Open innovation marketing

Over the past two decades, open innovation has enjoyed extraordinary fortune in the academic sphere and the business world. The open innovation paradigm advances that firms cannot innovate in isolation, but need purposeful interactions with other subjects and organizations to retrieve new ideas and technologies. As a consequence, more and more organizations are equipping themselves with "open innovation officers," investing in inter-organizational collaborations, and promoting real contests where the two words "open innovation" are ever-present and well-emphasized.

The popularity of open innovation and the fact that the term is sometimes misused suggests that some of the promoted open innovation initiatives could be more geared toward nurturing a good corporate image than achieving disseminating innovation.

This 3-year research project examines the role that marketing plays in the decision to undertake open innovation initiatives.

Circular economy readiness

Policymakers and academics are increasingly discussing the transition from a linear economy to a circular economy (CE) to deal with the constraints of our planet (European Commission, 2020; Yang et al., 2022). A CE is “an economic model aimed at the efficient use of resources through waste minimisation, long-term value retention, reduction of primary resources, and closed loops of products, product parts, and materials within the boundaries of environmental protection and socioeconomic benefits” (Morseletto, 2020) (Page 1). 

Despite the interest in CE initiatives, the global economy is becoming less rather than more circular (Circle Economy, 2021, 2023). A relevant reason behind this regress lies in the effort being placed on the downstream processes of waste management or on the upstream limitation of material throughput in the economy, neglecting other valuable CE initiatives (Iacovidou et al., 2021; Koide & Akenji, 2017). 

Another relevant reason could be that some countries are not ready to contribute towards a CE. In other words, some countries might not have the pre-conditions to implement valuable CE initiatives.

This 3-year research project aims to develop a novel method to establish the readiness of a country for a circular economy.

Circular economy and Open Innovation in CoPS

The literature on CE in management studies focuses by far on mass-produced goods, such as electronics, cars, and household appliances, neglecting complex products and systems (CoPS). However, CoPS present peculiar features with respect to mass-produced goods. Indeed, CoPS are highly customised, engineering-intensive goods, typically made in one-off projects or small batches. CoPS often have a relatively long lifetime, require several producers to work simultaneously, and might present peculiar decommissioning challenges (Hobday 1998). Examples of CoPS include aircraft, nuclear power plants, wind farms, military vehicles, high-speed trains, and ships. Therefore, the dynamics of CE in CoPS and mass-produced goods are likely to differ (e.g., the opportunity to reuse components, the role of standardisation and modularity, opportunity of life extension). However, the literature stream on CE does not explicitly recognise this dichotomy, and there is no structured stream of research dealing with CE in CoPS. This PhD research project first investigates the dynamics of CE in CoPS, comparing and contrasting them with mass-produced goods. The ultimate goal is to formulate policy recommendations to increase the degree of circularity of the CE initiatives implemented in CoPS (e.g., fostering the life extension or the reuse of components rather than focusing on recycling). Second, it zooms in on the role of open innovation in fostering CE initiatives in CoPS.