Open Innovation and the Solver Community

Abstract

This paper introduces a doctoral research on open innovation solver's behavior and group factors inducing it. The research is now finishing its first year and exploratory strategies are developed close to open innovation online communities, to prepare a systematic methodological approach.Research seeks to understand how solver's patterns of communication and group behavior influence their participation in an open innovation community, through collaborative IT platforms - and how it weights on their innovation production. A second question is about critical factors that influence solvers' participation, due to the present global economical crisis. By designing a model of the solver's group of belonging characteristics and reflecting that on a collaborative platform's functionalities, the project intends to present some propositions to ease participation in crowdsourcing innovation processes - through an online platform being designed and developed at University of Minho.