CALL FOR PAPERS

 

Special Issue

Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS)

 

The Role of Information Systems in Enabling Open Innovation

 

SPECIAL ISSUE CO-EDITORS

 

Eoin Whelan, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland eoin.whelan@nuigalway.ie

Kieran Conboy, University of New South Wales, Australia k.conboy@unsw.edu.au

Kevin Crowston, Syracuse University, USA crowston@syr.edu

Lorraine Morgan, Lero, University of Limerick, Ireland Lorraine.morgan@ul.ie

Matti Rossi, Helsinki School of Economics, Finland matti.rossi@aalto.fi

 

The concept of open innovation advocates that in today’s increasingly boundary free world, organizations should seek to exploit inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand themarkets for external use of innovation (Chesbrough 2003). This open model of innovation challenges the traditional closed view, where invention and design is restricted to internal resources. Indeed, the past decade has witnessed a flurry of experimentation with different styles of open innovation in industries as diverse as consumer goods, semi-conductors, automotive engineering, and software engineering. IS has played a prominent role in creating the necessity for, and the implementation of, open innovation models. For example, the convergence of cheap personal computers, fiber optic cable, and powerful workflow software has been attributed to the “flattening” of the planet and the rise in global collaboration (Friedman 2006). Major corporations like IBM, GE, Boeing, and Proctor & Gamble have integrated online crowdsourcing platforms as part of their open innovation programs. Likewise, the open source software movement is also often viewed as a role model for openinnovation.

 

Yet, open innovation theory is not without controversy. Mowery (2009) questions whether open innovation is actually a new theory of innovation while Groen and Linton (2010) suggest that the conceptitself is a communication barrier to theory development. Trott and Hartman (2009) are even more forceful and argue that Chesbrough creates a false dichotomy by claiming that open innovation is the only alternative to a closed innovation model.

 

While open innovation may be a growing trend, it is clear that better theory is needed in order to extract the potential value it offers. IS has much to contribute to the development of this theory due to the pivotal role of digital technologies in enabling open innovation initiatives. However, the IS field has so far taken a very narrow perception of this important business paradigm. Within the open innovation movement, IS scholars have primarily directed their attention towards the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) phenomenon (von Hippel and von Krogh 2003). While IS research has aided in refining and extending open innovation theory, through investigations of crowdsourcing platforms (Di Gangi and Wasko 2009; Leimeister 2009), web-enabled innovation brokers (Whelan et al. 2012), proprietary knowledge leakage (Teigland and Wasko 2003), open IS development (Conboy and Morgan 2011), and IT’s contribution to absorptive capacity (Chatterjee et al. 2002; Chircu and Kauffman 2000), studies in this vein have been sporadic over the past decade.

 

As open innovation is rapidly gaining importance in research and practice, new questions and challenges arise that require a deeper understanding of these phenomena from an IS perspective.  There is much that has yet to be understood about the role of IS in enabling open innovation, and the implications of open innovation movement on the various aspects of the IS discipline.  The aim of this special issue is to expandand advance the state of open innovation research within the IS field, highlighting work that makes significant theoretical and empirical advances to our understanding of IT enabled open innovation.

 

Example topics for the special issue

Papers are invited for the special issue on any topic related to the role of IS in enabling open innovation. Papers should be theory-driven or theory-building, with clear implications for further research and practice. Example topics include:

 

·                  IS enabled open innovation models

·                  Open innovation in services and the enablement role of IS, and particularly cloud computing

·                  The application of social capital, social network, and value creation theories to open innovation communities

·                  Alignment of IS and open innovation models

·                  IS case studies that describe the implementation of open innovation in organizational settings

·                  Open innovation/co-creation through digital enabled social networks

·                  Open principles in information systems development e.g. distributed environments, intra and inter-organizational development

·                  The translation of FLOSS best practice to the non-software realm

·                  Use of ICT in inter-organizational innovation systems

·                  Technology scouting and the role of social media

·                  The intersection of knowledge management and open innovation

·                  The role of IS in closed innovation, and the evolution from closed to open

·                  Assessing organizational boundaries in open innovation networking

·                  Knowledge leakage and other legal issues in open innovation communities

·                  Globally Distributed open innovation teams

·                  Issues for R&D and IT departments in implementing open collaboration systems .

 

Important dates

Initial submissions of full papers: 5^th August 2013

Reviews sent to authors: 2^nd December 2013

Workshop: 16^th December 2013 at ICIS (for papers through to 2^nd round)

Revised papers from authors due: 31^st March 2014

Decision notification: 30^th June 2014

Final papers due: 25^th August 2014

Publication (anticipated): November 2014

 

Editorial review board

Göran Goldkuhl, Linkoping University, Sweden

Jan vom Brocke, University of Liechtenstein

Jason Thatcher, Clemons University, USA

Jeremy Hayes, University College Cork, Ireland

Joe Feller, University College Cork, Ireland

Karl-Heinz Kautz, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Pat Finnegan, University of New South Wales, Australia

Paul DiGangi, Loyola University, USA

Robin Teigland, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden

Salvatore Parise, Babson College, USA

Suprateek Sarker, Washington State University, USA

Xiaofeng Wang, University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy