Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era 1st Edition

Excelent reading and a new way of looking at services and the importance of seeing the big picture in services all through the organization. I will have it on my teaching and Management Service class

Prof. Chesbrough has brought his vision from Open Innovation to the services arena, and have shared his privileged sight and years of reflection with everyone involved in the development of new services, and specially to managers of product firms who are engaged in transforming a product-centric thinking to a service-centric one. The basic question that the book offers is "How to escape the commodity trap?". To answer this question, Prof. Chesbrough proposes an "Open Services Innovation Concept Map" based on four elements:1) Think of Your Business as a Service Business2) Co-Create With Your Customers3) Embrace Open Innovation4) Exercise the Transformation of Your Business ModelsAfter establish this foundation on solid and rigorous academic bases, illustrated by real market examples, the book discusses how to apply this framework to different contexts - larger and small companies, services businesses and emerging economies.It's certainly a must read to managers and entrepreneurs of all industries.

Great read that shares many ideas in common with outside thinking, which could be used for approaching a customer centric modern approach to providing services and innovation.

Overall a well written book with some good illustrative examples. The section on the developing world was not as relevant, but it was not a large part of the book.

In Henry Chesbrough's book "Open services innovaton - rethinking your business to grow and compete in a new era" he offers a synthesis of his preceeding works on the same theme. The author successfully addresses a wider circle of readers, not only experts in business economy and administration but also social and organizational psychologists who would find in this book relevant contextual approaches in studying psychological implications of innovation strategies.

Every once in awhile, a business book comes along that is so timely, so helpful to the right audience and so filled with common sense principles that you kick yourself for not thinking of it! But being in the right place at the right time with what is most needed is why people like Dr. Henry Chesbrough, the "Father" of Open Innovation, are so successful. His latest book, Open Services Innovation, is just such a tool that is so needed for business today.In a global economy stung by commoditization and a lack of differentiation, only those organizations that stand out via services, business models, operating processes and customer focus will succeed. The premise of Open Services Innovation is that, in a product-based economy, after the exchange of a product is executed between provider and consumer, the provider's "job" is essentially done. But in a services-based economy, the exchange of a service between provider and customer is not complete until the customer's need is fulfilled. This gives the provider much more time to interact with the customer, understand their needs, analyze trends, and study behaviors, all to simply discover ways to better serve that customer and their needs. And that results in a closer relationship. And that results in growth. Get it?Not yet? Okay, how about this great anecdote from the book about a Wal-Mart data mining initiative that studied customer purchasing trends in the lead up to Hurricane Charlie. Wal-Mart, traditionally thought of as a simple product provider, noticed through their analysis of the purchase trending data that people tended to stock up on, among many "normal" survival products, Pop-Tarts and beer. Oh, and not just any Pop-Tarts, but Strawberry Pop-Tarts. So, fresh with this knowledge, and with Hurricane Frances taking aim on Florida, they sent added supplies to Florida stores, including more Strawberry Pop-Tarts and beer, which promptly flew off the shelves. The combination of customer insight and a service mentality sold more product. Get it now?Look, unless you've been under a rock for the past few years, you know "open innovation" is hot. Opening up R&D to outside ideas, banishing "not-invented-here" corporate mindsets, reaching out to customers and interacting with them to learn about their "jobs to be solved" have all changed the innovation management landscape. But where this book steps clear of the other "open innovation" offerings is how it extends these concepts beyond current thinking and into the service-based economy.Dr. Chesbrough takes us into places where there aren't typically R&D functions. Services don't typically evolve from prototypes and research experiments. But, despite these differences in traditional innovation models, some service organization have leveraged open innovation concepts to get closer to their customer's needs and thus, closer to their wallets. Cool ideas like experience point mapping, specialization, niche services, co-creation and business model changes now fill the open services innovation management space. This is key...because in a world rapidly being consumed by the commoditization of products, you only really have services left in which to interact, participate, share and otherwise wow the customer. If you can leverage the best of what we know from traditional open innovation strategy and transform the services-based experience, you just leapfrogged your competition. How cool is that?!Dr. Chesbrough also delivers what few business writers can nowadays, and that is cold, hard examples from not just the "big guys" like Xerox or KLM, but smaller firms that you've never heard of...yet, and global firms that are just starting to emerge. Remember that great Gary Hamel quote that basically says "somewhere, in some garage, someone is crafting a bullet with your organization's name on it?" Well, these emerging market service providers, who are learning to master the concepts of open innovation and customer observation, are those "someone's" and "somewhere's."Please, do yourself a favor and get this book. Sit down and dedicate some time to really study it. Fold the corners...highlight it...write in it. Its only 200ish pages. But it is chock-full of information you need to keep pace with, and then lead, the transition from a product-based economy to a services-based economy.