The Microsoft business model has resisted all efforts to introduce open innovation practices into its markets, and many would argue, has stunted its growth and innovative potential as a result.

    How rapidly things can change, even when you resist from a position of strength.

    Microsoft introduced “Kinect” in the US just before Christmas, with the objective of wresting back some of the gamer/activity market into  its X-Box offering which has suffered at the hands of the Wii.   At the  heart of Kinect is a chip with advanced capabilities, and very quickly hackers have found how to add open source access those capabilities, and are starting to explore applications that would not have occurred to Microsoft, or would have cost too much to pursue.

    U-Tube is being used extensively to communicate the astonishing stuff being done, this one being the use of the Kinect  chip extracted from a Kinect device bought for $150, to create 3-D images

    The message in all this is simply that open source innovation that engages the crowd outside the boundaries of your ability to harness IP is the exploding as the driver of innovation.

     IP is almost unprotectable nowadays, the management task is now a question in two parts,

  1.  “How do we create the conditions for the development of Intellectual Capital around our “patch”? ,
  2. ” How do we evolve our business model and monetarise it?
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