Symposium Open Innovation and Creativity in Management and Governance

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
2. Professor Henry Chesbrough

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.”

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.”

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 !!

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.”

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.