Describing knowledge integration in innovation processes

Abstract

In order to sustain competitive advantages, many companies are being challenged to shift their strategy from "Closed Innovation" to "Open Innovation", and also to "Crowd Innovation". In "Closed Innovation", knowledge or information was created and stored in tightly integrated organizations. Their knowledge and information were the resources to be protected by companies. The concept of "Open Innovation" encourages companies to combine internal and external knowledge and information for new value propositions. Business alliances, joint-ventures and M&A are the typical activities in "Open Innovation". The drastic progress of the Internet is creating a new wave of innovation, called "Crowd Innovation". "Crowd Innovation" is one of the key factors for corporations to exploit the enormous knowledge and information generated exponentially by the crowd of anonymous people on the Internet. In this paper, the knowledge integration process for new value propositions in "Closed", "Open" and "Crowd Innovation" is discussed, and a proposed integration process is described.