IdeaFlow (Renee Hopkins on Corante) has an interview with Henry Chesbrough, the author of “Open Innovation” [1 2 3], whose thesis is that “the traditional model for innovation–which has been largely internally focused, closed off from outside ideas and technologies–is becoming obsolete. Emerging in its place is a new paradigm, ‘open innovation,’ which strategically leverages internal and external sources of ideas and takes them to market through multiple paths.”
He has this to say about better innovation, as opposed to more innovation:
I think of “more” as a quantity. I think of “better” as a quality of something. In this case, better innovation enables people to solve problems that are important to them. In business terms, these solutions are worth more to the consumer than they cost to provide, so the consumer is willing to pay what it costs for the solution, and gets more value than they pay in return. Better innovation not only enables people to do their tasks faster or easier, at its best it can enable people to do new tasks.
