Open innovation is often viewed as the panacea to all sorts of innovation challenges. And this is for good reason. Building on innovation partners' novel, diverse and complementary perspectives should help organisations to find breakthroughs in their innovative endeavours. Yet, open innovation initiatives often fail to live up to these promises.
Consider the initiative of the Verband Deutscher Maschinen- und Anlagenbau (VDMA)—a mechanical engineering industry association representing over 3000 European companies. The association launched an open, global call for solutionsto several unresolved challenges that are faced by its members1. Despite receiving a wide range of feasible and promising solutions, VDMA's members did not adopt any of these solutions at all—not a single one!
Why do so many open innovation initiatives return underwhelming results? My research on and biases.
