Harnessing the innovation potential of citizens: How open innovation can be used to co-develop political strategies

Abstract

Information and communication technologies provide firms with new opportunities to co-create innovations with their customers. The resulting trend towards “open innovation” has revitalized firm’s interest in systematically tapping into external innovation sources. Whereas the first open innovation cases typically dealt with product innovation, latest developments show that also intangible service innovation or corporate strategies can be co-developed with users, customers, or employees. As internet technologies are also increasingly pervasive in the public sector, virtual citizen co-creation systems also constitute an important but unexplored research area within the public administration research. This is especially relevant since real case examples in the public sector underline the need for more openness in governmental decision making. To tackle the research question, how an online co-creating approach may be designed to develop a political strategy together with experts and citizens, we conducted a 22-month research project together with the state chancellery of North Rheine Westphalia.