(Modified re-post of a posting by Alex Vosson in the RWTH-TIM Blog). During the past weeks, I attended together with some colleagues from our RWTH-TIM group two major events in the conference circle: the Annual User and Open Innovation (UOI) Workshop and the Academy of Management Annual Meeting (AOM).
Visiting the UOI always is special. It is as much a family meeting as a scientific event. Every participant gets a 2-min slot to present recent research or ideas, and so one really get a very good impression about how our scientific community is evolving and see what everybody is currently working on.
My impression from this year's workshop (at MIT): User innovation research is consolidating, we know already quite a lot, and some people are replicating older research, or are really looking into small pieces. In the field of open (distributed) innovation, however, there are still many open spots! And some great high-lebel research is being conducted here. I was very pleased to learn that our own projects on "not invented here". "open innovation platforms", and "user idea contests" as well as "internal capabilities for OI" are really matching with the open research opportunities identified this year.
For more detailed information about the UOI workshop, head here: My colleaque Joel West from San Jose has repored extensively about the event in his great blog: UOI Workshop Report I and Report II
The Academy of Management Annual Meeting on the other hand is a slightly different, yet not less valuable, event. It is the biggest management conference of teh world. And so it requires a decisive mind, with many interesting sessions just within the TIM division at the same time . For me, the variety and diversity of the Annual Meeting still makes it the best academic innovation management conference in general.
This year, we saw a lot of "open innovation" sessions. Much more research on intermediaries, a lot on absorptive capacity as a driver of open innovation, a little bit on user innovation. For more, please refer to Joel's blog above. The theme definetly is going mainstream, and I hope it will not just become a management buzzword that will be forgotten in a few years.
There also still is a lack of a common definition of open innovation. While the core community has a good understanding of the topic, many people are just exploiting the term for many traditional forms of knoweldge exchange and collaboration in the innovation process.
I believe that the AOM could be the place where a solid discussion on the term takes place, but this year, this was not happening. Still you get a great overview about research from all over the world.
Again, Joel West has a great report about Open Innovation Research at the AOM in general and a special report about a joint session we organized on "Open Innovation with Suppliers".
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