Actually, title does the book a disservice

A review of the book, Open Services Innovation, and what exactly that means.

Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business To Grow and Compete In A New Era by Henry Chesbrough.

The company name, Computers & Structures (CSI), is unlikely to ring a bell with most readers. But owners of small and medium-sized businesses in the UAE will certainly appreciate its inclusion in this book.

It turns out CSI is best known for creating a computer programme that analyses how structurally sound bridges and buildings are, and its tools have also been used to help design the world's highest towers, including the 828-metre-tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

The company is used as an example of how even a small business, with some 50 employees when the book was written, "understands the value of openness", according to Chesbrough.

CSI offers free copies of its software to big engineering schools and countries hit by disasters, such as Haiti and Turkey, following recent earthquakes.

Rather than cutting into the company's sales, as one might expect, this strategic move has resulted in some surprising market share gains.

In the Dominican Republic, for example, an estimated 95 per cent of all buildings constructed rely on CSI's software because the government requires its use as a standard requirement for submitting drawings of all permitted high-rise buildings.

Yawn-inducing title aside, this book acts as a helpful guide for businesses convinced they must shift away from being product-focused to more service-centric.

Chesbrough's argument for making the transition is compelling: manufacturers with cheaper labour are driving product prices down, and leaving less revenue - and, more importantly, profit - for businesses to spread around.

Still not convinced? Expect Chesbrough's arguments to be accompanied by plenty of persuasive-looking tables, flow charts and graphs.

After all, he's just showing his academic side as an adjunct professor for the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley.

One graph, in particular, shows a significant change within the US, where about 80 per cent of the country's economic activity is now related to services.

Much of the growth behind this activity is specifically centred on the knowledge-intensive portion of the services sector - such as CSI's computer software creation, for instance.