Innovation Ecosystems: The future of Open Innovation

Open innovation has been one of the most talked about ideas in innovation over the past decade or so. However, the fundamental flaw with open innovation is that in most cases, the company still put itself at the center of the innovation activity in order to control it. The next generation of innovation management becomes exciting when companies begin thinking as an ecosystem. This allows for multiple companies to innovate together using the network of each partner to work with unexpected collaborators. Sharing information on challenges and new technology becomes advantageous in an ecosystem, where challenges can be solved much faster and at a lower cost. Companies which have traditionally been direct competitors may even begin to collaborate to innovate the entire industry together.