Books

Best Books on Open Innovation, Crowdsourcing, Wikinomics & Networks

Although blogs and online journals are much faster to report on the latest developments, books can provide an interesting synthesis of overall trends and insights. Here’s a list of 13 pioneering books about crowdsourcing and open innovation. I hope you enjoy reading some of these excellent books, and please feel free to share your remarks and suggestions below.

  1. Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company’s Future
    - by Patricia B. Seybold
    Patricia Seybold argues that companies should seek innovation by actively engaging and bringing their customers into the product development process.
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  2. Motivation in Open Innovation
    - by Robert Motzek
    Robert Motzek’s study investigates the motivational profiles of user innovators from a manufacturer’s point of view, focusing on lead users and tool kit users. The analysis is supported by two exploratory case studies of Spreadshirt and Threadless.
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  3. Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology
    -by Henry Chesbrough
    Chesbrough suggests that companies make themselves more permeable to the flow of knowledge through such strategies as hiring professors and grad students as summer consultants, sponsoring university research, investing in and partnering with high-tech startups and venture capitalists, and disseminating their own innovations through spin-off companies or even by publishing it in the public domain.
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  4. Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm
    - by Henry Chesbrough, Wim Vanhaverbeke, Joel West
    Offering theoretical explanations for the use (and limits) of open innovation, the book examines the applicability of the concept, implications for the boundaries of firms, the potential of open innovation to prove successful, and implications for intellectual property policies and practices.
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  5. Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape
    - by Henry Chesbrough
    Chesbrough is not the first academic to grasp the superior economic value of intellectual over tangible property in today’s economy. But he may be the one who has thought most deeply about its consequences for business.
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  6. Democratizing Innovation
    - by Eric Von Hippel
    “Von Hippel presents a persuasive case for the benefits of encouraging lead users to innovate and a truly intriguing look at what they’ve contributed to the world so far”
    Downloadable for free: here.
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  7. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
    - by Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams
    As a proponent of peering, sharing, and open-source thinking, Don Tapscott has presented a clear and exciting preview of how peer innovation will change everything.
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  8. Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Strategy
    - by Ron Goldman, Richard P. Gabriel
    It’s a plain fact: regardless of how smart, creative, and innovative your organization is, there are more smart, creative, and innovative people outside your organization than inside. Open source offers the possibility of bringing more innovation into your business by building a creative community that reaches beyond the barriers of the business.
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  9. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
    - by Yochai Benkler
    Yochai Benkler shows us how the Internet enables new commons-based methods for producing goods, remaking culture, and participating in public life.
    Downloadable for free: here
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  10. Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
    - by Keith Sawyer
    A pioneering expert on creativity and innovation shows the power of collaboration for individual organizational creativity.
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  11. The Wisdom of Crowds
    - by James Surowiecki
    While our culture generally trusts experts and distrusts the wisdom of the masses, New Yorker business columnist Surowiecki argues that “under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.
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  12. We Are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business
    - by Barry Libert, Jon Spector, Don Tapscott (foreword)
    In We Are Smarter Than Me, you will discover exactly how to use social networking and community in your business, driving better decision-making and greater profitability. The book shares powerful insights and new case studies from product development, manufacturing, marketing, customer service, finance, management, and beyond.
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  13. The Global Brain: Your Roadmap for Innovating Faster and Smarter in a Networked World
    - by Satish Nambisan, Mohanbir Sawhney
    Nambisan and Sawhney have written a book that constructs a truly effective bridge between network driven innovation and its application. A refreshing look at innovation and its practice.

The following books are forthcoming, and have a good chance of being added to the list after publication.

  • Forthcoming: Open for Business
     - by Jaap Bloem, Menno van Doorn
    Open Source Inspiration for Innovation
    Dutch version already freely downloadable: here

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