CNR–Fincantieri Joint Projects: A Successful Example of Collaboration between Research and Industry Based on the Open Innovation Approach

Abstract

This paper contributes to the open innovation literature by presenting a successful application of the open innovation approach in the maritime sector between Fincantieri (FC), one of the world’s largest shipbuilding groups, and the National Research Council of Italy (CNR, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), the largest research entity in Italy. By using external sources of scientific innovation, specifically 10 different groups of researchers from CNR research institutes and three universities, and by integrating these groups with a team of expert Fincantieri’s designers, the company obtained significant advances in terms of technological content and competitiveness. This collaboration is an evident example of successful implementation of the open innovation paradigm, where a big company (Fincantieri) uses external sources of innovation (the CNR researchers) to advance its technology by carrying out six different projects simultaneously. The paper presents the adopted open innovation model, the governance approach specifically implemented by the company and the major scientific contents and outcomes of the constellation of the six connected projects.

Collaboration between Government and Research Community to Respond to COVID-19: Israel’s Case

“…Successful open-innovation collaboration in which a company engaged with the academic research community in six different simultaneous projects spanning different services are presented by Campana et al [ 31 ]. These collaborations were long-term, spanning two years.…”

A Systematic Literature Review on University Collaboration in Open Innovation: Trends, Technologies, and Frameworks

“…Levels of Collaboration (Johnston, 2021); (Baban, Baban and Rangone, 2021b) (Băban and Băban, 2022); (Băban, Băban and Mitran, 2023); (Johnston, 2022); ; (Zhao, 2023); (Han et al, 2019); (Ponce, Polasko and Molina, 2021); (Rostoka, Locovs and Gaile-Sarkane, 2019); (Audretsch et al, 2023); (Tomita, 2022); (Koria et al, 2022); (de Araujo et al, 2020); (Huggins, Prokop and Thompson, 2020); (Campana et al, 2020) Policy Open innovation policy (Baban, Baban and Rangone, 2021b); (Johnston, 2022); (Szromek et al, 2023); (de Araujo et al, 2020) 6 Performance Patents/Intellect ual Property Rights…”

“…Băban et al, 2023). One of the aims of such collaboration is to create intellectual property and achieve a competitive advantage (Campana et al, 2020).…”

“…The role of government is to provide funds (Ponce et al, 2021;Campana et al, 2020) and to formulate policies on open innovation that involve collaboration between partners (Szromek et al, 2023).…”

“…The Process domain consists of seven subdomains, namely "idea or knowledge flow", "knowledge transfer", "knowledge management", "selection", "negotiation", "evaluation", and "commercialization". The idea or knowledge flow is the initial process where the ideas/knowledge originating from external parties combine with internal ideas/knowledge to produce innovative products or services (Johnston, 2022;de Araujo et al, 2020;Campana et al, 2020). Knowledge management is more about the process of managing internal knowledge and external knowledge.…”