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The purpose of this paper is to empirically study challenges faced by product and service providers when innovating openly with customers in business-to-business (B-to-B) markets. The study aims to fill the research gap of how the challenges vary in different types of customer involvement in innovation. The work applied the qualitative methodology of multiple case studies, and the material was collected in semi-structured interviews with management personnel at 48 companies in Finland and in the Netherlands that are practicing open innovation with their customers in one form or another. For the analysis of challenges identified from the empirical data, a typology of open innovation with customers was built, resulting in four distinct types to categorise product and service providers through their dominant business and innovation logics and related customer involvement. The typology gave the context in which strategic and operational challenges of open innovation with customers were explored. Each of the four types seems to have specific and characteristic challenges of open innovation. The findings of the study will help managers of product and service providers in guiding their open innovation practices with customers in B-to-B markets.

Real-world products and physics-based simulations are becoming interconnected. In particular, real-time capable dynamic simulation has made it possible for simulation models to run in parallel and simultaneously with operating machinery. This capability combined with state observer techniques such as Kalman filtering have enabled the synchronization between simulation and the real world. State estimator techniques can be applied to estimate unmeasured quantities, also referred as virtual sensing, or to enhance the quality of measured signals. Although synchronized models could be used in a number of ways, value creation and business model development are currently defining the most practical and beneficial use cases from a business perspective. The research reported here reveals the communication and collaboration methods that lead to economically relevant technology solutions. Two case examples are given that demonstrate the proposed methodology. The work benefited from the broad perspective of researchers from different backgrounds and the joint effort to drive the technology development towards business relevant cases.

The present study investigates activities and actors' roles in how companies utilise and adopt big data and cognitive systems in their business processes. Based on the literature review, a qualitative analysis of 18 in-depth interviews with participants from six companies and a complementary review of five illustrative case companies, we identify five different roles to create business value or new business opportunities in the collaborative networks. Based on those business roles, we also identified activities and outcomes. This study contributes to the debate regarding business roles and activities and how companies create value in adopting data and cognitive systems in collaborative networks. For practitioners, the findings show that different data-driven business roles and opportunities exist in the collaborative networks. The business roles are not exclusive, and the same company can have several roles depending on the business case.

The paper describes empirical findings on how openness is realized in practical innovation projects involving different organizations. The purpose of the study is to increase the understanding of how openness should be managed in the various forms of inter-organizational innovation development. The main research interest is in how openness is manifested in developing innovations with different organizations involved in inter-organizational innovation projects. Subsidiary research questions are: ‘What is open?’, ‘To whom is it open?’ and ‘How open is it?’. The study applied qualitative case study methodology, and empirical data were collected by semi-structured interviews with management personnel in 40 organizations in Finland and the Netherlands. The findings reveal that openness in innovation is a multifaceted issue that can have very different meanings in different contexts. In the context of the study, the answer to the first sub-question (‘What is open?’) is obvious. It is the innovation project; its input, process and outcome. As for ‘To whom is it open?’, interviewees made a clear distinction between projects with known actors and projects that may include unknown actors. Answering ‘How open is the project?’, one can distinguish between different projects according to which attribute best describes the openness of the project – readable, usable, or modifiable. Answers to the three sub-questions conceptualize the issue of openness in inter-organizational innovation development and can be considered theoretical conclusions of the study. By combining the answers, five characteristic levels of openness in inter-organizational innovation were derived as practical implications of the study for R&D and innovation management.