Joel West’s Blogs

My Blogs

Open IT Strategies Blog

The first (and thus far most active) blog is Open IT Strategies, which I started in January 2007 and draws 1-5 posts per week. Originally it was focused on open-ness as an IT strategy — which of course also means covering proprietary strategies — but today also looks frequently at creating successful business models despite increasing pressures for commoditization. It also considers more broadly issues of strategy, economic policy and accountability in public and private institutions. A summary of the first thousand articles was published in October 2009.

Other Blogs

I have four other blogs, each of which averages between one post a month and one a week (depending on source material and my workload):

• San Diego Telecom Industry (March 2007-present): news and commentary about the San Diego telecommunications industry (including Qualcomm and its CDMA technology), as a byproduct of my research for a planned book on the industry.
• Open Innovation (May 2007-present): an adjunct to the OpenInnovation.net website, this is intended to be the definitive blog for research on open innovation; I also sometimes comment on articles on the practice of open innovation. (See also the open innovation postings on my other blog). (Vareska van de Vrande is also a contributor to this blog).
• Engineering Entrepreneurship (April 2008-present): ties to my latest research interest, how ideas in engineering (and science) are transformed into new startup companies. This considers how this process is taught in universities, research on the practice by academics, as well as observations on what technical entrepreneurs are doing.
• Cleantech Business (August 2008-present): includes my observations (particularly from a Silicon Valley perspective) about the economics of clean technologies, with a particular focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy.

About Me

I’m a (full) Professor, Innovation & Entrepreneurship, at the San José State University College of Business. I’ve been here at SJSU and in Silicon Valley since 2002.

Before that, I spent the 1980s and 1990s as a third-party software developer (ISV) for two proprietary platforms. First, it was as a software engineer designing simulation software for the DEC’s VAX/VMS machines (1979-1986), and then later as the co-founder and president of an ISV for the Apple Macintosh. During this period, I also worked as a political reporter and computer trade magazine columnist.

Since I started down the academic path in 1994, I’ve been a researcher on how firms use “open”-ness as a competitive strategy in three major areas:

• Open Standards (1996-present): this has included work on Japanese PC standards, cell phone standards, a re-examination of Apple’s cloning strategy, and a comprehensive analysis of the economics of “open” standards.
• Open Source (2000-present) as one of the leading academic researchers on how firms use open source software as a competitive business strategy.
• Open Innovation (2004-present), notably as the co-editor and co-author of Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, a collection of research on open innovation published in 2006 by Oxford University Press.

A fourth major research interest has been Technical Entrepreneurship, specifically the creation of startup companies in technology (especially engineering) based fields.

Since 2002, I’ve also worked as a strategy consultant for high-tech companies, usually developing or refining business models related to open standards, open source and open innovation.

My full resumé and a capsule biography can be found online. My e-mail address is .