Henry Chesbrough on the Green Exchange and Open Innovation

Sustainable Life Media - Henry Chesbrough, the Executive Director of the Center for Open Innovation, speaks with EarthSky about the Green Exchange, a web based platform that aims to facilitate the sharing of sustainable technololgies between businesses in developed countries and those  in the developing world.

An example of this would be Nike, which had a water-based adhesive in their footwear, to fix the sole of the shoe to the foot of the shoe. By doing this, they replaced a petrochemical-based adhesive that’s more toxic. So this is a much more environmentally-friendly technology. This is a technology Nike is going to put into the Green Exchange. By doing so, other companies wanting to use more environmentally-friendly adhesives in industries outside of footwear, they can use this technology for free or for a very modest license. So they can take ideas discovered by Nike and apply them much more broadly in other industries.

Chesbrough said while traditionally, some businesses might guard their own ideas from other companies, or feel hesitant to use ideas developed by other companies, he said there are many benefits to contributing technology to the Green Exchange. One reason, he said, is because a company’s suppliers are often located in developing countries like China and India – that may have difficulty getting access to environmentally-friendly technologies.