Seeking Open Infrastructure: Contrasting Open Standards, Open Source and Open Innovation

Joel West, Associate Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the College of Business, San José State University

7/18/2008
(Original Publish Date: 6/20/2007)

While “open” normally has connotations of public goods, the idea of “open”-ness has been used for decades as a competitive strategy by firms in the computers and communications industries. Phrases like “open standard,” “open source” and more recently “open innovation” have been used to refer to these strategies. What do they have in common? Which ones really are “open”? What does “open” mean, anyway? To consider the issues faced in the creation and adoption of cyberinfrastructure, here I contrast firm strategies for these three types of “open”-ness in the context of their respective business models. Any firm needs a business model if it hopes to profit from innovation. Across disparate research on business models, the three common elements of a business model are value creation, value capture and a value network