Turning dispersed ideas and efforts into successful businesses?
Strasbourg, February 25-26, 2010
Deadline for submission: 13th December 2009.

The recent patent upsurge in almost all countries and all domains has, paradoxically, contributed to draw the attention of scholars on the importance of openness and large scale collaboration for innovations’ development. The free-libre open source movement in the software industry has also contributed to put the notion of openness and decentralized problem solving in the forefront. Among others, it has led some recent works to explore how to expand the open source model in other industries. Similarly, organisation sciences have seen the emergence of the “open innovation” paradigm, which advises firms to open up their boundaries. Practices of crowdsourcing” also rely to some extent on an open and distributed model.

All these recent changes show clearly that openness, data sharing, informal collaborations, decentralised and distributed problem solving, are important elements of the innovation process. Yet, except in software, where a tremendous number of studies have been realised, we know little about open source innovation and their industrial and commercial exploitation. Only a few attempts have been made to explain how to transform open source innovation into a successful business model for a wide range of industries.

PAPERS

We are soliciting works focusing on the issue of openness and distributed problem solving in the field of innovation. Papers on the following issues will be particularly welcome:

• Open source and free / libre innovation (in other domains than software)
• Collective invention
• Open science and its links with industry
• Non-exclusive use of patents
• Distributed entrepreneurship
• Crowdsourcing and opensourcing
• Business model development and application of open source innovation
• Evaluation of open source innovation

MEETING ORGANIZATION

Accepted papers will be presented in a two-day workshop to be held in Strasbourg, February 25st and 26nd, 2010. An important part of the agenda will be allocated to open discussions among participants.

SUBMISSION

Interested scholars are expected to submit an extended abstract in electronic form (PDF or Word) to the following address:
penin@unistra.fr

Submission should include the author’s name, affiliation, address, phone number and email.

FEES

Participation is free. Yet, transportation and accommodation will be covered only for DIME members

IMPORTANT DATES

• Deadline for submission: 13th December 2009.
• Acceptance notification: Early January 2010.
• Communication of the full paper: No later than mid February

Looking forward to welcoming you in Strasbourg,
The organisers,

Julien Pénin Claude Guittard
Thierry Burger-Helmchen Eric Schenk