Philips builds Open Innovation Campus in Shanghai

In 2005, Philips started building a One Philips Innovation Campus in Shanghai, annually investing about 40 million euro. Philips’ aim is double. First, they want to increase efficiency and internal collaboration by bringing different R&D centers together on one campus. Second, they want to open up the campus to external parties, facilitating R&D cooperation and open innovation. So actually, the success formula of their campus in Eindhoven, the High-Tech Campus Eindhoven, is being copied to Shanghai, China. Since the High-Tech Campus Eindhoven (HTCE) was opened in 1999, it has been one of the key elements in Philips’ adoption of the philosophy of ‘open innovation’.

Why and how? Built on the site of Philips Research in Eindhoven, HTCE houses over 40 (external) technology-based companies and institutes employing several thousand people in developing ground-breaking technologies and products through the open innovation model. Philips tries to create an environment and structures which promote interactions, networking and knowledge-sharing, leading to joint projects and joint ventures among the HTCE companies. For Philips this means that the company can spin in ideas and innovations from outside, enriching the services it can offer Philips’ business divisions. It can also spin out technologies from its own extensive IPR portfolio to high-tech companies in the HTCE, which can bring innovations to market more quickly. For the companies on the campus, networking and co-operation on ideas is reinforced by shared facilities and technology - for example, through the MiPlaza, a microsystems and nanotechnology facility including a world-class ‘clean room’ with laboratory and materials-analysis services. In most cases, start-ups can make free use of those facilities.

This case clearly shows how companies can create a stimulating environment for cooperation and open innovation. It also underlines that open innovation is much broader than opening up to lead users or crowds alone, in contrast with what is being writen sometimes. Henry Chesbrough’s first book on open innovation - Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology - hardly even mentionned users or crowds. The main focus was (and still is) on working together with suppliers, research institutes, universities, and other companies. Therefore, the Open Campus idea perfectly embodies what open innovation orginally was about.

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