Written by Alexander Schroll

Tags: Term | Terminology

The term "Open Innovation" was coined by Henry Chesbrough in 2003. Since 2003 the concept of open innovation was remodeled and was often used in a context which was primarily not related to open innovation anymore. But despite of that, there are new terms created every day, which describe a part of open innovation. For instance:

• E-Novation,Prosumer,Participative Consumption,Crowdsourcing, Coolhunting,Community Based Innovation,Web 2.0, Design Thinking, Attention Economy,and many more (forgot most of them...)

I don't have a problem with all these different terms. But what is annoying me, is that many people (bloggers, but also academic researchers) mix these terms and concept. And in many cases, something is called "Open Innovation" whereas "Crowdsourcing" or "E-Novation" would describe it at lot better.