A reference model for outside-in open innovation platforms

The Open Innovation paradigm has spread widely since 2003, and led to the emergence of Open Innovation Platforms as software systems aiming at supporting and facilitating open innovation initiatives and projects. This software domain has matured up to a point where many functional concepts became notably common and used in these platforms. When implementing open innovation platforms, related people often struggle when defining expected functional characteristics due to the general application of the paradigm, making necessary the existence of a model that provide a set of potential functional features expected in the creation and development of this type of platform. Reference models provides a domain-specific set of clearly defined entities aiming at encouraging better communication in the domain. We propose in this paper a reference model for capturing and defining the functional features that could be implemented in outside-in oriented open innovation platforms. For building this reference model, we reviewed some of the already published reports of open innovation platforms implementations in order determine and define the potential functional features expected in this kind of platforms. We believe this knowledge base could ease software development and deployment decisions, especially at early stages where open innovation platforms adopters face development in a domain that as of this writing is still new to many people.