Key Differentiators of Open Innovation Platforms – A Market-oriented Perspective

Within the open innovation debate, significant attention has beenpaid to the fact that customers can be a useful source for bringingnew ideas and concepts into a company. In this context, onlineplatforms have become a widely used instrument to facilitateinteraction between companies and customers. While priorliterature discusses various aspects of open innovation platforms,a market-oriented analysis covering all types of platforms for ideacreation and concept development seems to be still missing. Byevaluating a total of 44 different innovation platforms, we identifythe degree of interrelation between five major platform attributesand develop two key differentiating dimensions: The platformoperator (company vs. third party) and the platform purpose (findsolutions vs. understand customers). The resulting classificationmatrix highlights a newly emerging category of online openinnovation platforms, opening the field for deeper investigation infuture research