How is Open Innovation (OI) linked to Open Source Software (OSS)? Is Open Source nowadays organised innovation activity?
These questions in mind I participated the research seminar of Brian Fitzgerald in Helsinki Business School. Professor Fitzgerald is known as the leading academics in the Open Source research. He uses the term "OSS 2.0" meaning that open source software phenomenon has metamorphosed into a more mainstream and commercially viable form. He has also pointed out new paths for open source research:
Much of OSS research has focused inward on the phenomenon itself, studying the motivations of individual developers to contribute to OSS projects, or investigating the characteristics of specific OSS products and projects, for example. Far less has been done in looking outward at the process of OSS adoption and implementation in organizations.
Why is OSS so innovative? We discussed about this with Brian and he pointed out that many software companies have turned their proprietary product to the OSS community product, because the input from OSS community provides different, unexpected viewpoints. These in turn improves software and provide new functionalities and infrastructure improvements. While sometimes openness is forced by buyers or regulators, many firms voluntarily favour openness for those problems that require coordination and cooperation.
Joel West and Scott Gallagher have a nice chapter about the relationships of OSS and OI in the newest Open Innovation book.(Highly recommend!) They see that value capture is needed for OSS to become Open Innovation. Typically this is succeeded by selling related products and services, although the actual software remains free of charge. There are multiple business models for OSS business. I will get back to this later on.
A detail: As you can see from the picture, the challenge for companies is the collaboration with OSS community. Both parties and their interests need to be understood for mutual benefit. Not an easy thing to accomplish!
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