Open Innovation

Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann | Dr. Christoph Wecht

Importance of open innovation management
In times of increased competition due to increased pressure to innovate and reduced R&D budgets, companies are forced to open their innovation process in order to increase their innovation potential by establishing a closer link to the outside world. This strategic integration of the outside environment is called the open innovation approach. First studies have revealed three core process archetypes of open innovation: the outside-in process, the inside-out process and the coupled process. The open innovation research model includes – besides the core process archetypes – variables like industry determinants, company size and capabilities in order to link the innovation process's openness to successful innovation output.

An example for a recent topic which was developed at the CC Open Innovation is Crowd Sourcing – innovation management with swarm intelligence. A multi-year research project has been conducted resulting in a hands-on step-wise procedure to support management decisions.

Practice-oriented and relevant research
The Competence Center Open Innovation conducts practical projects closely working with industry partners on real life challenges. Substantive research focuses primarily on cross-industry innovation, customer and supplier integration, and development of company-specific innovation networks. Strategic and organizational issues are considered covering complete new grounds, closing research gaps, and overall to further advancing management practice.

Some of the current topics of the Competence Center Open Innovation include:

• Crowdsourcing
• Cross-industry innovation
• Customer integration
• Supplier integration
• Collaborative innovation processes
• Company-specific innovation networks
• Opening up the early phase of the innovation process
• Intermediaries for open innovation
• Creativity techniques with externals

Advanced publications
As Europe's first Competence Centre for Open Innovation our research has been published in renowned journals such as e.g. R&D Management, International Journal of Technology Management, Research Policy, European Management Journal, Creativity and Innovation Management, io new management.