The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently awarded Microsoft Corp. its 10,000th U.S. patent. With their closed innovation model and their hard-line patent policy, Microsoft was (and is) a typical example of a closed company. This was already mentioned by Chesbrough.Microsoft approach to Intellectual Property was mainly "Quantity matters". But in the previous years, Microsoft started to change its IP policy through shifting from a defensive position to a proactive, collaborative position. They signed more than 500 licensing agreements with companies of all sizes (see here). This results in a major shift towards open innovation, because the licensed innovations enables the companies to develop other innovations which results in a win-win situation for both parties.
“Patents are the currency of innovation. They enable Microsoft to share our innovations with others through licensing, and that in turn enables others to share their innovations back with us. What we’re seeing more often in the past several years is that patents and IP are now serving as bridges to collaboration through licensing and other technology collaboration. Let’s face it, the days of the self-contained, go-it-alone company are over. This is especially true during the current economic downturn. Open innovation is more critical than ever in today’s business world." Bart Eppenauer, Microsoft chief patent counsel
To sum up: It is a good sign, when even the major players in the market reconsider open innovation as the superior innovation approach. It would be interesting to examine the exact role of the economic downturn in this inner-company paradigm shift. Do you think, they would have changed their mind without this whole financial crisis/economic downturn? I'm a bit skeptical on that.
