EURAM 2007: 16-19 May 2007
From 16 to 19 May 2007, the Annual Meeting of the European Academy of Management was held in Paris, France. During this meeting, participants could choose between two tracks on Open Innovation: Managing Open Innovation through Online Communities (by Linus Dahlanders, Lars Fredriksen, and Francesco Rullani) and Open Innovation (by Oliver Gassmann, Wim Vanhaverbeke, Ellen Enkel and Vareska van de Vrande). In the last track, 14 papers were selected for presentation.
The first day started with an overview session, indicating the current status of the field and presenting a number of challenges faced by open innovation researchers. Presentations from Ellen Enkel and Wim Vanhaverbeke stressed the importance of management-related issues in the implementation of open innovation. Marcus Becker furthermore indicated the difficulties of implementing open innovation when developing complex products, whereas Mikko Ahonen stressed the importance of collective creativity as a driver for innovation.
The second session, titled “External Knowledge Sourcing”, presented different viewpoints on the role of external acquisition of knowledge. The role of users (by Francois Scheid) , universities (by Emilio Bellini), and R&D alliances (Valentina Morandi) were discussed, followed by a detailed account from Felipe Monteiro on the process through which this external knowledge is accessed.
The third session kicked off with a keynote speech by Julian Birkinshaw. During this speech, Julian presented a framework for open innovation, showing a number of dimensions of open innovation that are crucial to consider when establishing a “theory” of open innovation. Markus Perkmann and Elena Sousa-Ginel once more stressed the particular role played by universities, when companies seek to acquire external knowledge.
The last session left us with many questions that are still open for discussion. To what extent is it really beneficial for companies to share knowledge, and how important is the protection of internally developed knowledge (by Michael Mol)? What is the role of different stakeholders, such as customers, employees, external stakeholders, and knowledge management (by Silvia Ayuso)? How do different types of software professionals value open innovation in Open Source settings (by Oliver Alexy)? And finally, what can we say about cost efficiency and spilover effects as determinants for open innovation (by Benjamin Chiao)?
To conclude, the different papers presented in the Open Innovation track have further stumlated the debate on open innovation research, but has also raised a large number of questions that are still to be answered!
For an overview of the program and to download presentations of the papers, click here. Full papers can be downloaded from the EIASM-website.