The Next Step In Open Innovation

The creation of knowledge, products, and services by online communities of companies and consumers is still in its earliest stages. Who knows where it will lead? For most companies, innovation is a proprietary activity conducted largely inside the organization in a series of closely managed steps. Over the last decade, however, a few consumer product, fashion, and technology businesses have been opening up the product-development process to new ideas hatched outside their walls - from suppliers, independent inventors, and university labs.