However, the trend is changing today as companies begin to realise that in order to face the competition better and come out with more innovative solutions or products, they need to make their innovation process open.

This means working smartly with other companies or external R&D teams in order to come out with new products.

According to Henry Chesbrough, a professor and executive director at the Center for Open Innovation at Berkeley, the central idea behind open innovation is that in a world of distributed knowledge, companies cannot afford to rely entirely on their own research, but instead buy or license processes or inventions from other companies.

What Chesbrough said is true because it normally takes a much longer time for a company to come out with a product by doing it all alone internally compared to by collaborating with others.

At a time where consumers expect new products in a shorter period of time and competition is coming from everywhere, working alone is definitely no longer smart.

Giant companies, be it in the information and communications technology (ICT), transportation or healthcare sector, are already adopting this method.

For example, aircraft maker Airbus has been working with many companies to come out with the A380 super jumbo aircraft, as it knows that it is impossible to produce such innovative aircraft without working with partners from all over the world.

In the ICT world, meanwhile, major players have been able to produce new products in a shorter period of time through collaboration and acquiring other companies’ inventions and technologies, and improvise or bundle them with their existing products.

For Malaysia, as a growing ICT hub in the Asia-Pacific region, being able to innovate new products and solutions will put the country as producer of technologies, not just a mere user.

But in producing these new tech products, local companies must be fast as competitors, especially from China, India, Vietnam and Singapore, are also innovating and producing new solutions each day.

And for ICT companies here to face these competitions better, open innovation may be the best way forward.

We need to remember that not all smart people work for us. We need to work with smart people inside and outside the company. Now, that’s open innovation.