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Henry Chesbrough, the guru of ‘Open Innovation’ has joined ESADE Busienss School’s faculty as a visiting professor, further consolidating the school´s commitment to excellence in business innovation.

Chesbrough, with his colleague Wim Vanhaverbeke (Hasselt University, Vlerick Management School and ESADE) will teach PhD, MBA and Executive MBA participants. This is an exciting step forward for innovation at ESADE; not least because Chesbrough´s theories of multi-sectoral collaboration (cross innovation between companies in order to speed up product delivery to market and retain value) have been of great influence in the creation of ESADECreapolis. His classes will combine analysis of open innovation theory with its practical application to participants’ business models.

For Chesbrough, ESADE’s investment in ESADECreapolis was a key factor in his decision to collaborate with the school, “I chose ESADE as it’s one of Europe’s leading management schools and also boasts a laboratory bringing together management students and companies in the pursuit of innovation”, explained Professor Chesbrough, “the environment at ESADE fully supports my favorite activity: teaching how to innovate”.

Henry Chesbrough, who coined the term ‘Open Innovation’ in his first book, has long argued that many businesses lack the infrastructure and strategy necessary to capture value. Instead of operating as islands, solely reliant on in-house R&D units, Chesbrough advocates the sharing of innovation processes between companies, to enable the development of new products and proposals that would not normally fit the model of a specific business. Chesbrough has worked for several Fortune 500 companies in technology areas such as mass storage, application software, networking and communications. He is also author of three Open Innovation-themed publications: Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology (HBS Press, 2003), Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape (HBS Press, 2006) and Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm (Oxford, 2006).

Committed to excellence in innovation, over the past year ESADE has held events and programmes relating to open innovation theory that have been successfully delivered to an ever widening audience. In 2009 the Beyond Pretty program run with leading California design school, The Art Center, paved the way in Executive Education when global business leaders from HP, Nestlé, IDEO and other proven innovators shared their experiences in promoting an innovation culture. Following on from the Beyond Pretty Program, sessions based on open innovation theory have proved popular additions to In-Company Training Programs for forward thinking multinationals, keen to augment the creative competency of their top managers. In addition, companies resident at ESADECreapolis enjoy weekly sessions on innovation taught by ESADE professors and external experts.

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