Open Innovation
Innovations for sustainability rarely derive from a single source but rely on the knowledge of diverse actors. Actors look beyond their organizational boundaries to scout for innovations they can build on. This knowledge flow across actors forms a distributed innovation process, relying on the openness of actors to share and adapt the knowledge of others. The open innovation concept serves as a suitable lens to explore the underlying mechanisms and processes of co-innovation.
SusTec investigates the drivers, outcomes, and dynamics of open innovation. While prior research focuses on the organization and governance, ongoing research focuses on organizational aspects (e.g., role of boundary spanner, spill-over effects across single initiatives).
Key findings:
- Inter-firm relations can be organized into four archetypes: organic coalitions, bureaucratic foundations, coalitions of intense interdependency and reciprocal foundations (DownloadMeuer, 2014).
- Open innovation needs to be studied across multiple levels of analysis. New multi-level research categories of open innovation are (1) open innovation behavior and cognition, (2) open innovation strategy and design, (3) open innovation stakeholders, (4) open innovation ecosystem, (5) open governance (DownloadBogers et al., 2017).
- Open innovation firms choose diverse forms of formal and informal intellectual property (DownloadHagedoorn & Zobel, 2015).
- Different types of openness (external search breadth and depth) are associated with formal as well as informal appropriation mechanisms. The relationships between openness and appropriation vary across different types of innovators (incremental vs radical) (DownloadZobel et al., 2017).
- The patent stock of new entrants in industries shaped by systemic innovations positively influences their subsequent number of open innovation relationships. This association varies across relationships of differing technology intensity: it is strongly positive for technology-intensive relationships, weaker as the technology intensity decreases, and negative for least technology-intensive relationships (DownloadZobel et al., 2016).
Ongoing Projects:
- Leading house of the Download‘Circular Building Industry’ Booster, supported by Innosuisse.
- Research on renewable materials and processes for sustainable construction. Case: construction industry.
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