The Institute’s research and programs in innovation and entrepreneurship continue to maintain and expand their pre-eminence by addressing the cutting-edge issues of global entrepreneurship and open innovation. Please see below for highlights, or visit the Research and Programs in Innovation and Entrepreneurship page for more information about our programs.

The Center for Open Innovation (COI) conducts scholarly research on more open, distributed models for organizing and managing technology and innovation. Henry Chesbrough, the Executive Director of COI and adjunct professor at the Haas School of Business, was included in the top 50 innovators of 2003 chosen by Scientific American for accomplishments in research, business or policymaking that demonstrated outstanding technological leadership. strategy+business magazine named Chesbrough’s book "Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology" among the best business books and the top book on innovation of 2003.

An excerpt from Open Innovation: “In many industries today, the logic supporting an internally oriented, centralized approach to research and development has become obsolete. Useful knowledge is widespread in many industries, and ideas must be used with alacrity if they are not to be lost. These factors create the new logic of Open Innovation, which embraces external ideas and knowledge in conjunction with internal R&D. This logic offers new ways to create value, along with the continuing need to claim a portion of that value.”

In a new book that already has drawn glowing reviews, Chesbrough calls on companies to break down their walls to foster innovation. Released in December 2006, Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape, already has received a Wall Street Journal review calling the book, "one that B-school students and lay readers alike will enjoy." BusinessWeek also included it on its list of the 10 best innovation and design books of 2006.

Associate Director of the Institute David Mowery, along with leading innovation scholars Jan Fagerberg and Richard Nelson, edited the Oxford Handbook of Innovation, recently published by Oxford University Press. This volume carefully designs and selects twenty-one contributions from leading academic experts within their particular field, each focusing on a specific aspect of innovation. . It provides academics and students with a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the phenomenon of innovation. An international conference on innovation entitled "Research, innovation and economic performance -What do we know and where are we heading?" was held in Brussels on October 8, 2004 to mark the launch of the Handbook.

The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the primary locus for the study and promotion of entrepreneurship and innovation in management and new enterprise development at UC Berkeley, continues its program leadership with its ranking in the top 13 of the top 50 national entrepreneurial colleges for 2004 by Entrepreneur Magazine.

The Lester Center has also expanded its research programs with a $600,000 two-year grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to investigate the causes and consequences of entrepreneurship in the United States. Led by John Freeman, research director of the Lester Center, the " Causes and Consequences of Entrepreneurship in the United States" project will support the research of faculty and doctoral candidates across various departments at UC Berkeley. With the recent expansion of research activity, the Lester Center’s programs have established great strength in all major functional areas of instruction, research, and public service.

The major trend informing the development of the Lester Center’s programs is pervasive globalization. Entrepreneurship today is no longer a concern of local or national scope but requires consideration of global markets and trends. Moreover, the globalization of entrepreneurship extends beyond the developed economies of Europe and Asia to include third-world nations. One of the Lester Center’s major new programs, the Intel+Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge, invited entrepreneurial teams from Russia, Mexico, Singapore, and the United States. Co-hosted by the Lester Center and Intel Corporation, the Challenge seeks to identify ventures that promise the greatest positive impact on society through the commercialization of new and truly innovative technologies. Intel and the Lester Center are extending the global entrepreneurship concept to teaching through the Technology Entrepreneurship- Theory To Practice program. The goal of the program is to foster entrepreneurship education around the world, helping to create innovative business people with cross-disciplinary skills, technical expertise, and the ability to seize market opportunities. Intel is sponsoring two-day seminars to be held in five venues in Brazil, China, India, and Europe during 2006. Attending each seminar will be 15-20 faculty members from several colleges and universities in those regions. The Lester Center manages both the teaching program and the Challenge as mutually supporting activities where the concepts and importance of entrepreneurship are reinforced for both teachers and students.