Open Digital Innovation Contest

Abstract

This chapter introduces open digital innovation contests that aim to develop digital services. Key stakeholders in such contests are identified: organisers, participants, resource providers, and beneficiaries. A classification of digital innovation contests is proposed based on the length of a contest and its inclusiveness. Other design elements of contests are also discussed, including media, target group and evaluation. It is argued that innovation contests can be viewed as innovation intermediaries that help to connect actors in an innovation system. Advantages and disadvantages of innovation contests are discussed. Finally, six contests are introduced, which serve as running examples throughout the book. Open digital innovation contests are competitions that aim to develop digital services. Based on the work by Hjalmarsson and Rudmark (2012), they can be described as events in which external developers compete to design and implement innovative and solid digital service prototypes, based on digital resources made available by the organiser. There are three key ingredients in this definition. First, the participants of the contests are to be external developers, i.e. developers outside the organisation that arranges the competition. In this way, new categories of people are drawn into the innovation system around an organisation, thereby enabling open innovation. Furthermore, the goal is to develop a digital service prototype; it is not sufficient just to suggest a new idea or create a product without digital content. Finally, the service developed is to be based on digital resources made available by the organiser.