Global Open Innovation and Policy Challenges

Global open innovation is not new to many small economies. Innovative firms are open to capabilities available beyond organizational and national boundaries. Cross-border collaboration is flourishing. Regions with strong cluster portfolios become innovation hubs, while regions with no clusters risk stagnation. Universities are critical in helping regions tap into global resources. Open innovation is stimulated across a number of sectors. It calls for flexible approaches to public governance. Several areas of innovation policy making deserve attention: creating regional platforms for competitive clusters, using universities as global knowledge and resource pipelines, adopting flexible intellectual property strategies to capture benefits from knowledge exchange, improving research program designs and funding mechanisms to facilitate knowledge sharing, and using intermediary organizations as interfaces for exchange.