Open Innovation Business Model in the Food Industry: Exploring the Link with Academia and SMEs

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the recent developments that have been made in the area of innovation management in the food industry. The paper tackles particularly open innovation and how it has been applied in the food industry. Open innovation is the strategy adopted by companies where they get to share certain levels of technology up to some levels as a way of continued and improved productivity in the food sector. The continued research by companies has made them realize that it would be cheaper to share some of the knowledge and skills that have already been made in the food industry, and in order to do so, certain rules have been made to govern the sharing of the particular skills and knowledge. This has involved measures such as companies licensing their set of research skills and sharing them or selling them when they see it necessary. This paper also highlights how various bodies contribute to creativity and innovations being carried out in the food industry.