Knowledge roles and flows in open innovation

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Companies are under constant pressure to stay competitive in order to survive in an ever changingmarket. It is important for companies to stay ahead of the market and to ensure that any window ofopportunity is exploited with maximum benefit to the company.Innovation is regarded as a tool that provides companies with a competitive advantage and thatensures sustainability and success. Organisations need to enhance their innovative capabilities toensure growth and sustainability.Knowledge can be seen as the building blocks of innovation. Innovation and knowledgemanagement are, therefore, tightly linked. Knowledge generation can be very costly and issometimes found to be limited in organisations. When internal knowledge is insufficient in anorganisation, external knowledge can be utilized by means of innovation networks betweendifferent organisations which share common goals. By knowledge being shared betweenorganisations, not only will each organisation benefit individually, but it will also help the partnersand strategic alliances to evolve and grow in stature.Required knowledge can be generated internally and can also be extracted from differentorganisations by means of open innovation. Open innovation sets the scene for knowledge to flowacross organisational boundaries and enlarges the creative knowledge capacity and knowledge pool.The flow of knowledge should be governed by knowledge management.The research in this study bridges the gap between the previous innovation models and the notionof an open approach to internal innovation, which improves the speed and effectiveness of theinnovation process. The fundamentals of innovation had been investigated, where after the focusmoved to understanding a specific and existing innovation process framework, named the FuGleInnovation Process Model.The tracking of knowledge in Open Innovation Models assigned to the FuGle Innovation ProcessModel, leads to the proposed change of converting Innovation role players to function in an OpenInnovation paradigm.By understanding the responsibilities of the role players and the intricacies of controlling the flow ofdifferent types of knowledge between interlinked companies, will provide an organisation with theopportunity to deploy an Open Innovation approach at appropriate points within their differentprocesses. This will assist the organisation to stay competitive in an ever fluctuating market.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University