Managing Openness

The global financial crisis triggered a broad reassessment of economic integration policies in developed and developing countries worldwide. The crisis-induced collapse in trade was the sharpest ever since World War II, affecting all countries and all product categories. A huge shock to the trading system, combined with severe macroeconomic instability, makes it natural for policymakers to call into question the basic underlying assumptions of trade liberalization and openness. In particular, outward-oriented or export-led growth strategies are being reassessed as openness is increasingly associated with greater volatility. However, it is crucial not to lose sight of the dynamic benefits that openness can offer. Examples include technology transfer, increased competitive pressure that reduces markups and improves efficiency, and economies of scale. The real question is how to manage outward-oriented strategies so as to maximize the benefits of openness while minimizing risks. This book aims to contribute to this important and ongoing policy debate, bringing together recent empirical work on the trade collapse, its causes and consequences, and the broader trade policy agenda in the post-crisis environment. It addresses critical policy issues revolving around the topic of outward-oriented growth strategy, including policy instruments that help manage risks associated with outward-orientation, lessons learned from the crisis for particular countries and regions, and how emerging trade policy issues such as climate change, commodities, global production networking, and migration affect the prospects for recovery and outward-oriented growth.

Open innovation increases the profit of companies and organizations via the input and the adoption of new ideas that are transformed into new processes, products, and services. Yet, how do we ensure that adopters of such innovations focus on relevant problems and use appropriate methods? How should we manage open innovation technologies? How can we exploit distributed knowledge and inventions? And how can we promote them successfully on the market? With valuable lessons to be learned from academic research and industrial experiences of e.g. Intel, Nokia, Philips Healthcare, small municipalities, e-learning platforms and user communities, this book focuses on some of the key dimensions of open innovation and open innovation technologies. It is divided into three themes: theme 1 deals with open innovation as it is in use today, including theoretical underpinnings and lessons from related research fields. Theme 2 analyzes the use of open innovation in organizations today in order to extract best practices. Theme 3 presents forward-looking theoretical research as well as practical future uses of open innovation. Each chapter addresses the particular topics by presenting experiences and results gained in real life projects and/or by empirical research, and clearly states its purpose and how readers are supposed to benefit from it. Overall, the objectives of this book are to advance and disseminate research on systematic open innovation, and to make its results available to practitioners. Thus, the intended target audience includes the international academic community, industrial enterprises, and public authorities.

'Research on open innovation has been developed exponentially in the last five years, but strong empirical evidence on several research questions is still lacking. The authors offer via detailed large scale empirical research, interesting answers on how to manage open innovation and how to shape policy conditions that lead to more open innovation.' – Wim Vanhaverbeke, University of Hasselt, Belgium Open innovation is about firms' external relations with other firms and organisations. It is a topic which has attracted an immense amount of attention, but which has also been heavily criticised due to the diversity of the ideas and fuzziness of its key concepts. To date, the bulk of the literature on open innovation draws on case study material to illustrate the operation of firms in an anecdotal way. By contrast, this book examines open innovation practices by using large-scale datasets and stresses their impact on firm performance. The authors examine four key issues: differences between firms in open innovation practices, public funding to enhance external relations, R&D outsourcing of firms, and the role of human resources in R&D and innovation. The conceptual and measurement issues attached to open innovation explored in this timely book will prove essential to academics. Practitioners from large firms who are closely engaged in the practical organisation of open innovation will benefit from the authors' insights on outsourcing R&D and the need for the right kinds of human resources.

For the last fifteen years, open innovation has been one of the hottest topics in innovation management research. Digitalisation of the open innovation process has also emerged as a concept of high organisational value. The potential benefits of this concept and how firms organise, or should organise, in order to realize these benefits have been addressed in numerous empirical studies published in scientific journals as well as books. Responding to the need for further conceptual and empirical research on open innovation in services, this book reveals if and how service providers in different service sub-sectors have implemented the concept of open innovation. Based on rich empirical data, the book discusses the benefits and drawbacks, the processes, the characteristics and the management practices of open innovation in private as well as public service organizations.Through a series of empirical case studies focusing on the open innovation practices of different public and private service organizations, this book contributes to deepening our understanding of how the concept of open innovation has been implemented in services, and what challenges, achievements and benefits that are associated with the implementation of open innovation concepts in this sector. These insights it provides can assist managers of both private and public service providers to confidently implement open innovation in an efficient manner in their organizations.

The only guide to managing and integrating the open source model With the phenomenal success of Linux, companies are taking open source business solutions much more seriously than ever before. This book helps to satisfy the growing demand for guidance on how to manage open source enterprise development projects. Expert Jan Sandred explores the open source philosophy, describes current software tools for managing open source projects, and provides expert guidance on how to organize and manage open source projects using the Internet as a collaboration tool. With the help of several fascinating and instructive case studies, Sandred explores practical concerns such as building, motivating, and managing virtual teams; structuring tasks and meeting deadlines; establishing trust; project management software tools; maintaining project security; and more.

This book uses in-depth case studies to provide a structured analysis of open innovation practices in small and medium-sized enterprises.

'Leading and Managing Open and Distance E-Learning (ODeL) Institutions in Africa' focuses on e-learning, especially in developing countries in Africa. The outbreak of COVID-19 has forced most educational institutions, including conventional institutions in higher education, to embrace e-learning as a tool to ensure that education is not paralysed but continues to thrive. However, the major challenge has been shifting focus from the conventional face-to-face mode to the e-learning mode. This calls for a change of mindset and a review of practices to ensure success in implementing e-learning. This book has 12 chapters that explore the leadership theories and approaches that influence administrative practices in ODeL institutions, as well as student support within library and information services, the complexities of student affairs, the inclusion of students with special needs, the contemporary issues of innovation and industrialisation, and effective marketing techniques for the survival and growth of tertiary institutions. It is hoped that the recipients of this book can acquire the theoretical and practical knowledge relevant to the successful implementation of e-learning.

Medium and small sized enterprises are increasingly reliant on innovation to be successful. A new paradigm to exploit joint forces for creating innovative products and services is Open Innovation, in which companies open specific phases of their innovation process to collaboration with others in order to profit from novel ideas, or alternative external paths to market. Especially in the field of the digital economy, which is highly innovation-driven, successful examples of value-creating open partnerships can be found: customers, researchers or partners join the innovation process, and thus may complement a necessary competency portfolio that a single company may be unable to provide. Managing and facilitating Open Innovation processes does, however, require appropriate competencies and experiences. In that regard, support in terms of infrastructure and analytical frameworks can be very helpful and even necessary. This book includes theories, tools and support mechanisms that were presented at the International Symposium on Support for Open Innovation processes. Researchers and practitioners active in the field of Open Innovation describe their experiences and ideas in this area. The first part of the book elucidates several approaches to support the management of Open Innovation processes. Special attention is given to the topics of competence development and management, awareness and the reputation of Open Innovation community members, and the implementation of the Open Innovation paradigm in enterprises. Furthermore, social software based services to foster and facilitate the Open Innovation process are proposed. The second part of the book focuses on case studies in Open Innovation conducted within SMEs in the digital economy sector. Three case studies - on Web 2.0 learning, Open Source Innovation and Virtual Worlds platforms - are introduced and analysed with theoretical frameworks that are described in the first part of the book.