Knowledge Bites # 14 : Open Innovation in Sustainability Context

Open Innovation promises higher outcomes from innovation processes through collaboration and sharing of knowledge, information, and intellectual assets. Inclusion of stakeholders such as suppliers, customers/users/ beneficiaries, partners, societies/citizens, and even competitors in innovative processes can help to overcome constraints on internal resources. The increasing complexity and shorter life cycles of products and services, changing requirements and preferences force innovators to go beyond their intrinsic capabilities and utilize the knowledge and practices of their stakeholders in the innovation management processes, and adapt themselves to a collaborative and continuous learning framework for meeting the increasing expectations for sustainability performance. Various forms of open innovation can be adapted to the context of sustainability innovations, including design thinking, co-creation, and sustainable business model design.

In this context, this course aims to introduce the open innovation approaches in a sustainability context and to provide insights into the theory and practice of open innovation by presenting the open innovation management frameworks, processes, and types explained through multiple cases that successfully combined open innovation with sustainable development.

Speaker: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nihan Yıldırım