Open Innovation: a new paradigm for innovation

Open Innovation, research, collaborations between startups, universities and companies: these were the topics at the heart of the meeting held at Terna’s Auditorium in Rome, entitled “Innovating The Grid: An Open Innovation Perspective”. The event offered an opportunity to exchange views on the role of open innovation in the evolution of the electricity system.

The meeting was organised on the occasion of a visit to the Italian capital by Professor Henry Chesbrough, a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, who is internationally recognised as the theorist behind and promoter of the open innovation paradigm.

From a closed system to a new collaborative approach. In his speech, Chesbrough offered an authoritative view of the strategic value of collaborations between businesses, universities and innovation ecosystems, illustrating the evolution of innovation from a closed system within companies to an open model. “For much of the twentieth century, innovation was a closed system and became a mental habit. In the traditional model, it was taken for granted that the innovation is a journey from the laboratory and research to the market and to customers. Today, that’s no longer the case,” explained the professor. “In fact, there’s no guarantee that being the first to invent something also means success on the market. Sony and Texas Instruments did not invent the transistor, but they were the quickest to innovate using somebody else’s invention”.

Moreover, “talent mobility has made it impossible to retain all expertise within a single organisation. When people leave, they take their experience and knowledge with them. And this has radically changed the rules of the game,” added Chesbrough. “Another factor is the central role of universities, which are no longer a separate world from industry: today, they produce knowledge which is directly useful to businesses”. This is where the new innovation model springs from: “The innovation funnel is no longer closed: it’s full of gaps through which ideas can get in and out. Knowledge has to be able to flow from the outside to the inside, but also from the inside to the outside”.

Berkeley and Terna: outposts and ecosystems. The partnership between Terna and UC Berkeley, which began in 2025, was created with the goal of strengthening Terna’s role in the main international innovation ecosystems. It runs along three strategic axes and rests upon three strategic pillars: the performance of an academic case study on Terna’s open innovation model (particularly the Terna Innovation Zones); a visiting fellowship programme which allowed innovation specialist Antonella Spaltro to carry out research and networking activities at Berkeley; and privileged access to the university ecosystem through events, training and networking activities.

In fact, the partnership with the Californian institution is a strategic factor for Terna: it opens a channel of communication for the company with the main global innovation hubs, consolidating the role of its Terna Innovation Zones and building an increasingly open, collaborative and international model.

The day’s events also included a speech from Professor Chris Bush, a Faculty Professor at Berkeley and Director of the Institute for Business Innovation and Clausen Center, who presented the acceleration programmes and initiatives for startups promoted by the American university through the “startup campus”. Bush emphasised the results in terms of new businesses springing from the institution: “over 1,300 venture-backed startups and 1,800 founders in 2025, which saw us overtake Stanford”.

One moment during the event was dedicated to the research paper “Innovation Outposts: how they create value for a Company. A five-archetypes framework”, presented by Spaltro. The research analyses in detail the experience of the Terna Innovation Zones, the local outposts created by the company in top international centres of innovation, and suggests a classification of different innovation outpost models, assessing their impact on the value generated for the company in its relationship with global innovation ecosystems.