Twenty Years of Open Innovation

Two decades of open innovation have shown that the biggest barriers are inside, not outside, the organization.

Henry Chesbrough

December 21, 2023

Twenty years ago, I introduced the concept of open innovation in an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Where do we stand two decades later? We’ve seen some companies enjoy great success with this approach and witnessed the difficulties of others. One surprising insight 20 years on is that the biggest barriers to successful open innovation are inside, not outside, the organization.

Open innovation emphasizes drawing on external resources — such as customers, startups, crowdsourcing platforms, and universities — to develop ideas for new products and services. More formally, ...