During December 15-17 we had in ESADE Barcelona the World Open Innovation Conference 2016. About 250 scholars, industry, government and researchers gathered to present, network and talk about Open Innovation in what is possibly the largest conference in the world on this area.
It will be difficult to highlight only a few things because we had so many. From the State of Open Innovation introduced by Henry Chesbrough to the commitment on Open Innovation of the European Commission presented by Carlos Moedas or the one of the City of Barcelona introduced by Francesca Bria. Or the intersection between Open Innovation and food with Ferran Adrià and Marcel Planellas or with soccer with Ivan Bofarull. The state of Open Innovation in China. Even a food hackaton held by Soh Kim from Stanford and myself.
Of course, lots of papers, academic research and also challenges posed by companies where academic and industry can both relate and discuss.
It was a really nice conference with many different flavors, reflecting the reality of a discipline that is becoming increasingly important as companies move towards ways to compete where innovation is more prevalent.
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to give a talk in Berlin invited by Fraunhofer FOKUS (Vielen Dank !!!) about the past, the present and the future of Open Innovation.