Re-examining the classification of technology and innovation industry in the context of open innovation

Open Innovation Model has been widely applied in firm level research and development analysis. However, the environment in which such activities could be developed is unavoidably shaped by the technology and innovation policies formulated by the government. In this regard, analyzing innovation from the existing perspective would only see part of the puzzle. Focusing on evaluating the way to improve competitiveness of an organization, the Open Innovation Model could be applied well beyond its existing domain and scope. The Extended Open Innovation Model extends the application of the Open Innovation Model to the Commercialization stage. With the addition of Output-thinking element, the study of the Extended Open Innovation Model has been further extended to the area of technology and innovation policy issues. The relevance of technology and innovation policies with the Extended Open Innovation Model lies with the relationship between the policy issues and the environment where Open Innovation operates. Since government policies are critical in shaping the environment where Open Innovation operates, it is important to study how such policies are being formulated. The obvious gap between the policy researchers who strike for advancement of better policies and the policy practitioners who try to avoid controversies have to be taken care of. Among the various factors and processes involved in policy formulation, this study attempts to examine a particular fundamental one – the classification of technology and innovation industries from the angle of policymakers. This factor has critical importance in the policy formulation process because the classification is the foundation that identifies the various stakeholders. Only with the stakeholders identified could the policymakers determine the incentives to be used for fostering the relevant policies and analyze the subsequent impact of the policies. Should such classification be mishandled, wrong stakeholders would be identified and incentives misused, thus leading to ineffective policy implementation. Hence, this paper examines the classification of technology and innovation industries by discussing the existing mechanism used and proposed a simple yet intuitive classification mechanism that takes into consideration the unique characteristics of technology and innovation technology. After studying the classification mechanism, a case study is conducted using the proposed framework to give insights in how the proposed framework can improve the policy analysis for Hong Kong. The focal point of the case study is to analyze the policy formulation of Hong Kong using the lens of Extended Open Innovation Model and the proposed classification system. Keywords: Technology, Innovation, Policy, Open Innovation Model, Classificatio