In january 2014, the world intellectual property organization held an international conference in geneva, switzerland, on the theme “open innovation: cooperative projects and the knowledge future”, at which experts explored “the potential of open cooperative innovation to meet the most serious challenges facing today's society”. The innovative model is now widely applied and has many successful practices in industrial areas such as health research, climate change and film production. The rapid development of open innovation models and their close relationship to intellectual property governance require us to pay great attention to their trends and to draw inspiration from our economic and social development。
Introduction to the wipo conference on open innovation: cooperative projects and the knowledge future
In january 2014, the world intellectual property organization (wipo) convened an international conference on the theme “open innovation: cooperative projects and the knowledge future”, in geneva, switzerland, with 17 high-level representatives from developed and developing countries. The meeting was organized in accordance with recommendation 36 of the 2007 world intellectual property organization development agenda, “exchange of experiences on open collaborative projects such as the human genome project and intellectual property model”, and was divided into six topics: a global innovation network architecture; best practices in open innovation and a vision for the future of open cooperation among public institutions; film and innovative cooperation; large innovative infrastructure projects based on open cooperation; best practices in open innovation between public institutions and private enterprises; and operational and open cooperation tools for open innovation in social development。
Open collaborative innovations are now widely used in industrial areas such as health research, climate change, film production and museum design, and examples of such initiatives as the hiv vaccine development project, the open source drug development project and the human genome programme all demonstrate the great potential of open innovation. The potential of open innovation in addressing some of the serious challenges facing today's society was explored in depth by the experts. In recent years, the director-general of the world intellectual property organization, francis gautt, has on several occasions stressed the importance of open cooperation. He stated that the creative way in which human beings expressed themselves had changed profoundly over the past 30 years. The emergence of user-generated content and the involvement of people in collective creation, including through crowdsourcing and open innovation platforms, have opened new opportunities for humankind. The area of innovation is currently undergoing transition, with one of its features shifting to a more open innovation system. At the same time, data show that 22 per cent of scientific papers are completed through international cooperation. It is not difficult to conclude that, with increasing international competition and the risks associated with the commercialization of technological innovation, innovation is breaking geographical constraints and becoming more international than ever, and that an increasing number of enterprises are beginning to participate in collaborative innovation activities, premised on the sharing of resources and the complementarity of strengths, thereby sharing risks and sharing results。
Ali jazairy, senior adviser to the innovation and technology sector of the world intellectual property organization, presented his views on the evolution of innovative models of cooperation. He noted that the flow of technology and knowledge at the global level was crucial in the context of the changing landscape of technology, changing user needs and shrinking product life cycles. In view of this, fundamental innovations to openness, connectivity, flexibility and applicability can stimulate faster innovation. Ali jazairy listed the current traditional innovative models of cooperation, such as licensing, subcontracting, joint ventures and patent pools, as well as new innovative models of cooperation, such as web application models, crowdsourcing, ideas competitions and open source software. He expressed the view that developing countries that were experiencing “mass” ict development should play an active role in open cooperation projects。
In addition, james puli, deputy director-general of the world intellectual property organization, addressed the relationship between open cooperation and intellectual property rights in his statement. He stated that intellectual property was consistent with open cooperative innovation and that intellectual property rights made open innovation possible. He provided examples of open-source software and open networks, how collaborative innovations were protected by patents and the integrity and confidentiality of open innovation networks。
The meeting concluded by setting the direction for future work on open-ended cooperation topics, including optimizing the use of the expertise of the world intellectual property organization (wipo) in future open-ended innovation projects, making open-ended cooperation models more accessible and affordable, new open-ended innovative financing mechanisms, further explaining the role of the “human element” in innovation under intellectual property protection regimes, and a comparative study of licensing systems in environments such as open data platforms。
Ii. Introduction to open innovation
The concept of open innovation was first introduced by harvard scholar henry chesbrough in 2003 in his academic monograph, open innovation: a new strategy to benefit from technology, and was summed up as the value of purposeful use of knowledge inflows and flows to accelerate internal innovation and to market innovation through internal and external channels. Open innovation theory argues that the management of knowledge and technology is not confined, but rather proactive in facilitating the cross-border flow of knowledge and technology in order to take full advantage of its value, and that enterprises need to establish extensive linkages with the outside world to complement their strengths in knowledge dissemination and sharing. The process of open innovation is shown in figure 1。
Figure 1 open innovation processes
During the twentieth century, corporate innovation came mainly from in-house research institutions, relying on internal creativity and emphasizing monopoly control over innovation knowledge. The success of enterprise competition lies in the development of new technologies and new products adapted to market needs through investment in in-house r&d institutions; this closed innovation strategy, which has been successful for quite a long time, is based on a specific historical context of low labour mobility, low risk investments, few new businesses, weak power and the influence of institutions such as universities. Since the 1990s, however, this pattern of closure has gradually changed, owing to: (i) the increasing mobility of academic talent, which is highly likely to exist outside the enterprise when the enterprise dominates the important innovation process; (2) the growth of venture capital has led to an increase in entrepreneurial firms with unique technological power, which has enriched the availability of resources in external technology markets; and (3) the wave of economic globalization has brought innovation the new situation allows the allocation and flow of innovative resources to take place on a wider scale; (4) the rapid reduction in the life cycle of products leads to increasing demand for innovation, and modern innovation requires extensive cooperation within and outside the enterprise for rapid success; and (5) as intellectual property protection moves towards internationalization, open innovation enables enterprises to benefit from technology transfer, while the assets of technological innovation in an enterprise can be combined in time and space in a qualitative and quantitative way under an open innovation model. Changes in these elements have had a significant impact on traditional closed innovation。
Open innovation is a different model from closed innovation: open innovation means that firms can take advantage of outside creativity, either through the purchase of patents, access to technology, investment in research projects by external research institutions or the formation of research alliances, as long as companies have sufficient absorptive capacity to convert creative ideas to marketable products, or to profit from market development through patent licences or technology ownership transfers that do not suit their inherent business model. A comparison of the two models from the context of technological innovation, modalities, intellectual property management etc. Is shown in table 1。
Table 1 comparison of closed and open innovation
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Fundamental principles of closed innovation
Fundamental principles of open innovation
Economic context of technological innovation
1. Slow diffusion of innovative knowledge, lack of qualified personnel and low mobility of talent
1. Knowledge of innovation spreads rapidly, high-quality and highly mobile talent
Low risk investments
2. The development of venture capital markets
3. Inadequate market for third-party technical services
3. A developed third-party market for technical services, with strengthened universities and professional research services
Business is the key to winning
Create enough new technologies, patents through internal innovation
Make full use of new technologies, patents, suitable for the company, both within and outside the enterprise
Management of essential elements of technological innovation
It's creative to hire good factors of production, such as the best employees, to use state-of-the-art experimental equipment for research
Not all good production factors need to be mastered, but just creative results from good production factors
Profit model
Research, creativity and marketing; control of knowledge production rights
1. Use of intra- and extra-corporate innovations, productization, marketization
2. Intra-firm creativity can also be marketed to the most valuable firms to benefit from the exploitation of intellectual property rights
Intellectual property management
Intellectual property monopoly should be strengthened to prevent competitors from benefiting from intellectual property
The purpose of regulating iprs is not to prevent their use by outside firms, but to improve the business model of the company by regulating them, or to benefit from the use of the intellectual property rights of the company by competitors
Iii. Characteristics of open innovation models and their advantages
(i) characteristics of open innovation models
The following characteristics of open innovation can be derived from the process of open innovation and its comparison with closed innovation:
Enterprise boundaries are permeable. The transaction cost theory considers the enterprise's boundaries as the balance between the marginal costs of the enterprise's external transactions and the marginal gains. The most obvious feature of open innovation is that the boundaries of the enterprise are open and permeable, allowing for adequate exchange of information with the business environment. Permeability refers to the ability of external creativity to enter the intra-firm r & d process through the enterprise's borders, and the ability of intra-firm technology to move to the external environment。
Open innovation network dynamics. The organizational network of open and innovative enterprises is not static, but flexible and needs-based. Open innovation and innovative approaches, such as cooperative innovation, strategic alliances, are not identical, and the latter two are based on a more formal and restrictive relationship that will remain stable and inflexible over the longer term; while some resources are shared between the parties or multiple parties when internal cooperation is undertaken, it remains closed to the outside world. The dynamic nature of open innovation is a new option for enterprise r & d activities, where enterprises can form partners with outside institutions without formal agreement and can organize innovative resources in the broader context of social resources。
Open innovation knowledge-sharing. In the face of an intense market competitive environment, where enterprises integrate and share resources and knowledge in order to quickly seize opportunities, knowledge-sharing fosters dynamic business alliances. Knowledge-sharing is therefore an important driver of open innovation models and open innovation networks facilitate knowledge-sharing among enterprises. A growing number of countries, organizations and enterprises, aware of the unstoppable trend of open innovation, have begun to shift innovation models to try to adapt to and lead the tide。
(ii) advantages of open innovation models
One of the advantages of open innovation is that it breaks out of existing barriers through cooperative approaches. The hiv vaccine development project, a successful practice of open innovation, covered 103 research institutions in 16 countries, with 600 participants. Through rapid data-sharing and cross-licensing, project partners have broken out of the innovative barriers previously encountered in this area. Each participating country can contribute its advantages and advanced hardware to the maximum extent possible, and relevant information can also be accessed more easily and widely。
Open innovation has led to more people participating in the innovation process in the form of a brainstorm, bringing together a larger range of innovative resources. The open-source drug development project covered 75 institutions in 130 countries, with 7,900 participants. Through new communication channels such as facebook and google chat, the project provides a global open-source platform to address complex issues using the intellectual results of the build-up. Industry sources argue that in cooperative projects, the contributions of all participants should be recognized, the quality of the patent needed to be assured, and subsequent innovations in open-source situations could be accessed and patented through non-exclusive licensing。
Open innovation can reduce the cost of innovation, speed up the innovation cycle, improve innovation efficiency and optimize solutions. The human genome programme covers many scientists in six countries and has a budget of $3 billion. The project, which aims at decoding about 100,000 gene codes in a human being and at the same time developing a human gene map, is an ambitious scientific exploration project. The participants stated that the open-ended cooperation approach allowed participants to analyse the same data from different angles and in different ways, in parallel and non-competitive circumstances, in order to obtain the best solution. Scientific staff from different organizations in different countries within the plan have been frank and have helped each other, reducing waste of resources and greatly improving the efficiency of research。
Another advantage of open innovation is that firms can remain competitive through innovative ipr management models. In the age of the knowledge-based economy, where firms rely solely on internal resources for high-cost innovative activities, it has become difficult to adapt to fast-growing market demands and increasingly competitive firms, open innovation is becoming a paradigm of business innovation. The successful transformation of ibm was the result of the introduction of open innovation, whereby ibm changed its traditional intellectual property management approach and moved away from insisting that intellectual property rights be retained within the company. By selling technology and patent rights to other companies, ibm earned significant profits. In 2010, ibm received $1. 9 billion in royalties from the sale of patents, compared to only $600 million in investment in basic research。
Open innovation and intellectual property management
Open innovation poses new challenges and requirements for ipr management. With the shift from an innovative business model to an open one, the concept of the creation and protection of intellectual property rights by enterprises goes from self-restraint to an open partnership. In an environment of widespread knowledge and shorter innovation cycles, it is difficult for enterprises to deter competitors through conservative intellectual property protection. Moreover, in a number of high-tech areas, such as internet technology, biotechnology and so forth, a large number of overlapping patents are held by different rights holders, gradually forming a “patent jungle”, which makes the use of one patent technology subject to the licensing of a large number of other patent holders, thereby slowing down overall technological innovation, and thus, access to technology means working with other companies and even competitors to acquire their knowledge-based resources。
(i) impact of open innovation models on intellectual property management
Intellectual property management is an important component of modern business management. Under the open innovation model, there has been a marked change in the management of enterprise intellectual property, as evidenced by the increased complexity of management, the shift in the focus of management costs and the increased difficulty of managing risk control。
First, management complexity has increased. External creativity and external market access were key to the implementation of open innovation by enterprises, and the importance of technical cooperation had been raised. From closed to open innovation, the technological innovation process of an enterprise has moved from a simple linear process to a complex feedback mechanism requiring enterprises to establish synergies with external sources of innovation, including users, upstream suppliers, competitors, research institutes, universities, intermediary services and governments. The importance of each source of innovation to the enterprise will change somewhat over time and in a changing competitive environment, and an objective assessment and selection of external sources of knowledge is necessary in order for external sources of innovation to be able to maintain a positive match with the knowledge and capacities within the enterprise. As a result, in an open innovation environment, the management of intellectual property rights (iprs) has become more complex as enterprises have more diversified sources of results, more diverse players in intellectual property rights (iprs) and more diversified forms of possession and use of iprs。
Second, management cost shifts. Under the closed innovation model, firms acquire intellectual property rights through r&d in order to obtain a monopoly position and corresponding monopoly profits and to create entry barriers for other enterprises. Enterprises attach importance to the protection of intellectual property rights and maintain a cautious attitude towards external technologies. In an open innovation model, the focus of enterprise intellectual property management is on the benefits of applying patents from other enterprises or institutions, for which enterprises need to improve their ability to apply iprs in an integrated manner and actively buy or sell patents. Differences in innovation concepts determine differences in the cost of managing intellectual property rights in enterprises. The costs of ipr management in enterprises under closed innovation models are mainly related to r & d costs of iprs, supervisory control costs, and the costs of ipr management in enterprises under open innovation models include, inter alia, the assessment of external iprs, selection of purchases, cooperative sharing and risk control。
Thirdly, managing risk control is becoming more difficult. Open innovation requires enterprises to cross organizational and knowledge boundaries, even geographical boundaries, to gain access to external innovation resources, which to some extent makes it more difficult for enterprises to control innovation processes and, in the absence of a systematic intellectual property management system, may lead to disruptions in the management of the enterprise's intellectual property rights and even to the loss of its intellectual property rights. In addition, the increased mobility of enterprise technology and creativity increases uncertainty about the output of innovation outcomes and increases the likelihood of intellectual property tenure disputes. Moreover, open innovation increases the mobility of highly qualified people, and business secrecy protection of enterprises becomes more difficult and can easily lead to the loss of core intellectual property rights of enterprises。
(ii) model of intellectual property management in the context of open innovation
As an important element of an enterprise's corporate management strategy, an enterprise's intellectual property strategy refers to a set of actions and responses undertaken by an enterprise in the field of intellectual property, taking into account its own circumstances, by collecting, collating and analysing information on intellectual property rights, obtaining information on technological research and development required by the enterprise, market competition, etc., in order to predict future technological and market developments, thus seeking the initiative of intellectual property competition and cooperation. The diversity and diversity of corporate intellectual property under open innovation models determines the diversity of corporate intellectual property strategy models。
First, intellectual property licensing. It refers to the granting by the licensor of the intellectual property in question to the licensee for the purposes agreed upon in the contract. Cross-licensing is one of the important forms of intellectual property licensing in which two or more intellectual property rights holders grant their respective intellectual property rights to each other under certain conditions. Cross-licensing allows companies to better share ideas and make better use of intellectual property for wealth creation. For example, microsoft has implemented a cross-licensing authorization scheme that not only enters into a cross-licensing agreement for intellectual property rights with dozens of companies in cross-practice areas, but also a similar agreement with companies not directly linked。
Second, the intellectual property union. Its main reference is the patent union or the patent pool. The creation of patent unions is beneficial for business advocacy and can enhance the market competitiveness, market share and industry quality of enterprises within the unions through sharing of patent results. For example, the country's first intellectual property union in the field of electricity, the electricity pressure cook patent union, led by the american company for life and electrical manufacturing ltd. In guangdong, integrates 174 patent technologies in the industry, forming a patent pool, significantly increasing the market ownership of intellectual property union enterprises, stabilizing market order and reducing intellectual property disputes。
Thirdly, intellectual property rights are developed cooperatively. Cooperative enterprise r & d is an effective form of organization for the development of common technologies, which aims at cooperative innovation, through the complementarity of comparative resources and through joint cooperative r & d efforts governed by contractual and informal contracts. Cooperative research and development in the broad sense includes a wide range of technology transformation activities, including technology transfer, technology services, technology entry, technology development and technical advice; and cooperative research and development in the narrow sense refers to joint research and development activities between enterprises, universities and research institutes. Cooperative research and development (r & d) facilitates the sharing of information, r & d results and intellectual property rights, improves r & d efficiency and reduces r & d externalities。
Fourth, intellectual property rights are open free of charge. Informatization requires enterprises to find more balance between private and cooperative innovation. The future intellectual property strategy of enterprises will focus more on harnessing technological leadership and patent portfolios to promote collaborative innovation. In 2005, the united states company ibm committed itself to opening up patented technologies, including interoperability of databases and operating systems, language-processing technologies, for free use by groups and individuals engaged in the development of source codes, making it the largest patent-opening operation in the history of the united states。
The implementation and application of the above-mentioned strategic model of intellectual property rights needs to be selected and combined according to the actual circumstances of the enterprise in order to achieve the optimal impact of the various models. Of course, we do not deny the importance of firms gaining access to intellectual property rights through internal r&d, but rather stress the need for firms to improve their innovation capacity and core competitiveness by integrating the integrated use of external intellectual property rights with internal innovation processes。
(iii) recommendations for intellectual property management responses in the context of open innovation
The characteristics of open innovation in enterprises and the resulting diversity of corporate intellectual property strategy models determine that corporate intellectual property management is no longer a control of intellectual property rights, but is more concerned with the allocation, use and value added of intellectual property rights. This calls for innovative business models of intellectual property management by enterprises, attention to corporate intellectual property management, the development of regulatory regimes for intellectual property rights, the establishment of improved systems for intellectual property valuation, the development of intellectual property value assessment tools, and the adequate development and use of intellectual property intermediary services。
First, innovative business models for intellectual property management, with emphasis on business management of enterprise intellectual property. As the concept of open innovation deepens, the importance of open business model innovation has also received widespread attention from enterprises, almost as much as that of product and service innovation. A growing number of enterprises recognize that a better business model is more important than a better technology or innovation. An important way to innovate in open business models is to build a common development relationship, and enterprises ceos and cfos should raise intellectual property assets to the corporate strategic level as a profitable asset. Thus, in addition to the administration of intellectual property rights, an enterprise must focus on creating more value for the enterprise through the operation of intellectual property rights and seeking more excess profits based on the creation and consolidation of intellectual property values. These include direct access to superior intellectual property rights, acquisition of licence or transfer fees for the transfer of ownership of intellectual property rights through licensing and transfer, acquisition of venture investment in the form of a pledge of intellectual property rights, direct investment in intellectual property rights, and intellectual property risk management。
Second, there is a regulatory regime for intellectual property rights. The experience of open and innovative practices of domestic and foreign enterprises, such as procter, shows that the establishment of a sound intellectual property administration system is necessary to avoid patent disputes. In particular, the innovation of internal risk control systems, including risk assessment systems, the establishment and improvement of risk investment systems, will allow for an adequate assessment of the positive and negative impact of enterprise intellectual property resource flows on enterprise development, and will enable enterprises to improve the efficiency and value added of intellectual property outcomes and the conversion rate of intellectual property outcomes。
Thirdly, a well-developed system for assessing intellectual property rights should be established and a value assessment tool for intellectual property rights should be developed. Open innovation requires enterprises to be able to search for external knowledge resources on a wider scale, based on the ability to objectively and accurately assess the value of intellectual property rights (iprs), and it is therefore important to have a well-developed ipr assessment system in place to select the most adaptive technologies that match the knowledge resources and capabilities of the enterprise itself, among the many available technologies. To this end, enterprises must first assess the scope, characteristics of free intellectual property rights and, when cooperating with external intellectual property rights, identify which technologies are already owned, which are urgently needed and which are not necessary. At the same time, however, it should be seen that assessing the value of intellectual property and its compatibility is a challenging exercise, that the dynamics and variability of knowledge make it much more difficult to assess, and that the development of a systematic and scientific intellectual property assessment methodology and tools is an important element of the ongoing work of enterprises to implement effective open innovation。
Fourthly, the development of intellectual property services should be accelerated. On the one hand, through a series of policy measures such as fiscal policy, talent policy, and industry access policy, the development of intellectual property intermediary services has been continuously nurtured and encouraged, leading to a virtuous interaction based on the legal operation of enterprises, self-defence by associations and government supervision and regulation. (c) strengthen its efforts to train intellectual property practitioners, improve their quality and performance in general, and improve the capacity and level of services provided by intermediaries. On the other hand, enterprises should take full advantage of the intellectual property acquisition and enforcement services provided by domestic and foreign intellectual property intermediaries, intellectual property legal services, extension and application services, asset assessment services and information services, through the information resources and professional advantages of intermediaries, the improvement of intellectual property strategies and regulatory systems, and the training of technical intellectual property personnel。
V. The inspiration of open innovation practices for our country
Open innovation as a new and innovative model has been studied more systematically in theory and has led to many promising practices. My country is actively involved in international open cooperation and in empirical research on open innovation in enterprises. Since its inception, the federation has had just over a dozen people, with a registered capital of $200,000, and after more than 20 years of development, it has grown to be the world's third largest pc manufacturer with an annual sales volume of over $13 billion. As can be seen from its growth trajectory, innovation has always been the goal pursued by the association. At present, the union is trying to invest 2. 5 billion yuan annually in technological research and development, and more than 1,800 people in technical research and development, especially after the successful acquisition of the pc ibm operation, have greatly improved its innovation capacity. While strengthening internal innovation, the union is gradually beginning to focus on external research and development, and its innovative model is becoming more open. It is through this continuous open innovation that it has been possible to become a china-made pole and representative of the internationalization of national brands。
(i) state of open innovation in the country
While some of our enterprises have embarked on open innovation, for the majority of them the innovation model is still dominated by closed innovation. The reasons for this are multiple. The objective reason is that open innovation is a new theoretical paradigm and innovation model, that theoretical research needs to continue to deepen and that there is a need for in-depth analysis and research on the conditions for implementation of open innovation, applicable industrial areas, impact on enterprises, and performance assessment of open innovation. The main reasons for the relatively slow development of open innovation in the country are:
Enterprise innovation capacity is insufficient to provide a strong core capacity for open innovation. Supporting open innovation models is not a simple model of innovation based on external technological resources, and in open innovation, internal r & d continues to play an important role. The development of intra-firm innovation capabilities is the foundation for the implementation of open innovation. Only with strong in-house innovation capabilities can firms develop core competencies that are different in quality and that are dynamic through continuous organizational learning and knowledge creation, thus creating a differentiated competitive advantage for firms that is based on a firm's knowledge of different quality and is therefore difficult to obtain by competitors through simple imitation, thus ensuring that firms are better placed in open innovation。
At the same time, the greater the ability of enterprises to innovate, the greater the degree of specialization in the knowledge they possess, the greater the degree to which innovation, especially fundamental innovation, can be achieved in an environment where knowledge is highly decentralized, it is necessary to introduce external and different types of knowledge through knowledge exploration or through inter-organizational mechanisms for knowledge creation that create different types of knowledge that can bridge the enterprise's capacity or knowledge gap. Thus, the ability of enterprises to innovate is both a basis for the implementation of open innovation models and their upgrading objectively requires that open innovation models also underpin them。
Moreover, in terms of efficiency in the use of r & d funds, the efficiency of r & d funds used by our enterprises is quite different from that of developed countries in europe and the united states, while the output rate of r & d activities is relatively low, resulting in the inefficiency of enterprise-owned innovation activities。
(ii) accelerate our open and innovative response
Numerous studies have shown that innovation is closely linked to organizational structures, and that an appropriate organizational structure is necessary to achieve open innovation. In order to move from closed to open innovation models, organizational structures must be geared towards innovation. An organizational structure suitable for open innovation must be flexible, networked and virtual in order to meet the organizational requirements of open innovation。
In open innovation models, where external knowledge and external market access are as important as internal knowledge and internal market access channels, intellectual property management is critical for enterprises, and closed innovation models implement defensive intellectual property management, while in open innovation models intellectual property management is a proactive approach. However, a proactive ipr management strategy presupposes the establishment of a sound technology trading market. However, in the light of the country's reality, there is no market environment in which firms can implement proactive intellectual property management strategies, and the government should therefore commit itself to creating a mature technology trading market to provide an external environment conducive to proactive intellectual property management strategies。
In sum, the policy architecture that drives open innovation practices in our country is a systemic project that includes not only institutional arrangements at the micro level, but also at the macro level. Its main objective is to address the cost of reducing knowledge flows under open innovation models and to provide good institutional support for knowledge creation under open innovation models. In the light of the current system, there is a long way to go to build a policy system that promotes open and innovative practices in the country, and specific policy formulation and impact assessment are yet to be studied in depth. (national intellectual property strategy implementation (tienjin university) research base zhang hui wing)
