Innovation & Strategy Tracks > Track 22: Open Labs, Innovation Spaces and Entrepreneurship Centers

Track Chairs:

• Prof. David W. Versailles, Paris School of Business, Paris, France
• Prof. Valérie Merindol, Paris School of Business, Paris, France
• Mohammed Tahiri, Université Internationale de Rabat, Rabat, Morocco

During the last years, collaborations across organizational boundaries have gained increasing importance for innovation and entrepreneurship (Chesbrough et al., 2006; Eftekhari and Bogers, 2015). As a consequence, a variety of new settings have emerged that support the engagement of different stakeholders in shared activities. Examples include business incubators, startup accelerators, fab labs, maker spaces, living labs and many others (Bruneel et al., 2012; Leminen et al., 2012; Berman & McMullen, 2022). Offline and online, they involve intermediaries in different forms (De Silva et al., 2018; Merindol et al., 2023), make use of different sets of tools (Möslein & Fritzsche, 2017), and enable new ecosystem dynamics of innovation and business development (Gawer and Cusumano, 2014). What they all seem to have in common is the fact that they create more openness in interactions (Fritzsche et al. 2020; Merindol & Versailles, 2023), similar to patterns known from the field of open science (Hu & Fritzsche, 2020).   

This track looks for contributions that explore this phenomenon empirically or conceptually in its different facets. In particular, we welcome case studies and applied research on the function and benefits of these places in today’s business and society.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Project management in open laboratories: planning, running and controlling innovation and business development activities
• The role of community building and networking for entrepreneurship, innovation etc.
• Business development and acceleration for sustainable growth of local ecosystems
• Field-configuring events in innovation hubs and entrepreneurship centers
• The role of universities as drivers of open collaboration
• Engineering design and the involvement of external stakeholders
• Methods and tools for broader engagement in innovation and entrepreneurship
• Cultural determinants of open lab activities and output
• Challenges and opportunities of entrepreneurship centers and accelerators in developing countries
• Innovations paces and entrepreneurship centers as marketplaces, trading zones and translation spaces in-between different organizational cultures and business interests
• Online and offline support for innovation and entrepreneurship across organizational boundaries
• Open labs and national/ corporate innovation strategies.

References

Bergman, B. J., & McMullen, J. S. (2022). Helping entrepreneurs help themselves: A review and relational research agenda on entrepreneurial support organizations. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 46(3), 688-728.

Bruneel, J., Ratinho, T., Clarysse, B., & Groen, A. (2012). The Evolution of Business Incubators: Comparing demand and supply of business incubation services across different incubator generations. Technovation, 32(2), 110-121.

Chesbrough, H., Vanhaverbeke, W., & West, J. (2006). Open innovation: Researching a new paradigm. London, England: Oxford University Press.

De Silva, M., Howells, J., & Meyer, M. (2018). Innovation intermediaries and collaboration: Knowledge–based practices and internal value creation. Research Policy, 47(1), 70-87.

Eftekhari, N., & Bogers, M. (2015). Open for entrepreneurship: How open innovation can foster new venture creation. Creativity and Innovation Management, 24(4), 574-584.

Fritzsche, A., Jonas, J. M., Roth, A. & Möslein, K. M. (2020). Innovating in the Open Lab. Berlin: DeGruyter.

Gawer, A., & Cusumano, M. A. (2014). Industry platforms and ecosystem innovation. Journal of product innovation management, 31(3), 417-433.

Hu, M., & Fritzsche, A. (2021). Innovation, the public and the third space: understanding the role of boundary objects in open laboratory work. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 33(10), 1159-1170.

Leminen, S., Westerlund, M., & Nyström, A. G. (2012). Living Labs as open-innovation networks. Technology Innovation Management Review, 2(9).

Mérindol, V., & Versailles, D. W. (Eds.). (2022). Open Labs and Innovation Management: The Dynamics of Communities and Ecosystems. Taylor & Francis.

Merindol, V., Le Chaffotec, A., & Versailles, D. W. (2023). The role of organization intermediaries in science-/techno-push versus user-centric approaches in health care innovation. European Journal of Innovation Management, 26(3), 665-687.

Moeslein, K. M., & Fritzsche, A. (2017). The evolution of strategic options, actors, tools and tensions in open innovation. Strategy and communication for innovation: Integrative perspectives on innovation in the digital economy, 61-76.