[Updated] Exnovate and Open Innovation Forum: Two New Open Innovation Community Sites

Recently, two new blogs or portals covering open innovation went online:

Our colleague Wim Vanhaverbeke has initiated a great community service for everyone interested in open innovation: He just has launched Exnovate, an European Network of Excellence on Open & Collaborative Innovation.

Exnovate is just another name for the idea of open innovation that originated from the pioneering work of Henry Chesbrough and other domain experts. The site very much focuses on open innovation in a company setting, with a focus on getting access to technical solution information in the periphery of a firm. The topic of customer co-creation and user innovation (the "Eric Von Hippel School") is not so much in the focus of the site.

What is Wim's idea for Exnovate? In a statement, he says: "Exnovate aims to become a highly visible, leading European network of excellence on managing and oganizing open & collaborative innovation -- a place where OI best practices could be exchanged and where a genuine market for OI expertise would be prepared and organized for all stakeholders."

On the site, I found three features especially useful:

•  A list of case studies on open innovation for teaching
• A list of academic papers on open innovation, most with a link to download (while not comprehensive in the moment, it can become a great collection)
• A list of people working in the field

For companies, there is the possibility to join a company consortia, but this seems to be just in the making. On top, the site has also information for policy makers, service providers, and venture capitalists. Just have a look: http://www.exnovate.org

The OI Forum is a wordy, academic focused site that reports about latest research. It is facilitated by Stefan Hrastinski, a Research Fellow and Director of Master Studies at the Department of Information Science, Uppsala University, Sweden.

From the Open Innovation Forum’s perspective, open innovation involves all aspects of creating new business opportunities by engaging end-users in co-creative activities. Web 2.0 technologies has caused electronic collaboration to evolve, hence paving the way for companies to invite customers and employees to be involved in the refinement of their offerings. Ideally open innovation will create win-win situations where users get services that are more oriented to their needs and organizations will offer services that are more desired by the market.

With this perspective, the Forum is much more focused on "customer co-creation", just one aspect of the larger understanding.

Have a look at http://openinnovationforum.com (where you also will find a new posting by myself about a new paper and research project).