Key Enablers towards Mature Company-community Collaboration in Open Source Hardware

Abstract

Despite being acknowledged as key drivers for socio-economic development, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are still facing major challenges such as resource scarcity and rising competition. By engaging in open collaborative product development, SMEs can benefit from the great potential of open source hardware (OSH) as a strategic source of open innovation. This is, however, associated with numerous challenges and it is lacking a solid framework for realisation. This work identifies seven key enablers that support SMEs to engage in successful collaboration with OSH communities for the co-creation of physical products. Those enablers tackle the collaboration from various aspects such as readiness, strategic alignment, governance, tools, resources, value network, and culture. They were derived through an e-Delphi study with experts from academia, industry, and the OSH domain. The seven enablers have been defined to serve as a foundation for the maturity assessment of the concept of company-community collaboration (C3).