Center for Open Innovation

Open Innovation Speaker Series

The Open Innovation Speaker Series is a weekly series intended to provide both academic and managerial perspectives on open innovation and related subjects. The organizer is Henry Chesbrough, executive director of the Center for Open Innovation at UC Berkeley. It is open to students, faculty, staff, and the general public. If you would like to join the mailing list for papers and other information, please email Richard Henderson at richard@haas.berkeley.edu.

[Fall 2009 Schedule]

[Spring 2009 Schedule] [Fall 2008 Schedule]
[Background Info] [Presentation Info]

Fall 2009 Series Schedule

250 Sutardja Dai Hall (New Citris Center), UC Berkeley - The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society is located at the corner of Hearst and LeRoy, on the north side of campus. Click here for a map.

Mondays, 2 pm - 3:30 pm

Aug. 31	Henry Chesbrough
	COI Executive Director	UC-Berkeley


Sept. 14	Joel West
	Associate Professor	San Jose State University
	(presentation PDF)	(video on YouTube)


Sept. 21	Judy Estrin
	CEO	J Labs
	(presentation PDF)	(video on YouTube)


Sept. 28	Keval Desai
	Director of Product Mgt	Google
		(video on YouTube)


Oct. 5	Joachim Henkel
	Chair, Professor	Technical Univ. of Munich
	(presentation PDF)	(video on YouTube)


Oct. 12	Hyun Park
	Head, Global Offering Mgt	Nokia
		(video on YouTube)


Oct. 19	Sabine Brunswicker
	Manager/Senior Researcher	Fraunhofer Institute
	(presentation PDF)	(video on YouTube)


Oct. 26	Lesa Mitchell
	Vice President	Kauffman Foundation
	(Hubbard presentation pdf)
	(Kim presentation pdf)


Nov. 2	Jens Froslov Christensen	Copenhagen Business School
	(presentation PDF)	(video on YouTube)


Nov. 9	Wim Vanhaverbeke
	Professor	Leuven University


Nov. 16	Rob Valli
	Academic/Consultant	Cambridge University, UK


Nov. 23	Vivek Wadhwa
	Professor	Harvard Law School


Nov. 30	Marco ten Vaanholt
	Vice President	SAP Community Network


Dec. 7	Johann Fueller
	Co-Founder	Hyve

Spring 2009 Series Schedule: videos now available

Cheit Hall room 330, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley

Mondays, 12:30 - 2 pm, Refreshments provided

Feb. 9 - Wim Vanhaverbeke, Professor, Hasselt University, Belgium, "Broadening the scope of Open Innovation", (presentation available: pdf) (Real video)

Feb. 16 - President’s Day – No Presentation

Feb. 23 - Steve Goers, VP Open Innovation, Kraft Foods, "Applying the principles of open innovation to drive growth", (abstract)(presentation available: pdf) (Real video)

Mar. 2 - Peter Williams, CTO, Big Green Innovations, IBM, "Case Studies in Environmental Innovation at IBM", (abstract & speaker bio)(presentation available: pdf) (Real video)

Mar. 9 - Dan’l Lewin, Microsoft, Corporate VP, Strategic & Emerging Business Development, "Microsoft's Approach to Open Innovation", (abstract, image & speaker bio) (presentation available: pdf) (Real video)

Mar. 16 - Marko Torkelli, Professor, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland, "Open Innovation – Buying & Selling Knowledge across Systems: The Case of China, Finland & Spain" (abstract) (presentation available: pdf) (Real video)

Mar. 23 - Spring Recess - No Presentation

Mar. 30 - Alex Osterwalder, Business model advisor, on business models & innovation (abstract & speaker bio) (Real video)

April 6 - Tony Singarayar, Founder, Analogy Growth Partners (Business model) (abstract & speaker bio) (Real video)

April 13 - Frank Piller, Professor, University of Aachen, and MIT, success factors of implementing customer co-design (abstract, image & speaker bio) (presentation available: pdf) (Real video)

April 20 - Francesco Sandulli, Professor, Complutense University of Madrid, intermediaries and partnerships (abstract & speaker bio) (presentation available: pdf: LivingLabsApproach) (presentation available: pdf: UCMLivingLabs) (Real video)

April 27 - Andrew Davies, Professor, Imperial College, London, "Systems integration: a core capability for open innovation" (abstract & speaker bio) (Real video)

May 4 - Rich Friedrich, Director, Open Innovation Office, HP Labs, "Open Innovation at HP Labs: Leveraging HP’s world-class innovation network to discover and nurture new opportunities to improve business and life" (abstract, image & speaker bio)(presentation available: pdf) (Real video)

Fall 2008 Series Schedule

Hearst Mining and Minerals Building, Room 290

Wednesdays, 4:00 – 5:30pm

Refreshments provided

9/10 – John Wilbanks, Vice President, Science Commons (confirmed), "Uncommon Knowledge and Open Innovation" (abstract)

9/24 – Carol Mimura, Ph.D., Assistant Vice Chancellor for Intellectual Property & Industry Research Alliances (IPIRA), UC-Berkeley (watch video)

10/8 – Alpheus Bingham, Ph.D., founder, Director, former Chairman of the Board, former CEO, InnoCentive, Inc. (watch video)

10/22 – Stephen Benson, CEO, Innovation Exchange.com, “Open Innovation Communities: The art and science of creating markets and pathways for people around the world to connect and innovate” (watch video)

10/29 – Ronald Wolf, Phillips Electronics – NOTE: This address will be in 3110 Etchverry Hall (watch video) (presentation available: pdf)

11/5 – Linus Dahlander, Lecturer, Imperial College London, Tanaka Business School, “"Progressing to the Center: The Antecedents and Consequences of Lateral Authority" (coauthored with Siobhan O'Mahony, UC Davis), (watch video) (paper available: pdf)

11/19 – Henry Chesbrough, Executive Director, Center for Open Innovation and Adjunct Professor, Haas School of Business, "Industry-University Research Relationships: The Promise, the Tensions, and Why We’ve Got to Get This Right" (abstract) (watch video)

12/3 – Fiona Murray, Class of 1922 Career Development Professor, Associate Professor Management of Technology Innovation & Entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan School of Business, “Does Open Access Democratize Innovation?” (confirmed)

Background Information on the Open Innovation Speaker Series

The processes of industrial innovation are themselves being innovated. The locus of innovation is shifting, from largely being confined to operations within the four walls of the corporation, to a more distributed, open model of innovation. In this more open approach, useful knowledge can be found from a wealth of possible sources. Companies need to re-orient their management processes to make greater use of external knowledge in their own innovation systems. In turn, companies would do well to let their own unused ideas flow to other businesses for them to use. Related topics involve the opportunity to engage with customers in more participatory processes, advancing science through more open, collaborative, and rapid means, and creating markets and pathways for people around the world to connect and innovate.

This new speaker series brings together some thoughtful practitioners of this more open process of innovation, along with some excellent new academic research on new ways of conceptualizing innovation processes. The thesis of the series is that this open process goes well beyond any single industry (such as open source software), geography (we will have practitioners using open models in a variety of countries), or type of organization (we will consider both for-profit and not-for profit organizations). As such, we believe that the series will be of interest for a wide variety of people, from disparate backgrounds.

Presentation Information

9/10/08 – John Wilbanks, Vice President, Science Commons (confirmed), "Uncommon Knowledge and Open Innovation"

Abstract

We are seeing the transformation of knowledge from something that is primarily conveyed in paper formats into something else: a computable graph, in which the knowledge is written in formats that computers can understand and interconnect, based on the same technologies that underlie the internet and web. Paper technology simply contains expressions of ideas, but the very technology of paper makes *integration* of ideas very difficult, if not impossible.

Graphs allow ideas to "snap" together into larger and larger networks, which can in turn allow computers to help us interrogate the knowledge more effectively. There are competing technologies to achieve this, but the idea of "the paper" as the core container for knowledge is dying, and technology will be the killer. This transformation is happening first, like the transformation of documents to the Web, in the sciences.

The move to a computable graph as a knowledge storage technology holds enormous promise for open innovation. It can make innovations easier to discover and evaluate, serve as a network for low-cost transactions, provide new bases for credit and impact, and in general provide a technical infrastructure for the purposive inflow and outflow of ideas necessary for OI.

But this is "uncommon knowledge" - we've never dealt with knowledge this way, and it shows. There is a significant amount of legal and technical infrastructure failure to be addressed. And there's a lot of barn raising to be done.

This talk will outline the basics of the transformation of knowledge to computable graphs, the connection to Open Innovation, and outline some ideas for how we move forward to increase the chances of breakthrough discoveries about human health and drug discovery.

11/19/08 – Henry Chesbrough, Executive Director, Center for Open Innovation and Adjunct Professor, Haas School of Business, "Industry-University Research Relationships: The Promise, the Tensions, and Why We’ve Got to Get This Right"

Abstract

Industry is playing a growing role as a funding source for discovery-oriented research conducted at universities in the US. This growing role offsets to some degree the decline in federal and state support for universities over the past 30 years. But it also raises important questions about the nature of the American public university in the 21st century. Does growing industry funding compromise the academic quality, integrity and freedom of the research university? Can universities remain open institutions in a world where industry funding plays an increasingly important role? And how are universities addressing these issues?This talk will consider these questions, and address them through a recent case study of the BP-UC Berkeley-UC Illinois Energy Biosciences Institute.

2/23/09 - Steve Goers, VP Open Innovation, Kraft Foods, "Applying the principles of open innovation to drive growth"

Abstract

Open innovation can be an important enabler in driving growth for consumer goods companies. Forging external partnerships to drive growth is really not a new approach for Kraft. However, given today's reality that innovation is occurring at a very rapid pace and largely outside of Kraft, it is more imperative than ever before that we tap into these streams of external value-creation. But, how do you best embark on this journey and what does success look like? How do you make the connections and effectively raise your external awareness as a desired partner of choice? What organizational structures, behaviors, processes and capabilities do you need to be successful? This presentation will cover some of the approaches Kraft has employed to begin building open innovation capabilities and describe our learning from recent case studies.

3/2/09 - Peter Williams, CTO, Big Green Innovations, IBM, "Case Studies in Environmental Innovation at IBM"

Abstract

ECO (Evaluating CleanTech Options) is an IBM Big Green Innovations project that supports energy and green investment decisions regarding the nation’s energy and sustainability challenges. It provides at one and the same time an open sourced method to evaluate the financial and environmental viability of new green technologies; and what will build over time into a repository of society's knowledge of these technologies.

"ECO", is a concept created by Dave Getzin to create an open portal (in a spirit and manner similar to the forces that created Linux). ECO seeks to leverage the power of the Linux development model along with a broad community of energy and environmental experts and apply them to judging the viability of “green” inventions. There are many competing claims today and no forum or process to openly and objectively evaluate them. More importantly there is no established common framework upon which they should be evaluated. ECO would fill these voids, providing a transparent system with broad participation that would promote under-appreciated solutions, highlight issues with other solutions and help government and others make optimal investment decisions in order to address our sustainability challenges.

Peter's presentation will describe IBM's Big Green Innovations activities and then focus specifically on ECO as an example of these. Participation from Berkeley is eagerly sought to continue and sustain this initiative.

Speaker Biography

Dr Peter Williams is the Chief Technology Officer for IBM's Big Green Innovations unit, whose role is to identify environmentally focused businesses for IBM to either develop or participate in - he is personally responsible for assembling, maintaining and developing the portfolio of businesses included. His particular focus areas have been photovoltaic energy; developing green house gas reduction solutions and services for all types of organization, both public and private; and water management solutions, covering entire water resources (for example entire rivers or aquifers), utility infrastructures responsible for water supply, water quality and waste water management, and enterprise water management.

By background, Dr Williams is a management consultant with well over 20 years experience of bringing technology and business issues together to develop novel solutions and business models. He has extensive experience of the public sector, including defense, as well as the high technology, retail and CPG sectors. A native of the UK, he has lived in California since 1999, and is married with three children. His PhD was awarded by the School of Management at the University of Bath, England, in 1986.

Mar. 9 - Dan’l Lewin, Microsoft, Corporate VP, Strategic & Emerging Business Development, "Microsoft's Approach to Open Innovation"

Abstract

The IT industry is transforming the ways that people work, create and share information, generating waves of opportunity for all industries and individuals in an interconnected global economy. In this environment, it is now more critical than ever to examine the traditional methods of innovation and to embrace new models – from centralized R&D processes to greater collaboration with outside networks of innovators. In this presentation, learn how IP is the enabler in these relationships and impacts economic growth through Microsoft’s approach to open innovation.

Speaker Biography

Dan'l Lewin, corporate vice president for Strategic and Emerging Business Development, is responsible for Microsoft Corp.'s global relationships with startups, venture capitalists and the business relationships with industry partners such as Adobe Systems Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc. and IBM Corp. Based in Silicon Valley, Lewin also has executive and site responsibility for the company's operations in Mountain View, Calif., which currently employ 2,000 people.

Dan'l Lewin

Microsoft's Strategic and Emerging Business Development consists of three groups: the Emerging Business Team, the Local Software Economy (LSE) and the Strategic Relations Group, whose common goal is to support software startups and established companies working on the Microsoft platform while helping develop and grow local software economies worldwide. Through the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program, Microsoft BizSpark Program, and the LSE's Microsoft Innovation Center Program, Lewin's groups help accelerate startup success in more than 60 countries.

Lewin has spent more than 30 years as a Silicon Valley-based executive leading sales and marketing divisions for companies including Apple Computer Inc., NeXT Inc. and GO Corp. Before joining Microsoft, he was CEO of Aurigin Systems Inc., a startup that pioneered intellectual property asset management, and he has consulted for emerging companies, venture capital firms and corporate joint ventures.

Lewin serves on the boards of the Churchill Club; Software Development Forum; American Electronics Association; Santa Clara University Center for Science, Technology and Society; and the Tech Museum of Innovation, where he serves as chairman of the Tech Museum Awards program. He is also on the Corporate Advisory Board of the National Venture Capital Association. He holds an AB in politics from Princeton University.

Mar. 16 - Marko Torkelli, Professor, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland

Abstract

I am pleased to present our research on March 16th about our survey results. Our open innovation survey covers nowadays China, Finland, Portugal, Russia, and Spain. Brazil, France, Sweden and some other countries are coming soon.

Mar. 30 - Alex Osterwalder, Business model advisor, on business models & innovation

Abstract

Among the topics to be explored are:

What are business models? What role do they play in innovation?
Can they be innovated, or they too embedded within an organization to change much?
What are the barriers to innovating business models?
How has Alex addressed these barriers in his work?

After this talk you will understand why business models and particularly business model innovation are important. We will discuss how you can make it a systematic part of an organization through a tested visual approach to describing, developing and sharing business models. The talk will be accompanies by numerous examples ranging from traditional industries to Web-based companies. Participants will be challenged to think out of the box in a number of short exercises.

Speaker bio

Dr. Alexander Osterwalder is a freelance author, speaker and workshop facilitator on the topic of business model innovation. He coaches executives, entrepreneurs and consultants around the globe to help them better understand how they can transform their business models. Dr. Osterwalder has developed a systematic approach to business model innovation, which is applied in companies such as IBM, Deloitte, Ericsson,Telenor and more.

Dr. Alexander Osterwalder is from Switzerland. He holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Lausanne. His work is available on his blog at http://business-model-design.blogspot.com

April 6 - Tony Singarayar, Founder, Analogy Growth Partners (Business model)

Tony is an experienced hand at innovation, having worked extensively with J&J in a variety of roles. He has launched a consultancy that utilizes an extensive database of business models to derive factors that enhance value or erode value.

Here are some key topics he will address:

a businesses is more likely to succeed if it has a strong business model. when businesses are faced with tough growth and profit challenges, some evolve strong ways to win – we’ve been collectors of such strong business models from 1997
a proprietary database contains the business model archetypes and their variants – hundreds of them. we analyze them to understand the factors that enable their success – we call these factors “value accelerators”
in a typical project (we started doing these in 1997), we first understand dominant patterns of competition in a category…this leads us to recognize and predict typical growth and profit inhibitors that businesses in the category will encounter – we call these “value eroders”. We also find the typical factors that win in analogous categories – the “value accelerators”
we then prioritize the eroders and accelerators – to find the factors that will have most impact on growth, profits and advantage – given the client’s unique situation
the results are a custom recommendation. clients range from multinationals with global brands to start ups

More about him:

Tony Singarayar, founding partner, has experience in New Product Development and Marketing, Business Development, Finance, and Information Technology, in small and large companies, across a broad range of industries. He is Managing Director of a 400 person, 39 year old business in Sri Lanka, and COO of Smart Brain Technologies, a start-up using videogames and NASA technology to train “concentration stamina”. Prior experience includes roles in Johnson and Johnson, Shell Chemical (Lankem) and KPMG .

April 13 - Frank Piller, Professor, University of Aachen, and MIT, success factors of implementing customer co-design

Abstract

A growing heterogeneity of demand, the advent of “long tail markets” and the proliferation of product variety, and exploding product complexities despite shorter product life cycles are regarded as major threats by many product managers. In my talk I will argue, however, that these developments also present enormous new profit opportunities. The talk will introduce a number of strategies that help companies to address and profit from these challenges. A key capability of companies employing these strategies is to see customers not as a passive source of revenue, reacting on the firm's activities, but as a co-creation partner in creating these strategies and corresponding product assortments.

Several companies, such as Dell, Adidas, BMW, Nike, Volvo Trucks, Threadless, Capital One, Spreadshirt, Pandora, or Sears are already successfully operating after this new business model. However, a number of well-financed co-creation operations failed (e.g. by Levi Strauss, Procter&Gamble), reminding us of the challenges of implementing such a strategy. Based on studying more than 300 cases of companies co-creating with their customers and users, the talk will discuss the success factors of implementing customer co-design.

Bio

Frank Piller is a chair professor of management at the Technology & Innovation Management Group of RWTH Aachen University, Germany's leading institute of technology. He also is the founder and co-director of the MIT Smart Customization Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Before entering his recent position in Aachen in spring 2007, he worked at the MIT Sloan School of Management (Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group) and has been an associate professor of management at TUM Business School, Munich (1999-2004). His research focuses on value co-creation between businesses and customers/users and the capabilities that enable a company to successfully integrate external input in the innovation process.

Frequently quoted in The New York Times, The Economist, and Business Week, amongst others, Frank is regarded as one of the leading experts on mass customization, personalization, and open innovation. He graduated summa cum laude with a Ph.D. in Operations Management from the University of Wuerzburg, Germany in 1999. His habilitation (tenure in the German university system) is from TUM Business School. He is a fellow of the German Scholarship Foundation and a founding member of the European Academy of Management. As a founding partner of Think Consult, a management consultancy, he helps his clients to serve their customers better by using truly customer-centric strategies. As a board member or scientific adviser, he works with a number of innovative technology companies to bring his research into practice.

He can be contacted at piller@tim.rwth-aachen.de or via www.open-innovation.com.

April 20 - Francesco Sandulli, Professor, Complutense University of Madrid, intermediaries and partnerships

Abstract

In order to allow and facilitate Open Innovation a number of intermediaries have emerged. However, in this intermediation process, user involvement and capturing user insights have been notably absent. In Europe we are witnessing the birth and development of a type of intermediary, known as Living Labs. Living Labs are PPPP (public – private – people partnerships) that involve users in the creation, prototyping and validation of new products, processes or services in real-life contexts. This session will provide an overview on the activities and current state of development of this initiative and its representing network, the ENoLL – European Network of Living Labs, with 129 associated organizations so far (http://www.openlivinglabs.eu), discussing both the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, illustrating them with some ongoing experiences we are currently leading (In the health industry and in the services industry), and how this model could be also useful within the context of american system of innovation.

Bio

Francesco Sandulli is associate professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, director of the Orange Chair on Information Society. His main research interests are related to the interaction between innovation, information technology and productivity with a special focus on the services industry. He is leading the creation of the Living Lab of the Complutense University of Madrid, the biggest university in Spain with more than 80,000 students. He was previously one of the founding partners of a " bubble failed" dot.com initiative and of Everis, one of the biggest IT and management consulting firms in Spain nowadays (more than 3,000 employees). He also worked for Accenture.

April 27 - Andrew Davies, Professor, Imperial College, London, "Systems integration: a core capability for open innovation"

Abstract

Some of the world’s leading firms – IBM, General Electric, Rolls-Royce and Ericsson – now compete by providing integrated solutions, rather than just making stand-alone products or selling services. For example, Rolls-Royce provides airlines with solutions for power-by-the-hour, including jet engines and services to maintain, repair and upgrade them over many years. For firms like Rolls-Royce and IBM, services that add value to the physical product now account for over 50 per cent of their revenues. Many firms are finding that many obstacles must be overcome to achieve growth and profitability in these new markets. Traditional industry structures and capabilities have to be changed and continuously refined over many years. IBM, for example, continues to evolve its strategy for integrated solutions initiated in 1993.
This presentation presents a study of the organizational capabilities and structures that firms are developing to provide integrated solutions. It shows how firms must learn how to integrate dispersed knowledge and technologies in order to provide complex bundles of products and services. This involves having a clear understanding of their traditional capabilities and what new knowledge they need to develop. They must decide what capabilities can be provided in-house, which ones are no longer required and when partners are needed to fill capability gaps.

Bio

Andrew Davies is a Reader in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group, Imperial College Business School, Imperial College London. He is a co-director of the EPSRC Innovation Studies Centre and theme leader of research on 'project business', which examines how innovation occurs in infrastructure - airports, road, water, energy, ICT and urban ecocity developments. Andrew's own research has focused on a wide range of topics such as organizational capabilities, systems integration, integrated solutions business models, and innovation in megaprojects. He has published many articles in a range of leading journals such as California Management Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Research Policy, Industrial and Corporate Change, Organization Studies, and Industrial Marketing Management. His recent books include The Business of Projects: Managing Innovation in Complex Products and Systems , Cambridge University Press (2005), co-authored with Michael Hobday, and The Business of Systems Integration, Oxford University Press (2003, 2005), co-edited with Andrea Prencipe and Michael Hobday.

May 4 - Rich Friedrich, Director, Open Innovation Office, HP Labs, "Open Innovation at HP Labs: Leveraging HP’s world-class innovation network to discover and nurture new opportunities to improve business and life"

Abstract

As competition intensifies on an increasingly global basis, and innovation becomes riskier and more costly, companies are opening their innovation processes to increasingly adopt collaborative approaches, and HP Labs is no exception. As the exploratory and advanced research group for Hewlett-Packard, HP Labs tackles the complex challenges facing our customers and society over the next decade, while pushing the frontiers of fundamental science. We put a strong emphasis on open innovation, collaborating with universities, customers and partners, and government funding agencies to gain insights and to amplify the work of our 600 researchers. Through the HP Labs Open Innovation Office, we assemble experts from around the world, lead collaboration on ground-breaking programs, and work to identify the next set of technology breakthroughs that will meet the scientific and business objectives of HP and its partners.

Bio

Rich Friedrich heads the Open Innovation Office, which was established to deepen HP Labs’ strategic collaborations with those in academia, government and the commercial sector. A global team supporting HP Labs around the world, the Open Innovation Office is charged with driving high-impact research results that meet HP and its partners’ scientific and business objectives. In this role, Friedrich is responsible for identifying best-in-class technologies that complement the HP Labs research agenda. Friedrich previously directed the Enterprise Systems and Software Lab (ESSL) at HP Labs. The ESSL research team focused on ambitious next-generation enterprise computing and management systems and on inventing distinctive utility computing mechanisms to provide IT infrastructure and enterprise services on demand.

Rich Friedrich

[top of page]