For the first time I have come across the concept of Open Innovation while reading the interview of Henry Chesbrough. I must say the concept is quite intuitive as instead of supporting manufacturing over services or visa versa Henry is propagating adoption of services by the manufacturing sector to come out of the commodity trap. The increased flow of knowledge has reduced the product life cycles thereby increased threat of commoditization of the products. He advocates that companies should tear down the wall of it's R&D and ask the question, 'How can I make my product a platform?'. Platform is a place where others can build along or on top i.e. to continuously think how my product can help others to provide their product or services on top of my product or along with my product. He quotes an example of iStore which created the platform for thousands of app developers.
I am quite sure that this concept will catch on sooner than expected. Here is the link - http://www.strategy-business.com/article/11210?pg=all
