RADMA 2024
Corbel, P. « IBM, IP rights and open innovation », R&D Management Conference, Stockholm, June 2024
Abstract:
The relations between intellectual property rights (IPRs) and open innovation (OI) have drawn attention from scholars since the concept of OI was proposed by Chesbrough in 2003 (see West, 2006). Nevertheless, the emphasis was mainly on whether they were opposite or complementary. Much less attention has been devoted to the dynamics of the relations between the two. We propose to explore how innovation process openness and IP strategy coevolve in long period through the more than a century-long history of IBM.
Progressively, IBM has switched from a classical 'invent and protect' strategy to a complex but coherent one using OI and IPRs as reinforcing and dosing means. This contribution highlights how dilemmas are managed and why some strategies coupling IP and OI may seem paradoxical (Masucci et al., 2020). It goes beyond the traditional question of whether OI weakens or reinforces IP (see Nguyen et al., 2023 for a recent contribution) to unveil the complex interactions of the two over a long period.