For firms to leverage the external creative potential, they need to shift their focus from firm-centric innovation to network-centric innovation. Nambisan & Sawhney describe network-centric innovation as an externally focused approach to innovation that relies on harnessing the resources and capabilities of external networks and communities to amplify or enhance innovation reach, innovation speed, and the quality of innovation outcomes.

The underlying concept of network-centric innovation is network-centricity: the emphasis on the network as the focal point and the associated opportunity to extend, optimize, and/or enhance the value of a stand-alone entity or activity by making it more intelligent, adaptive, and personalized. In the context of innovation, such network-centricity helps individual innovation partners to enhance the value of their contributions, and in turn, the overall innovation outcome.

In The Global Brain, the authors also describe four defining principles of network-centric innovation: shared goals, shared “world-view”, social knowledge creation, and architecture of participation. These four principles are consistent with the historical roots of network- centric innovation in the Open Source movement and in the concept of Business Ecosystems.