The implication of open innovation and open source to mobile device manufacturers

Innovations largely contribute to a technology company's continuous survival and its competitiveness in the market place. Traditionally most companies employed closed innovation model. They kept their discoveries or inventions highly secret and made no attempt to assimilate information from outside. This model worked well until 1990s when advances in technology and society had facilitated information diffusion dramatically. Mobile industry, as one of the most rapidly changing industries, is also forced to adopt the open innovation model in various forms. Recently announced Android platform caused a big stir in the industry. The gradual shift from closeness to openness is inevitable in this industry. A good example of Open Innovation is the open source software development that has been studied extensively. This study further examines the open innovation model beyond software development, i.e. open innovation in hardware and embedded system development. Lessons are learned through case studies of software, hardware and embedded system related business practice. Recommendations are given to Mobile industry, specifically the cell phone handset industry accordingly. This study will not focus on a specific platform or the user side.

Department dc:contributor.department

System Design and Management Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Yuanwen Wayne

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael A. M. Davies.

• System Design and Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/55224

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/55224