How to practise Open Innovation today: what, where, how and why

ABSTRACT

Open Innovation (OI), a paradigm coined by Chesbrough in 2003, is not only ‘openness towards innovation’, it also represents a firm-view-point-based innovation strategy, which suggests the involvement of external actors in the innovation process. The present paper is part of an on-going discussion on open issues related to OI and the advantages, strengths, challenges and limits of its implementation, dealing with the frequently debated topic of the future of this paradigm. What has emerged from this study is that a clear one-way outline of the OI implementation process does not exist, either in the literature or in practical cases, but common catalyst points, such as a general ‘open’ attitude, the existence of a technology transfer approach, an Intellectual Property protection strategy, and the frequent use of search routines, are identifiable. However, the future of this paradigm is not clear, as the concept may fade away because the process could be fully integrated in the innovation process.

KEYWORDS:

• Open Innovation
• creative thinking
• SMEs
• intellectual property
• creative economy
• innovation intermediaries

Acknowledgments

Financial support from the European project number 5-3-1-D ‘Open Innovation in Alpine SMEs (OPEN-ALPS)’ is gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Federica Marcolin

Federica Marcolin is an assistant professor at the Department of Production and Management Engineering of the Politecnico di Torino. After the master degree in mathematics in engineering in 2010, she discussed her PhD in production systems and industrial design on January 2015 with a dissertation on differential geometry applied to 3D face analysis. In 2014 she was at the i·Bug group of Imperial College London to work on the same topics and now is dealing with 3D face analysis, landmarking, face recognition, face expression recognition. Apart from these topics, during her PhD she had the opportunity to research on open innovation methodologies thanks to the relevant European project “OpenAlps”.

Enrico Vezzetti

Enrico Vezzetti received the master degree in management engineering from the Politecnico di Torino in 1997, and the PhD in manufacturing engineering from the University of Parma in 2001. In 1998 he was in the 3D Printing Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. He is currently full professor of technical drawing and design tools for industrial engineering at the Department of Production and Management Engineering of the Polytechnic of Turin. He is the author of more than 80 technical papers on product design and development with specific attention on reverse engineering, rapid prototyping and collaborative design topics. His research interests include computer aided design, computer aided inspection, 3D scanners and virtual reality.

Francesca Montagna

Francesca Montagna, PhD, is an assistant professor at Politecnico di Torino where she teaches management of innovation and product development at the Department of Management and Production Engineering. She teaches also at MBA programs of other universities (e.g. LUISS in Rome) and actively collaborates in educational programs for managers, entrepreneurs and policy makers. Research topics range from management of innovation, engineering design and decision making. These themes are deepened through innovation projects in the private and public sector. She, the member of Design Society (http://www.designsociety.org), has authored or co-authored diverse academic papers and usually serves as reviewer on international conferences and academic journals such as RED or IJPR. Often she is expert evaluator of funding project proposals at national and international level.