BACKGROUND
The concept of open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003) has developed in concert with the advent of
new online technologies that have facilitated this approach (Howe, 2008). There are three emerging
models of crowd sourced innovation or co‐creation:
1. Crowdsourced competition ‐ involves soliciting ideas or solutions from a wide range of
contributors (Afuah and Tucci, 2012; Jeppesen and Lakhani, 2010). For example, the
Innocentive platform (http://www.innocentive.com/ )
2. Community‐based competition ‐some firms have developed dedicated online communities
as part of online competitions, where contributors may interact with each other. For
example, Threadless (www.threadless.com), Local Motors (www.localmotors.com),
OpenIDEO (www.openideo.com)
3. Open source co‐innovation – is what some describe as the ‘ideal type’ of co‐created value in
use. Here the product or service is created by the users for the users. It is both open in the
process of the creation of the service and open in the outcome. Examples of open source coinnovation,
the most open of the open‐innovation approaches, include the Linux operating
system and also Wikipedia (Boudreau and Lakhani, 2009).
In the last decade, open innovation practices have increasingly attracted research and practitioner
interest. Pedersen (2010) outlines a number of empirical studies that have demonstrated the
relevance of open innovation techniques (e.g. Huston and Sakkab, 2006, Rohrbeck and Hoelzle 2009;
Dodgson and Gann 2006; Chesbrough and Crowther 2006) yet others have found varied results
regarding the relationship between open innovation and firm performance, thereby concluding that
evidence is inconclusive regarding the effectiveness of open innovation techniques. Furthermore as
Chen et al (2011) outline, the shift towards openness fundamentally changes value creation in the
business model. These types of open innovation and open co‐innovation challenge some of the
basic tenets of traditional business innovation strategy, especially the need to have ownership over
the resources that are applied to create new value (Chesbrough and Appleyard 2007).
TASK
Your task is to participate in an online open innovation platform. You are to participate in the
process over at least two months (from week 5 to week 10) and produce a report and analysis based
21854 Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship – AUT 2015 Lecturers: Marco Berti& Tim Williams
SUBJECT MATERIALS
on your experience, the strengths and weaknesses of these platforms, and open and ‘co‐innovation’
more broadly.
Your report is to be no more than 1500 words. You need to demonstrate an understanding of open
innovation and co‐innovation, document your real participation and engagement, and based on your
experience and readings, reflect on the implications for organisations such as firm strategy,
performance, idea generation, business models, intellectual property protection etc. It will be
important to engage several times over the course of the semester i.e. you can see what the public
think of your contributions, or follow a participant over time to provide a valuable report on how
this process works and its impact.
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