Intentional Innovation Communities: A strategy for radical improvement of Australia's innovation performance

Abstract

Contemporary thinking on encouraging innovation within firms has converged on the concepts of "Open Innovation", "Knowledge Creation" and the proposed democratising of innovation (Bessant and Venables 2008; von Hippel, 2005; Chesbrough, 2006). Within R&D, the generational development of research, that is 1st to 5th generation research models (Table. 1) follows the same evolution towards open innovation, carried by the contextualisation of science through society and industry pressures (Nowotny et al. 2001). ... The reason for this shift is that it is well understood that the innovation process is creative, dynamic and opportunistic. It follows that an environment that encourages active, spontaneous and ongoing contributions is required to cater for and support this creative process. Isolated examples of firms that encompass this open management ethos (e.g. Gore) demonstrate a shift to Mode 2 type research management models (Table 2), which create an innovation-friendly environment. However, acknowledging that the source of innovation is not fixed within firms and in fact can be unaffiliated individuals, customers, other users, manufacturers, suppliers and other unexpected actors, leads to the realisation that there is an opportunity to create new institutional forms in the wider community devoted to the production of innovations. The new institutional forms need to be both "hothouses" and "safe houses".