Anna Yström

Turning Open Innovation Into Practice: Open Innovation Research Through The Lens Of Managers

Despite the fact that Open Innovation (OI) has rapidly become one of the hottest topics in innovation management, comprehensive reviews of the state of the research field and its managerial implications are scarce. This could be one of the reasons why OI still represents a big challenge for innovation managers. This paper, based on a literature review covering the period from 2003 up until June 2009, identifies managerial implications of OI under four major categories: namely organizing for openness, co-creating value, leadership for diversity and intellectual property (IP) management. The contribution of this paper is both practical and theoretical. On the one hand, innovation managers can find useful suggestions for dealing with the challenge of openness in their organization. On the other hand, gaps and omissions in the practical aspects of OI management are identified in order to guide further research on the field.

Rethinking the role of intermediaries as an architect of collective exploration and creation of knowledge in open innovation

This paper questions the applicability of traditional notions of intermediary activities, which are usually categorized as either brokering or networking, in cases of high uncertainty regarding technologies, markets or which actors to involve. In the case of collaborative open innovation, especially in circumstances when no single organization is able to take on the challenge alone, the activities traditionally associated with intermediation do not suffice to describe what an intermediary can do to support innovation. This paper presents two cases of intermediaries working with the early phases of traffic safety innovations, and how they have managed to develop their activities beyond solely brokering and networking, but also to take an active role in the process of joint exploration and creation of knowledge. We use a qualitative approach to analyze the two cases in order to provide examples of how rethinking intermediation activities can support open innovation in a collaborative setting. The findings suggest that intermediaries can take on a more active role, which could be described as an architect which designs prerequisites and offers leadership in the process of joint exploration and creation of knowledge.

Implications of Openness: A Study into (All) the Growing Literature on Open Innovation

Seven years after Chesbrough published the first book on open innovation; the field has literally exploded, and is continuing to do so at an increasing speed. Earlier overviews have analyzed the current status of the field at different points in time. The purpose with this paper is to take this research one step further and analyze gaps in the field as it has progressed up to date, and also discuss the managerial implications of that literature. All scientific literature (as found through major databases) published in English on open innovation has been analyzed qualitatively. The paper identifies current streams in the literature and identifies key issues that future research needs to solve. Compared to earlier reviews, we identify a shift in the direction that the research is taken. The paper discusses why this may be the case and speculates on the future of the field.

'Authoring' Open Innovation: The Managerial Practices of an Open Innovation Director

Abstract nThis chapter asks how we can understand the managerial practices in open innovation, a recently popularized way of organizing innovative work. Open innovation implies opening up the borders of the organization, creating a context where conventional steering and managerial tools no longer apply. Utilizing a collaborative research approach, following an open innovation collaboration over 8 years, this chapter outlines the managerial practices that direct the collaboration. These practices are important for meaning making and identity creation in the collaboration and can be understood as a form of authorship, a continuous intervention strategy to manage, develop and change the organizational context.

Exploring the creative climate in an open innovation arena : Identifying challenges and possibilities

Purpose – By increasing connectivity between multiple partners, the new paradigm of open innovation has been argued to stimulate creativity. However, there are still few empirical studies exploring what influence this new form of organizing for innovation has on the creative climate. The purpose of this paper is to start filling that knowledge gap by exploring the creative climate in an open innovation arena called SAFER, where 26 partner organizations meet to innovate together. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a mixed method consisting of a quantitative creative climate questionnaire complemented by qualitative data gathering through interviews. Findings – The findings suggest that the networking and cross-functional meetings within the arena are beneficial to facilitate a creative climate, but there are challenges in handling uncertainties such as work identities, information sharing and knowledge transparency. Practical implications – The arena is found to be rather dependent on inte...

Open for innovation? Practices supporting collaboration in Swedish regional clusters

While it could be argued that globalisation would diminish the importance of a company’s location, research has shown that in an increasingly complex, knowledge-based and dynamic economy, regional collaboration has in fact become a critical aspect of enhancing competitiveness, locally as well as globally. Still, in order to create sustainable, innovative and successful clusters, interaction and collaboration among its members is necessary, which is not always easy to accomplish and requires actions that stimulate bottom-up activity rather than top-down directives. Taking a practice-based perspective, this paper explores what cluster management do in their everyday activities to support collaboration among cluster members, based on a qualitative case study of 14 Swedish regional clusters and cluster initiatives. The paper contributes by outlining and discussing two distinct and essential practices–orchestrating and narrating.

Beyond intermediation: the open innovation arena as an actor enabling joint knowledge creation

The open innovation paradigm has created opportunities for the emergence of new actors to provide support for open innovation. It is acknowledged that knowledge creation is pivotal to innovation, but this has yet to be discussed in the context of open innovation intermediation. This paper based on a longitudinal study of SAFER, a traffic and vehicle safety research centre in Sweden, explores the role of an actor whose objective is to support joint knowledge creation in open innovation. Theoretical models of knowledge creation are used in the analysis and the identified activities go beyond intermediation, and include peer collaboration and mobilisation of a collective strategic body. These activities are fundamental to an open innovation arena - here introduced as a new type of actor. The paper challenges the established focal firm perspective in open innovation and introduces the open innovation arena to underline knowledge creation among peers.

Exploring Design Principles of Organizing for Collaborative Innovation: The Case of an Open Innovation Initiative

In a distributed world, relationships and partnering become even more critical for business, as delivering on rising and complex demands and addressing complex issues is more than one organization can do alone. Such a situation constitutes a huge challenge for many organizations. Building on an inductive case study of an open innovation initiative, illustrating the complex and messy nature of such organizing, we outline five design principles that appear fundamental to the organizing for collaborative innovation. These design principles are our main contribution to the emerging research on organizing for collaborative innovation as they form a perspective and a conceptual tool to talk about and understand the messiness and disorganization of dynamic and discontinuous contemporary organizational constructs.

Designing and Being Designed: Organizing Complex Collaborative Innovation in a Societal challenge

Societal challenges are inherently complex societal problems that cannot be solved using traditional innovation management approaches. Instead, collaborative governance is needed to enable the inte...

The Role of a Learning Approach in Building an Interorganizational Network Aiming for Collaborative Innovation

Collaboration has become a common way for organizational actors to engage in problem solving and innovation. Yet shifting from strategic interactions (driven by reduction of transaction costs) to transformational interaction (driven by collaborative transorganizational development) appears to be difficult to achieve in practice in a network setting. This article argues that such a shift can be enhanced by adopting an action learning approach, which entails working on real-life problems without clear solutions and collectively working to resolve them. Based on an action learning research process, this article therefore explores ways to support collective knowledge creation within an interorganizational network setting. It provides rich illustrations of how the interactions in the network changed through the process, and the participants moved from a space of territorial protection to a space for collaborative exploration. From this case, the article outlines a model for learning in interorganizational networks and discusses related challenges.