Esteve Almirall

The open innovation research landscape: Established perspectives and emerging themes across different levels of analysis

Abstract This paper provides an overview of the main perspectives and themes emerging in research on open innovation (OI). The paper is the result of a collaborative process among several OI scholars – having a common basis in the recurrent Professional Development Workshop on ‘Researching Open Innovation’ at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. In this paper, we present opportunities for future research on OI, organised at different levels of analysis. We discuss some of the contingencies at these different levels, and argue that future research needs to study OI – originally an organisational-level phenomenon – across multiple levels of analysis. While our integrative framework allows comparing, contrasting and integrating various perspectives at different levels of analysis, further theorising will be needed to advance OI research. On this basis, we propose some new research categories as well as questions for future research – particularly those that span across research domains that have so far developed in isolation.

Living Labs: arbiters of mid- and ground-level innovation

We perform a comparative case analysis of four working Living Labs to identify their common functions. Theoretically, we ground our analysis in terms of how they function, their processes of exploration and exploitation, where they work in the innovation strata and how new socially negotiated meanings are negotiated and diffused. Our research highlights four novel insights: first, Living Labs function at the low- and mid-level innovation strata; second, Living Labs are technologically agnostic; third, Living Labs use context based experience to surface new, socially constructed meanings for products and services; and finally, Living Labs are equally focused on exploration and exploitation.

The role of public open innovation intermediaries in local government and the public sector

In order to achieve a high level of innovativeness, cities are in collaboration with public and private organisations that allow city halls to tap into networks of companies and clusters as well as execute projects. This article focuses on this kind of public or private firm, public open innovation (POI) intermediaries, which operate in the public sector. An exploratory multi-case study was conducted with the participation of POI intermediaries and local governments in Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. The eight cases reveal that certain public or private companies act as a bridge – POI intermediary – across the large cognitive distances between city halls and a network of organisations, while orchestrating the collaboration of actors and executing innovation projects. These findings motivate policy makers to enhance the innovativeness and competitiveness of cities, and they offer useful guidelines for city halls to improve their innovation process and remove possible obstacles.

Public Open Sensor Data: Revolutionizing Smart Cities

Local governments have decided to take advantage of the presence of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in their cities to efficiently manage several applications in their daily responsibilities. The enormous amount of information collected by sensor devices allows the automation of several real-time services to improve city management by using intelligent traffic-light patterns during rush hour, reducing water consumption in parks, or efficiently routing garbage collection trucks throughout the city [1]. The sensor information required by these examples is mostly self-consumed by city-designed applications and managers.

Smart Cities at the Crossroads: New Tensions in City Transformation

The Smart Cities movement has produced a large number of projects and experiments around the world. To understand the primary ones, as well as their underlying tensions and the insights emerging from them, the editors of this special issue of the California Management Review enlisted a panel of experts, academics, and practitioners from different nationalities, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. The panel focused its discussion on three main areas: new governance models for Smart Cities, how to spur growth and renewal, and the sharing economy—both commons and market based.

Living Labs: Arbiters of Mid- and Ground-Level Innovation

We perform a comparative case analysis of four working Living Labs to identify their common functions. Theoretically, we ground our analysis in terms of how they function, their processes of exploration and exploitation, where they work in the innovation strata, how new socially negotiated meanings are negotiated and diffused. Our research highlights four novel insights: first, Living Labs function at the low and mid level innovation strata; second, Living Labs are technologically agnostic; third, Living Labs use context based experience to surface new, socially constructed meanings for products and services; and finally, Living Labs are equally focused on exploration and exploitation.

Contributions of Living Labs in reducing market based risk

Traditionally, the gap between research and innovation has been covered by startups and entrepreneurs who take on the risk and the uncertainty associated with bringing to market novel products or services. Public intervention in innovation has indeed attempted to lower that risk, but his intervention has been commonly associated to increasing the availability of factors that could trigger innovation, such as capital or research potential, rather than reducing the risks associated with the market, such as product/service or business model inadequacy. However, experience shows that are these market risks the main culprits of the failure of new ventures. Recently a new kind of institution called Living Labs, aims to address this area, providing not only help in managing market risks but the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that could push innovation forward while helping in creating an initial demand that might foster its development.

Cocreating Value from Open Data: From Incentivizing Developers to Inducing Cocreation in Open Data Innovation Ecosystems

Open governmental data available via platforms like data.gov have earned a place in the innovation agenda of governments and local authorities alike. To successfully make use of these sources, governments around the world experiment with competitive virtual contests or challenges to ignite the creativity of developers and hackers and motivate them to turn this data into novel digital applications. However, such efforts don’t seem to be sustainable. Applications developed in such contests regularly fail to ignite the continuous use by the end users. We argue that governments need to adopt an ecosystem perspective facilitating cocreation within the diverse open data innovation ecosystems of developers, producers, and users in order to foster the generativity needed for continuous value creation. However, various tensions among actors appear along the way. Taking a paradoxical view towards ecosystem tensions, we propose a socio-technical infrastructure that supports ecosystem generativity by addressing latent tensions in the “breeding zone” of an open data innovation. The infrastructure supports generative responses to these tensions in three ways: creating virtual trading zones, supporting the duality of stable and dynamic roles, and providing technological affordances for fluidity. This framework could set the stage for future research, encouraging system designers and policymakers to foster cocreation in open data innovation ecosystems.

Intervention intermediaries flourish: matching firms with solutions to complex needs

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the main models of innovation intermediaries as determined by the matching mechanisms they offer as a service to organizations, and to reveal underlying limitations of each mechanism to have a better understanding of their appropriateness for organizational requests. Design/methodology/approach This paper reports an exploratory study of 51 online innovation intermediaries using semi-structured interviews, supported with direct observation, scientific papers and official documentary sources. Findings The overall findings suggest that innovation intermediaries are not homogeneous, are evolving and that the underlying mechanisms with which they support their operations vary substantially, depending on the size of the community, platform design (collaboration vs non-collaboration) and reward conditions. The study identifies five mechanisms on which the models are based: broadcast search (directed and undirected), brainstorming with ranking (directed and undirected), networking/connecting, expert group and licensing out. Some of the underlying tensions and limitations of these mechanisms are also explored as are the managerial implications for the choice and use of innovation intermediaries. Originality/value This paper identifies distinct models of online innovation intermediaries in significantly more depth than what has been presented so far. In addition, it discusses their limitations as a mechanism and their use to achieve a better match between innovation intermediaries and needs of solution-seeker companies.