Using open innovation to create added value in mature industries

Everyone knows that innovation is a business necessity. Companies not innovating die. The importance of innovation is reflected by the fact that revenue growth for this year’s Top 100 Global Innovators outperformed the S&P 500 by nearly 100 percent. (Thomson Reuters 2014) In the current environment, however, to innovate effectively, you increasingly must innovate openly. (Chesbrough 2006) Open innovation is a hot topic, all companies seem to have understood that no matter how big you are or how good are your people, you are never going to make it on your own. This is why efforts to adopt the new open innovation model have been made across all industries. However, when going through open innovation literature and examples is quite rare to find a reference to a company out of the high-tech sector (mainly computers, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals companies). The most popular examples for open innovation are IBM, Intel, Xerox, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Millenium Pharmaceuticals, Genzyme, Orange...Even if examples for some companies outside the high-tech sector like P&G or GE can be found, is clear that there is still a huge spectrum of industries that seem not to be represented in literature. Nevertheless, judging by the Thomson-Reuters ‘2014 TOP 100 GLOBAL INNOVATORS’ publication, these other industries seem to be doing a good job innovating. In fact, more mature industries like chemicals, primary materials or industrials are very well represented in the list ABB, Arkema, Kobe Steel, Saint Gobain, Ashashi Glass, Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal, Komatsu... The first question I would like to address is if more mature industries are also adopting the open model for innovation. Secondly, I would like to study some specific examples of in what specific ways commodities companies are adopting the open model and how are they creating value with it. For that, I am willing to focus in the more mature industries, commodities. In order to answer to that question I will study few business cases of commodities companies that are adopting the open model: Codelco, Saint Gobain, Asian Paints Italcementi and Saica. The hypothesis lied to these questions that this thesis is looking to validate are the following: • More mature industries are also subject (or at least partially subject) to the factors that forced high-tech companies to adopt the open model and they are as a consequence, also adopting the open innovation model • The principles of open innovation that are being