4.10.1. Increased awareness of the need to leverage rich internal and external networks In the past, companies operated on the assumption that they must develop everything internally to maintain competitive advantage. According to Chesbrough (2003) during the last years a paradigm shift occurred. Companies moved from closed to open innovation. This paradigm shift was noticed because some of the principles of innovation changed. The difference in principles between the closed and the open innovation paradigm are summarised in Table 14. Table 14: The change in principle in moving from closed to open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003)
This paradigm shift is also acknowledged by some of the interviewees who noticed that in the past companies were trying to develop everything themselves and now it is more about trying to see who can help and who should be involved: Dus steeds meer mensen kennen, terwijl het vroeger steeds meer was dingen zelf uitzoeken, nu ben ik veel meer bezig met anderen om aan te voelen wat zou moeten kunnen en wie ik daar bij zou moeten betrekken. (EvS) The largest part of the companies in the interviews, as well as in the research of O’Connor et al (2008), is applying some of the principles of open innovation. O’Connor (in Chesbrough, 2006) proposes that the model for major innovation capability and open innovation should be integrated into one approach. One of the main reasons for integrating the major innovation capability with the open innovation approach is that it offers the possibility to speed up the arduous lifecycle of major innovations; this was also confirmed by an interviewee: So the broader your network the better you can manage your innovation process. If you don’t have a big enough network it will take you ten years instead of six. (LS) The companies interviewed are gaining awareness of the importance of opening up the innovation process and leveraging the networks and one of the interviewees mentioned that they are consciously managing and mapping the networks needed: Bij het business plan en de opstartfase gaan we gewoon heel goed kijken naar welke netwerken we nodig hebben en welke partijen daar in zitten en dan maken we tekeningen van hoe dat eruit ziet. En we vragen ons ook af wat voor type mensen we nodig hebben en wat voor type netwerken
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