A Taxonomy of Web-Based Inbound Open Innovation Initiatives

The term “open innovation” describes the opening of innovation processes of organizations to include external knowledge as well as external paths to market. Various concepts are grouped under the umbrella term “open innovation,” and topics such as crowdsourcing are increasingly receiving attention from researchers as well as practitioners. Unfortunately, the broad coverage and the fact that research on open innovation is a relative young research area also led to a very fragmented usage of the term. In this paper, we seek to contribute to the clarification of the term open innovation, and develop a taxonomy of web-based inbound open innovation initiatives from an organizational perspective. Based on a literature review and the examination of 49 examples we develop a taxonomy consisting of the dimensions process phase, outcome focus, group of participants, knowledge visibility, and facilitation.