Facilitating Innovation Through Openness And Collaboration

1st generation: Nokia 770
3rd generation: Nokia N810
4th generation: Nokia N900
5th generation: Nokia Z500?
Matthias Stürmer, Liip AG and /ch/open
matthias@stuermer.ch / @maemst
June 25, TransferSummit 2010, Oxford
Open Source Adoption Matrix
Source: Haefliger, Wallin, Spaeth & von Krogh, working paper 2008
10 Types of Motivation for
Contributing to Open Source Projects
Why do top-notch software developers
contribute to open source projects in the first place?
So why do firms employ people to
contribute to open source projects?
Private-collective
model
of innovation
Collective innovation
model
Private
investment
model
Appropriation of financial returns
from innovations through IPRs
(patents, copyright, licenses, trade secrets)
Knowledge spillover
reduces innovator's benefits
Investments in public goods
(non-rival, non-excludable)
Free riding problem, 
thus public funding by governments
Innovators privately fund creation of public goods
Example: production of open source software by firms
Rewards from process of innovation
surpasses rewards of free-riders:
involvement in innovation process
Process-related rewards are higher than process-related costs:
public good innovation
What are such rewards or incentives?
2005
2007
2009
2010
2nd generation: Nokia N800
2007
What do we do against 'open' washing?
Ask questions to software companies:
3. employees
4. product variety
1. services for OSS
2. contributions
5. customers
6. behavior
2000
2003
contracted KernelConcepts, OpenedHand, Collabora, Imendio, Fluendo, Movial etc.

Costs
Incentives
Control
Openness
Balancing
Act
Value
Creation
Value
Appropriation

Transparency
Accessibility
Firm-driven Open Source Projects
Business
Goals

Sales
Source: Matthias Stürmer 2009
"How Firms Make Friends: Communities in Private-Collective Innovation"
“But we believe the world is changing and the competitive advantage comes from how many others can you get from participating in this network. This network becomes
more important than trade secrets.”
Ari Jaaksi, Head of OSS Operations at Nokia
in an interview November 2006