Open innovation — the musical!

john bessant
2 min readAug 10, 2022

Time for another innovation song….

Image: Freepik

This is another of my attempts to bring innovation stories to life — by singing about them!

You can listen to the song here

and here are the lyrics:

Open innovation

1.

We’ve been innovating now for quite a long time

It’s the big thing that has helped us to survive

Find new ways to do things, keep on learning down the line

It’s what keeps you and me — and companies — alive

We’ve learned how we can manage it, how to repeat the trick

All about the structures and routines

But the world still keeps on changing, so we need to change with it

Innovate our model, look through a new lens

Chorus

Open innovation, these days it’s the name of the game

Open innovation, some things will never be the same

Put knowledge into motion, manage knowledge flows

From outside in to inside out, and everywhere it goes

Building knowledge networks but staying in control

And don’t forget the IP above all!

2.

It’s what you know and who you know and how they all connect

That’s the innovation challenge of our time

Learning knowledge trading, we have to give to get

For that we need a whole new paradigm

That’s where our good friend Henry first came into the frame

Throwing down a challenge to the rest

Laying out the ground rules to play a whole new game

And giving us a label for the quest

Chorus

3.

But it’s more than just a paradigm, it’s more than empty words

Open innovation needs community

It’s building up relationships, mapping out new roads

Networking to link A with B and C

It’s research and publications, built from rich conversations

It’s conferences, workshops, seminars

And most of all it’s people sharing their ideas

In classrooms, companies — and bars!

Chorus

Finale:

So next time someone says to you, ‘we need to innovate’

And asks your advice about what is going on

Just explain in no uncertain terms the best recipe to date….

With open innovation you can’t go wrong!

Chorus

If you’d like more songs, stories and other resources on the innovation theme, check out my website here

Or listen to my podcast here

And if you’d like to learn with me take a look at my online course here

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john bessant

Innovation teacher/coach/researcher and these days trying to write songs, sketches and explore other ways to tell stories