Wednesday, November 18, 2009

R&D, The Perils of Sharing

Open collaboration has long existed in software development. Now some firms are considering it for non-software R&D. In an article from strategy+business, Andrea Gabor describes the trend.

As companies outside the computer industry adopt the collaborative precepts of open source to improve their research and development efforts, they too undergo some major management shifts. P&G, for example, once known as an obsessively secretive organization, has thrown open its laboratory doors and invited outside collaborators to help develop new technologies and products, and at the same time is sharing some of its own intellectual property freely.


What are the risks? What are the benefits?

Click here to read the article.

1 comment:

  1. Risks are for the companies that have developed something internally that would benefit their company would ultimately lose the competitive advantage...however the benefit lies with the customer as we would be able to obtain this new technology/product from multiple sources which would keep adequate pressures in place to avoid higher charges.

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