ENABLING OPEN INNOVATION: PROPOSAL OF A

Open Innovation is a model used to describe how nowadays companies source and exploit new technologies, new products and services. Web-Based Intermediaries (WBIs) have entered the emerging innovation market and are expected to dramatically increase the number of innovation exchanges. However there are not yet clear theoretical guidelines supporting the design and management of such intermediaries. We use organizational sense-making theory and relative absorptive capacity (RAC) theory to analyze the factors that still hinder Open Innovation. From sense-making theory and RAC theory we draw directions on the services WBIs need to provide in order to effectively support an innovation market. Since information technology is critical to the success of a WBI, we also give directions on how ICT and KMS can be used in order to support these services