Turning Open Innovation into Practice: Open Innovation Research through the Lens of Managers

Journal article, 2011

Despite the fact that Open Innovation (OI) has rapidly become one of the hottest topics in innovation management, comprehensive reviews of the state of the research field and its managerial implications are scarce. This could be one of the reasons why OI still represents a big challenge for innovation managers. This paper, based on a literature review covering the period from 2003 up until June 2009, identifies managerial implications of OI under four major categories: namely organizing for openness, co-creating value, leadership for diversity and intellectual property (IP) management. The contribution of this paper is both practical and theoretical. On the one hand, innovation managers can find useful suggestions for dealing with the challenge of openness in their organization. On the other hand, gaps and omissions in the practical aspects of OI management are identified in order to guide further research on the field. © 2011 Imperial College Press.