KIM’s Strategic Advisor, Henry Chesbrough, talks about the necessity of taking risks in an interview given to El País.

KIM was one of the first entities joining the Open Innovation paradigm, a new way of innovating that has become a great focus of attention in R+D centers and departments worldwide. Even its creator, KIM’s Strategic Advisor, Henry Chesbrough, gets surprised for the results achieved: “I never thought this term would be so popular”, he says. Currently, KIM is still promoting this model, increasing its collaborators and national and international partners sharing its business idea.

In a recent interview to the director of the Center for Open Innovation of the University of California, Berkeley, published in the newspaper El País, Chesbrough reasserts the alternative that open innovation means for the companies: “If a sector is very dynamic, there will be more advantages in the specialization of some activities and the collaboration with external agents in the rest”. But Chesbrough recognizes that “before the opening outwards it is necessary the opening inwards, and developing a list of necessities according to the future objectives of the company”, as well as working in the legal field to avoid problems related to intellectual property that could arise from using and sharing ideas.

Chesbrough thinks that companies innovate in products and services, but it is more difficult to innovate in their own business model, as “successful business models create inertia; managers love to talk about innovation, but not about risks and failure”. To avoid that trend and promoting R+D even more, Chesbrough proposes to differentiate between these two terms: “Failure is a natural consequence of experiencing and it helps to learn, but a mistake is repeating something already done before that we have not learnt”, so “without business failures, innovation doesn’t exist”.

When analyzing innovation at international level, Chesbrough stands out countries like Israel: “It is small, but it has a lot of ideas within the defense sector and it is very fast turning them into new civil business”, and also Finland through Tekes, its public agency of technology and innovation financing. When talking about Spain, Chesbrough refers to the “moment of severe economic recession”, but he considers that “it is not doing so badly at attracting people from all around the world and engaging creative projects, something essential. If Spain wants to innovate, it must be globally connected”.