The sphere of innovation

In this chapter, we deal with collaborative relations in the sphere of innovation. In particular, we emphasize the historical variability of how innovation is organized, which can give greater or lesser space to collaborative partnerships. In the past few decades, more open modes of innovation have developed, which involve collaboration among companies, institutions and other actors (section ‘Innovation and cooperation’). Digital technologies facilitate these new modes of cooperation, up to the most extreme forms of crowd-innovation (widespread innovation, generated by the ‘crowd’) that use collaborative platforms to exploit the collective intelligence present on the internet. There are different forms of collaborative innovation (section ‘The forms of collaborative innovation’). ‘Open innovation’ refers to a profit-driven corporate strategy. In contrast ‘free innovation’ refers to a form of innovation implemented by consumers in their free time, for non-market purposes, often of a collaborative nature, and which do not imply any remuneration. There are also intermediate variants ranging from ‘collective inventions’ to ‘open innovation communities’.