Sisule Musungu – ‘Open innovation’ is on everyone’s lips these days. From industry gurus to business schools to governments, international organisations through to non-governmental organisations (NGOs). But will ‘open innovation’ deliver anything new or is it just another sexy phrase that will come and go and leave only despair in its wake?

The recent launch of the Initiative for Open Innovation (IOI) by CAMBIA and Australia’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a timely reminder and encouragement that we must go beyond the rhetoric and nice phraseology to providing the enabling tools and shaping policy if we are to practically open up innovation globally. Other efforts such as UNITAID’s work to create a patent pool for HIV/AIDS medicines are also good examples of how we can go beyond the rhetoric.

What really is Open Innovation?

The conventional definition of ‘open innovation’ today is largely based on that contained in Henry Chesbrough’s 2003 book “Open Innovation: The New Imperative for creating and profiting from technology”. For example, this is the definition carried by Wikipedia. Chesbrough defines, ‘open innovation’ as a paradigm which assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology. This definition, however, suffers from significant weaknesses and biases making it an inappropriate basis for thinking about innovation and intellectual property (IP) policy in a global environment. Two particular weaknesses are notable.

First, Chesbrough’s work is largely based on studying large companies, such as IBM, Xerox and Merck and their spinoffs as well as his experience in Silicon Valley. This excludes a large part of the economy and innovation landscape even within the United States (U.S.) itself let alone the rest of the world. The definition would, for example, not cover the type of businesses and innovations that researchers like Ronaldo Lemos have been describing over the last few years as ‘open business models’. Second, this definition tells us little about the nature of relationships between different players in an innovation ecology that is open. And, finally, the definition misuses both the words “open” and “innovation”. What is described in neither open, as it is mostly a one way phenomenon, nor innovation in its broad sense, as it is mainly focused on technological innovations.

If we were Serious about Openness and Innovation

For open innovation to have meaning in a globalised innovation system it has to be defined taking into account, at least, the following parameters:

• Inclusiveness.
• Transparency.
• Collaboration.

An inclusive system should be one which lowers the barriers to entry into the system for all players. It should be a system that can demonstrably bring a greater number of individuals, firms and other entities to participate in innovation than was previously possible.

Transparency should, among other things, relate to the availability of reliable basic information for all players. This means that a proper open innovation system should be one where it is relatively easier to navigate the system in terms of understanding the technological, regulatory and ownership of rights, such as patent rights. This provides an enhanced basis for making policy, business and strategic decisions by all players.

Collaboration speaks to a system that permits two way or multiple interactions that lead to better outcomes between players in the innovation system. While transparency enhances the opportunities for collaboration there is also need to think about the structuring of incentives in the system to promote collaboration.

Enter the Initiative for Open Innovation

The Initiative for Open Innovation (IOI) brings into play a powerful way of contributing to opening up innovation at the global scale for large and small players; for developed and developing countries; and for both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors of society. Though we need more practical actions, this is one initiative that has the potential to make important contribution in addressing the challenges of inclusion and transparency in the system as well as enhancing collaborative innovation.

Building on CAMBIA’s highly successful Patent Lens, IOI is intended to be a global facility dedicated to making the world’s patent systems more transparent, inclusive and navigable. In a press release on the Initiative Richard Jefferson of CAMBIA sums up the idea thus:

“Our goal is to create a free, open, global facility – cyberinfrastructure – needed to forge an evidence-based and inclusive innovation ecosystem. When patents can help society solve problems, they should be identified, learned-from and engaged with. When they block problem solving, they can be put in context and addressed through action, invention, negotiation or policy change.”

In practical terms, the intention is add the full text of worldwide patents and applications in all languages and integrate business and regulatory data as well as scientific and technical literature into the patent lens. While this approach will first be applied to the health sector, it is equally applicable to other sectors, including agriculture, and to broader challenges such as climate change.

IOI is by no means the first time that the idea of enhancing transparency in the patent system has come up. The issue has come up in a range of places before, including in discussions at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on patents and development. Most recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property has argued that in order for IP to contribute to innovation and promote public health action needs to be taken to [see Para 36(c) of the Strategy]:

“[F]acilitate widespread access to, and promote further development of, including, if necessary, compiling, maintaining and updating, user-friendly global databases which contain public information on the administrative status of health-related patents, including supporting the existing efforts for determining the patent status of health products, in order to strengthen national capacities for analysis of the information contained in those databases, and improve the quality of patents.”

What stands IOI apart is the fact that it builds on CAMBIA’s history of success in using open source approaches and because it seeks to provide more comprehensive innovation relevant information. In particular, the plan to integrate business and regulatory data as well as scientific and technical literature to basic patent status data makes this a significantly more valuable policy and business tool than any previous global effort.

With sufficient dedication and support, and a focus on the real meaning of open innovation, IOI and similar initiatives offer real hope that we can go beyond the rhetoric and actually open up the global innovation system to include all and to deliver for the public good.