In this short article I would like to bring Exnovate, the highly interesting Network of Excellence on Open & Collaborative Innovation, to your attention.

Back in 2008 I was fortunate to attend the fith European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepeneurship & Open Innovation with Henry Chesbrough & Kenneth Morse, where I first experienced the importance of the “business model”.

During the this Masterclass I was able to meet, experience and work with both professor VanHaverbeke and professor Henry Chesbrough. Both are the co-founders of Exnovate, as you can read in the about us section of the Exnovate website:

“Exnovate, the European Network of Excellence on Open & Collaborative Innovation, originated from the pioneering work of prof.dr. Wim Vanhaverbeke together with prof. Henry Chesbrough and other domain experts.”

What is Exnovate ??

The picture above shows an overview the Exnovate website, with the section “Exnovate in a nutshell” that provides a little more extensive description:

“Exnovate is a platform for companies and knowledge intensive organizations that are practicing open innovation. In particular, Exnovate serves as a clearinghouse and network platform, linking together the international community of companies, academia, governments and service providers. Since most knowledge and best practices on open & collaborative innovation are scattered around in different organizations, the platform can significantly speed up the learning process of the partners involved. In addition, Exnovate can help create and valorize knowledge on open & collaborative innovation, hence bridging the gap between theory and practice.”

On the left side of the website, below the Exnovate logo you can see a number of arrows, that provide additional information for a specific group of actors in the Open & Collaborative Innovation field:

1. Companies;
2. Acadamic World;
3. Public Policy Makers;
4. Service Providers;
5. Venture Captial;

While VentureLab Twente is aimed at entrepreneurs in ”assisting high-technology, high potential start-ups to develop and reach their full potential”, I can see similar concepts of connecting practitioners, researchers, experts and even venture capitalists. Exnovate however is focussed on the Open & Collaborative Innovation expertise.

Acadamic papers and network of innovators

Professor Frank Piller, who I was fortunate to meet during a masterclass @ Webster University in Amsterdam, wrote in the article “Exnovate and Open Innovation Forum: Two New Open Innovation Community Sites” on his Mass Customization & Open Innovation News blog:

I found three features especially useful:

• A list of case studies on open innovation for teaching;
• A list of academic papers on open innovation, most with a link to download
• A list of people working in the field;

Despite the fact that the list of academic papers isn’t completed yet (assumption since download links are missing), I really like this section and downloaded some papers that interested me. If you are interested in Open Innovation I can certainly recommend the academic paper list.

Concluding thoughts

I would like to recommend you to read the Exnovate vision, mission and strategy.

Such a European Network of Excellence on Open & Collaborative Innovation is highly valuable no matter if you are from a company, university, government, service provider or a venture captital firm. The amount of knowledge and experience on Open & Collaborative Innovation in such a Network of Excellence is tremendous !

I was able to meet and experience professor VanHaverbeke and professor Henry Chesbrough. Combining their drive and passion for Open & Collaborative Innovation with the high quality of the European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepeneurship & Open Innovation with Henry Chesbrough & Kenneth Morse, I can only conclude that the Exnovate Network of Excellence will be game-changing for many people out there !!

A little more than a week ago, from November 24th – November 28th, I attended the much anticipated fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepeneurship and Open Innovation organized by  Ronald Wolf (Philips) and Wim Vanhaverbeke (Hasselt University).

The beautiful main location was the Conference Hotel Willibrordhaeghe in Deurne (Netherlands), while some sessions took place at the Philips High Tech Campus (Eindhoven).

The two worldclass experts and keynote speakers of the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepeneurship and Open Innovation, Henry Chesbrough (UC Berkeley) and Kenneth Morse (MIT), are the leading experts in the professional fields innovation and entrepreneurship.

I was fortunate to attend a keynote session with Henry Chesbrough during a symposium, open innovation and creativity in management and governance. Combined with the fact that I’m currently completing a master program Innovationa and Entrepreneurship at the University of Twente, the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation, was a unique opportunity to meet both experts and learn from them.

Overview of the group working on a business case, fortunate to stand left next to Kenneth Morse. On the right event organizers Ronald Wolf and Wim Vanhaverbeke !

Aim and objectives of the Masterclass Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation

The subtitle of the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepeneurship and Open Innovation is “Open Innovation based New Business Creation for Corporate and Start-up Entrepreneurs”.

Despite both the title and subtile provide a rough idea of goal(s) and objectives of the Masterclass, you can read on the Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation website:

“This course focuses on entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and corporate venturing with focus on new product/new market combinations including a finance, marketing, sales, technology and human capital framework relevant for start-up ventures. During the course, Open Innovation is introduced as a tool to create a meeting ground for corporate environments, universities and start-ups where resources, knowledge but especially new business options can jointly be developed.”

Most remarkable aspect from the first paragraph from the aim section is the cross functional approach, in which most relevant aspects of a modern business, venture or start-up are addressed. The open innovation theory is not only addressed as a tool, but it can futhermore be seen as a driver for value creation, entrepreneurship and and exploring new opportunities in the market.

“Led by two internationally renowned experts in innovation and entrepreneurial management, Henry W. Chesbrough from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and Kenneth P. Morse from the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, this Corporate entrepreneurship course teaches the fundamentals of Open Innovation as applied to develop new venturing options for global corporations. The participants will be given the opportunity to develop and refine their business case, which will be evaluated during the last day of the course by an objective and demanding team of experts“

In addition to the unique situation where two worldclass leading experts, and pioneers of their professional field are brought together in a Masterclass, you can see that there is also room for a realistic, more practical oriented business case. Via this way you learn to apply theory and work with in realistic real-life scenario’s !

“The combination of world-class teaching and business case development will strengthen each participant’s new business development and venturing skills. It will also provide the participants with an Open Innovation framework where through collaboration with a variety of partners, new ventures can be created with a perspective outside their current corporate or startup environment.”

Finally a great systematic overview of objectives is provided on the Masterclass Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation website, to give you an idea of the skillset and scientific theory that is developed during the Masterclass.

A close look at the packed five day program

Since attendees will have to pay a “respectable” tuition fee for the Masterclass Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation, I will not provide any details on a session level (this wouldn’t be fare or professional towards the organizers), but I will provide an overview of the five day  program on a more abstract general level.

Monday November 24: Open Innovation and the Business Model (Henry Chesbrough, Graham Cross, Unilever)

“In this first day, we will examine the strengths and weaknesses of corporate innovation as it is practiced in advanced economies around the world. The traditional model is based upon a logic of internal vertical integration. As we shall discuss, the surrounding innovation environment no longer supports this internal logic, because the knowledge landscape has become too diverse and distributed for any one company to monopolize useful ideas in a given technology area. We will then present a new and different model of corporate innovation, called Open Innovation, and show how this model fits better with this more diverse and distributed environment.”

As you can read in the paragraph the start is at basic fundamental level of the traditional model, still available in a lot of companies.

In a good mix of both scientific theory, business cases and experiences of Henry Chesbrough a comparison between the traditional model and the open innovation model is discussed!

Furthermore a great session of Graham Cross, Collaborative Innovation Director at Unilever Foods, provides an idea of how open innovation is implemented within Unilever Foods. You might want to read an interview with Graham Cross on www.openinnovatie.nl !

Tuesday November 25: Opening Up your Business Model for Innovation (Henry Chesbrough)

“Day two focuses on methods to guide knowledge into and out of corporate environments. To develop a sustainable Open Innovation environment, it is necessary to create new business opportunities from new technology which in essence can be the result of any form of knowledge generating form of cooperation. In this context the role of start-up companies and venture capital providers will be discussed.”

Professor Chesbrough builds further on the knowledge about open innovation from the previous day. The central theme of the day is opening the business model for innovation.

It is not the pure technology itself that has a disruptive or radical character in the market (you might know the research of Professor Clayton Christensen), but it is the underlying innovative business model that causes the disruptive nature !!

An interesting book to read is “Open business models: how to thrive in the new innovation landscape” and not surprisingly written by professor Chesbrough !

Wednesday November 26: Creating new ventures (Kenneth Morse)

“This day is devoted to the elementary aspects of starting a venturing activity. The focus will be on defining the business model and how to involve potential customers to sharpen the case. At the end of the day the course attendants will have the opportunity to test their business proposition in a Networking Exercise with Top Sales Executives and Potential “Customers”.”

Kenneth Morse has a different style but excellent way of teaching, and with help of a few business cases and his own experience the central theme of today -creating new ventures- is intensively discussed.

Within the creating new ventures theme a great deal of attention has been spent on the development of a business proposition, and the way of communicating the proposition in an elevator pitch !

In the evening event, it was time apply the knowledge of today in practice during a realistic scenario where you can meet protential customers, venture capitalists and sales executives. This practical excersise is really aimed at developing a skillset that only can be learned by training and doing !!

Thursday November 27 : Generating sales (Kenneth Morse)

“Day four is devoted to sales in a series of lectures covering a wide variety of important aspects ranging from how to build a sales oriented venture activity to ‘how to close the deal’. In the afternoon, there will be a panel discussion with three experts on venturing, each representing a different perspective.”

As a student I wasn’t aware of the complex set of dynamics around the activity of closing a deal. In a multi perspective session Kenneth Morse was willing to share best practices, combined with practical examples, about how to close a deal.

A lot of the dynamics of closing the deal were completely new to me, but my compliments for the excellent step-by-step approach of Kenneth Morse that made this imporant step of building a business insightful !

In the afternoon program Kris Van der Velpen, Director Fortis Venturing, Fortis Brussels, Belgium, was willing to provide “a view in the kitchen of Fortis Venturing” around the topic of  Open Innovation - an important driver for sustainable service innovation.

Friday November 28: Discussion of the business cases

“In the morning, participants will have time to prepare their case presentations. In the afternoon, all business cases will be discussed in several groups consisting of your fellow students but also invited guests with expertise in the relevant areas knowing when but also when not to finance your venture plans.”

The final day of the Masterclass Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation, was completely aimed at presenting and selling the business case which we as a group have been developing in the past week. The business plans were presented to venture capitalists.

You can imagine that this has been a very rich experience, and the feedback & experiences from these kind of exercises will be valuable additions for the rest of my professional carreer !

Concluding thoughts and reflection

I started this article with the following sentence about the European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation:

” [...] the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation, was a unique opportunity to meet both experts (Henry Chesbrough & Kenneth Morse) and learn from them. ”

Of course it was awesome and very valuable to meet, experience and learn from the worldclass experts and founder in their professional field Henry Chesbrough and Kenneth Morse. Both had a very different style of teaching, but it was a unique experience to learn from them and they really embedded the knowledge in my brain in such a short time. This illustrates their excellence and outstanding professional quality ! Furthermore both gentlemen have a background both in science and business practice, which came back in their lectures from the past week.

Not only meeting two worldclass experts was an unforgetable experience, but also the wide range of attendees from different companies, different educational backgrounds and different corporate levels was very valuable. Especially for me as a student it was a great challenge to keep up with the corporate talents, however in the end I gained a lot of value from the interaction with the group of attendees as well ! I hope to stay in touch with them in the upcoming future.

Finally I would like to congratulate the organizers Ronald Wolf (Philips), Wim Vanhaverbeke (Hassel University) and the rest of their team Margot Franken-Richelle and Anny Roelandts for the excellent organization of the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation. I think you can be proud on such a great event !

I hope that I will look back on the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation in a few years and conclude that this has really been a life-changing event for me both on a professional level as well as in my personal development !!

About Henry Chesbrough

“Henry Chesbrough directs the Center for Open Innovation, focused on research and teaching on the impact of intangible assets and globally distributed knowledge on firm strategy and industrial innovation. He is doing research in innovation. More specifically he is interesting in Organizing, structuring and managing internal and external research and development. Furthermore, he is specialized in technology-based spin-offs, corporate venture capital and managing intellectual property. He is the author of “Open Innovation” (HBS Press, 2003) which was awarded Best Business Book of 2003 by Strategy & Business Magazine. He is also editor of a new, more academic oriented book “Open innovation: Researching a paradigm” (2006 – OUP, co-edited by Wim Vanhaverbeke and Joel West). Another book “Open Business Models” will be published in November 2006.”

About Kenneth Morse

“Ken Morse is a serial entrepreneur, having played a key role in launching several high-tech start-ups, including 3Com Corporation, Aspen Technology, Inc., a China Trade Company, a biotech venture, and an expert systems company.

As head of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, he is responsible for inspiring, training, and coaching new generations of entrepreneurs from all parts of MIT. Ken has been profiled and quoted in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Economist, and Red Herring.

Since Ken joined the MIT Entrepreneurship Center in 1996, the number of students taking Entrepreneurship Courses has increased from 220 to 1.500 per year while the number of professors has grown from 3 to 30.

Ken is a member of the Board of Advisors of four early-stage Venture Capital Firms: PolyTechnos Venture-Partners (Munich), Rudyard Partners, LLC (Boston) SINTEF A/S (Trondheim, Norway) and The Entrepreneurs Fund III (Silicon Valley). Ken serves on the Board of Advisors of Ludesi AB in Sweden, iMotions Technologies A/S in Denmark, Naseeb Networks in Pakistan, and several MIT spin-offs, including Medical Isotopes Technologies and Terrafugia, Inc.”

Because of the 40th anniversary of our faculty School of Management and Governance at the University of Twente, a symposium was organized with two very interesting keynote speakers: (1) Charles Landry and (2) Professor Henry Chesbrough

1.  Charles Landry:  Intercultural cities and Innovation

During this first keynote session, Charles Landry provided the attendees with an exciting presentation with lots of interesting visual material, discussing the visionary “creative city”-approach. Not only the advantages (clusters of creativity, climate for innovation, multicultural inhabitants, speed and growth) and disadvantages were addressed but also the approach itself and the scientific implications (redesign of the city, bringing more green and a creative atmosphere). Various parts of this great presentation could probably also be applied to the centers of excellence, like the High Tech Campus (Eindhoven), bringing together different complementary businesses supporting creativity and innovation.

“Charles Landry helps cities transform their thinking so that they look at their potential imaginatively and can plan and act with originality. He assesses the interplay and the impacts of deeper global trends, and attempts to ground these in practical initiatives. He inspires, stimulates, challenges and facilitates transformation.”  [ref03]

2.  Henry Chesbrough:  Open innovation and open business models

The second keynote session, was even more exciting and energizing to me, since my master program is called “Innovation & Entrepreneurship”. Henry Chesbrough is the leading scientific expert, who has defined the field of (open) innovation. Therefore it’s a unique experience to listen to a first-hand lecture about the fundamental idea’s of your  field of study.

The first step in building the theory is a start with the “old” closed-innovation paradigm, illustrated with some detailed examples from Xerox and IBM. In onder to learn, it’s highly relevant to understand mistakes from the past. The second step is a description of the open-innovation paradigm, again illustrated with great examples.This results in understanding the differences and underlying mindset of both the paradigms.

But even more important than the description of the paradigm shift is he detailed background information, and made choices of the examples from the business history. This deepens the understanding of the current business (models) and probably near future choices of direction.

Another extremely important fact in this keynote, that not the better technology but the better business model leads to superior business. This is illustrated with an auto-biographic example where Quantum outer-performed  the industry giant IBM by having a better business model. This business model was analogue to Darwin’s evolution theory better adapted to the market circumstances.

“His unique background as both a practitioner and a researcher has made Henry Chesbrough one of the most innovative and respected authorities on how to get ideas to market.  Furthermore Henry Chesbrough is a professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School, where he teaches and runs a center on managing innovation and the management of technology and researches in the areas of managing innovation, corporate venture capital, spin-offs, and managing intellectual property.” [ref04]

3.  Sessions:  Parallel session by University Researchers

Between the two keynote sessions a high number of parallel sessions from university researchers were held. I’ve joined the interesting sessions about:

• Business Development and Open Innovation / VentureLab Twente
• Open Innovation and Financial Customer Value Propositions

Both sessions were very interesting and approach the open innovation theory from a different perspective, which makes it a cross functional discussion topic. The open discussions between lectures, alumni, students and the business people were great to be part of !!

4.  Journal:  Creativity and Innovation Management Special Issue

“Volume 17 Issue 4 celebrates the 40th anniversary of the home institute of CIM – the School of Management Studies, University of Twente. Under the theme of Open Innovation and Creativity in Management and Governance this issue contains a special, including an article on Open Innovation Practices in Corporate Venturing by Henry Chesbrough, as well as a book review of his latest book Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm. Also, attention is paid to the concept of Creative Cities, coined by Charles Landry, including a book review of The Art of City Making. The issue is now freely available online.” [ref05]

Finally I want to thank the management of the school of Management and Governance for this successful symposium, with special credits to Petra de Weerd-Nederhoff in the role of main driver of this symposium.

Reference list

1. UTWENTE:  Internationale topsprekers op UT-symposium over innovatie en creativiteit (DUTCH)
2. UTWENTE:  Lustrum Faculteit management en Bestuur (DUTCH)
3. LUSTRUM CONFERENCE:  Open Innovation and Creativity in Management and Governance