Extending Open Innovation Platforms into the real world - Using Large Displays in Public Spaces Author: IVO BLOHM - Email: ivo.blohm@in.tum.de Track: 25. ICT enabling Collaboration, Innovation and Knowledge Sharing: emerging ���open��� phenomena, organizational models and technological tools Co-author(s): ��� Florian Ott (Universit��t der Bundeswehr M��nchen, Cooperation Systems Center Munich) ��� Ulrich Bretschneider (Technische Universit��t M��nchen) ��� Michael Huber (Technische Universit��t M��nchen) ��� Markus Rieger (HYVE AG) ��� Franz Glatz (gate Garchinger Technologie- und Gr��nderzentrum GmbH) ��� Michael Koch (Universit��t der Bundeswehr M��nchen, Cooperation Systems Center ��� unich) ��� Jan Marco Leimeister (Universit��t Kassel, Chair for Information Systems) ��� Helmut Krcmar (Techniche Universit��t M��nchen, Chair for Information Systems) Access to this paper is restricted to registered delegates of the EURAM 2010 (European Academy of Management) Conference 'Back To The Future'.

g1005g3 g3 ���Extending Open Innovation Platforms into the real world ��� Using Large Displays in Public Spaces���

g1006g3 g3 Abstract: This paper reports on a field test that explored how innovative ubiquitous user interfaces can extend virtual open innovation communities into real word settings. In this field test an Idea- Mirror���, a wall-sized, interactive touch screen that displays innovation ideas and features a scale for idea evaluation was compared with a state-of-the-art IT-based open innovation plat- form. Applying method triangulation and combining multiple, independent data sources it can be shown that ideas exhibited on the IdeaMirror have been invoked and rated significantly more often than on the IT platform. However, the idea ratings performed on the IT platform show a significantly higher concurrence with an independent expert jury. Implications for the use of IdeaMirrors in practice as well as for future research are deducted. To our knowledge this is one of the first studies that empirically investigate the purpose of publicly shared large screen displays for idea evaluation and supporting new product development. Key Words: open innovation, IdeaMirror, collaborative filtering, idea evaluation, ubiquitous computing, community support

g1007g3 g3 1. Introduction In the 20th century, many leading industrial companies generated, developed and commer- cialized ideas for innovations in self-reliance. Nowadays, companies are increasingly rethink- ing the fundamental ways of managing their innovation activities. Opening up company boundaries in order to utilize external resources for innovation activities becomes more and more important. For this emerging competitive strategy of open innovation customers are fre- quently seen as enormous potential for generating innovations (Kristensson, Magnusson et al. 2002 Enkel, Perez-Freije et al. 2005 von Hippel 2005). Thus, most methods of active cus- tomer integration into innovation processes like the lead user method (Urban and Von Hippel 1988 von Hippel 2005) or idea competitions (Walcher 2007 Ebner, Leimeister et al. 2009 Leimeister, Huber et al. 2009) focus on engaging customers in generating new product ideas. Prominent success stories such as the IBM Innovation JAM ideas competition in which more than 46.000 participants generated more than 140.000 ideas show the enormous potential of this mode of value creation. However, lacking are methods and instruments for evaluating the ideas submitted in these approaches (Blohm, Bretschneider et al. 2010). In new product de- velopment this task is generally performed by a small interdisciplinary group of experts. However, this approach is arduous, time consuming and resource intensive, in particular for a huge amount of customer-generated new product ideas (Franke and Hienerth 2006 Blohm, Bretschneider et al. 2010). Today, most IT platforms for open innovation provide functionali- ties for idea evaluation (Riedl, May et al. 2009) and first research has already been done in evaluating the accuracy of these rating mechanisms (Walcher 2007 Blohm, Leimeister et al. 2009). New intuitive ubiquitous interfaces allow extending these IT-based open innovation plat- forms into physical, real world settings. Publicly shared large screen displays ��� so-called

g1008g3 g3 IdeaMirrors ��� can expose new product ideas in semi-public facilities so that the awareness of these ideas can be enhanced and the tasks of idea generation and new product development be stimulated (Koch and M��slein 2006). Moreover, additional customers, business partners or employees could be integrated into the task of idea evaluation. By this means additional rat- ings could be gathered and the accuracy of the collaborative filtering be enhanced. This paper reports on a field test which has been carried out with a major software enter- prise in order to empirically investigate how IdeaMirrors can create awareness for new prod- uct ideas and how they can support the evaluation of customer-generated ideas. In the scope of this field test a set of customer-generated ideas was exposed to the 198 employees of 59 start up enterprises that were all customers of the software company and situated in the same premise of a business incubator using a state-of-the art internet-based open innovation plat- form and an IdeaMirror. On both instruments all ideas could be viewed, explored and rated by the participants. In this field test we investigated the actual usage, the user evaluation of both instruments as well as the accuracy of the ratings in terms of concurrence with an independent expert jury. The paper is organized as follows: In Section 2 we present a literature review for describ- ing the state of the art of IT-based open innovation platforms, IdeaMirrors as well as the com- plex construct of idea quality. Section 3 presents the research methodology. In detail the process of data collection, the design of the field test, the instruments as well as the assess- ment of idea quality are pinpointed. In Section 4 our empirical findings regarding the usage, the user evaluation and the rating accuracy of both instruments are presented. In Section 5 these results are discussed. Finally, Section 6 gives an outlook for possible future research areas.