Organizations that practice open innovation draw on external resources to develop new ideas for products and services. Since the term’s introduction 20 years ago, open innovation has had many proven successes, but organizations must recognize and address a potential barrier: an inability to move knowledge across internal functional, departmental, or geographic silos. Author Henry Chesbrough suggests ways to overcome the obstacles imposed by these organizational boundaries.

Open innovation includes external knowledge sources and paths to market as complements to internal innovation processes. Open innovation has to date been driven largely by business objectives, but the imperative of social challenges has turned attention to the broader set of goals to which open innovation is relevant. This introduction discusses how open innovation can be deployed to address societal challenges - as well as the trade-offs and tensions that arise as a result. Against this background we introduce the articles published in this Special Section, which were originally presented at the sixth Annual World Open Innovation Conference.

This article introduces the special issue on the increasing role of cities as a driver for (open) innovation and entrepreneurship. It frames the innovation space being cultivated by proactive cities. Drawing on the diverse papers selected in this special issue, this introduction explores a series of tensions that are emerging as innovators and entrepreneurs seek to engage with local governments and citizens in an effort to improve the quality of life and promote local economic growth.

In a world of widely distributed knowledge, the emergence of Open Innovation means that firms cannot afford to rely only on their own research, but should buy or license processes from other firms. Further, they should allow unused internal inventions to be taken outside the company through licensing and spin-offs. This article, by the scholar who coined the term Open Innovation, chronicles the history of innovation from the 1960s to the new millennium, when Open Innovation arose. It offers predictions for the future of innovation, such as that innovation management will become more collaborative and that business model innovation will become as important as technological innovation.