The internet was revolutionary in that it democratized the spread of information and ideas at a much faster rate than any other channel in. With the increased adoption of computing, we’ve also tracked the rise of “distributed knowledge” databases like Quora or Wikipedia. What is interesting is how powerful these specialized knowledge bases can prove to be in the context of innovation.
The election of 2016 will certainly be one for the history books. Regardless of your political leanings, there was one sure thing to celebrate during this election cycle. The Innovate Your State Fix California Challenge—a crowdsourcing campaign aimed at promoting public participation in order to determine ways to improve government—had an initiative on the ballot in California!
For many years, companies were convinced of the competitive advantage of closed research and development. They jealously protected their intellectual property behind closed doors and dramatically revealed it to the public after years of development. This old model has since been replaced by open innovation.
Extending the principles of open innovation to the public sector is a particularly important transition. Public bodies are significant spenders on products and services and yet are often distant from the most dynamic processes in our economy. Dennis Hilgers and Frank Piller look at the wider benefits of an open public service in an extended web article downloadable on Innovation Management. The authors raise some of the most important issues below.
