Stakeholder-Driven Conceptualization of Open Innovation Approaches in the SYNERGY Project

Since the late 90s, the way companies acquire novel ideas and bring resulting products to the market is in a paradigm shift moving towards open innovation concepts and making use of crowd-based approaches. This in particular affects the industrial technologies sector with its fast-moving advancements in the areas of Additive Manufacturing, Micro- and Nanotechnology and Industry4.0. Open innovation concepts together with stakeholder-driven engagement processes provide solutions for all parties involved in the innovation process—from research to intermediaries up to industrial realization. This paper reports an overview of the milestones of the open innovation evolution and describes the interactive engagement format established and carried out within the frame of the Interreg Central Europe (CE) project SYNERGY (CE1171) involving related stakeholder target groups in the conceptualization of an open innovation platform for state-of-the-art technologies. Creative formats like design thinking and crowdsourcing approaches were introduced to and applied by representatives from higher education and research, SMEs and industry and start-ups to create a catalogue of features required for the open innovation platform.