Open Innovation: The Open Society and its Entrepreneurial Bias

Open innovation constitutes one of those catchwords that has captured the imaginaries of our societies in striving to point out desirable and transformative changes in our political economy. By adopting a historiographical perspective, this chapter sets out a comprehensive view over the traditions of thought behind the concept of open innovation. Some literature streams and different authors have been working on themes that have fed the emergence of an open innovation management framework. This genealogical analysis includes the presentation of several accounts, roaming through the liberal creed of thinkers to the classical management studies, before arriving at the explicit formulation of this conceptual framework by Henry Chesbrough which presents open innovation as a ‘new imperative for creating and profiting from technology.’ Our conclusion is that open innovation represents a concept marked by increasing ambiguity that does not escape its entrepreneurial (and management) bias.