How Open is Innovation?

Open Innovation Contests for Improving Healthcare – An Explorative Case Study Focusing on Challenges in a Testbed Initiative

“…Initially, the project team aimed at revealing a problem, information and other internal resources such as the opportunity to talk to the staff at the clinic, to get access to clinical and technical competence, get support to advance and evaluate the winning entry. The revealing strategy is used when it is too difficult or expensive to develop something in-house [6]. However, the project team did not want to reveal too much of their thoughts and ideas since they did not want to limit the competing team's innovative ability.…”

“…when organizations scan the environment for external sources of innovation such as ideas and technologies that may be incorporated into the organization. Its pecuniary equivalent is acquiring these sources of innovation [6]. OI can be construed as an umbrella term [7] that includes many already existing innovation activities such as innovation contests.…”

“…In the light of theory, the contest can be understood as a case of outbound open innovation that is non-pecuniary, i.e. revealing [6]. Initially, the project team aimed at revealing a problem, information and other internal resources such as the opportunity to talk to the staff at the clinic, to get access to clinical and technical competence, get support to advance and evaluate the winning entry.…”

“…The former refers to internal use of external knowledge, whereas the latter refers to external use of internal knowledge. These can also be divided into pecuniary and non-pecuniary OI [6]. Revealing refers to non-pecuniary outbound OI, e.g.…”

“…The competing team, who used a sourcing strategy, i.e. non-pecuniary inbound open innovation [6], wanted more collaboration and knowledge exchange with the clinic to be able to develop their solution. Hence, the 'openness' of the OI initiative was limited since they did not fully commit to their chosen strategy.…”