Open Innovation Readiness Assessment within Students in Poland: Investigating State-of-the-Art and Challenges

Abstract

In light of Poland’s innovation performance level being below 70% of the EU average, open innovation can be a key path for innovation capacity increase. This paper explores the readiness of students in Poland for open innovation (OI). The study is based on a survey of a sample of 500 students using the Computer-Assisted Web Interview research technique. The main aim of this paper is to investigate Polish students’ attitude to open innovation—in particular in terms of social product development, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and the sharing economy—to assess the state-of-the-art and identify challenges. Students are selected as the target group because they are open-minded, eager to use new solutions, and will soon enter the business sector to either become the staff of companies or set up their own startups or SMEs. However, the study shows that Polish students, if they use the OI-based platforms at all, use them passively. The key barriers identified within this study are a lack of knowledge about the open innovation paradigm, its elements and opportunities, and an issue of trust. Therefore, a change of mindset, the adjustment of universities’ curricula, and the development of open innovation culture are critical.

The role of crowdfunding in endorsing responsible open innovation for shared value co-creation: a systematic literature review

“…We did also find that the knowledge exchanges between investors and project proposers could reinforce awareness, social engagement and promote critical approach to evaluation of CF projects (Care et al, 2018;Chandna, 2022;Dilger et al, 2017;Fuster Morell et al, 2020;Hong and Ryu, 2019;Lenart-Gansiniec, 2021;Lorne, 2020;Renwick and Mossialos, 2017;Rosienkiewicz et al, 2022;Troise et al, 2022;Wang and Deng, 2017). This confirms that knowledge sourced from engagement with internal and external stakeholders contributes to RI orientation.…”

“…Finally, the last stream of research addresses OI through crowdfunding for social entrepreneurship projects (Rosienkiewicz et al, 2022). Rosienkiewicz et al (2022) investigate students' readiness to OI-based platforms for social product development and sharing economy and finds that students still have a passive attitude towards these tools, based both on a lack of knowledge about the OI paradigm and a lack of trust in these paradigms of development.…”

“…Finally, the last stream of research addresses OI through crowdfunding for social entrepreneurship projects (Rosienkiewicz et al, 2022). Rosienkiewicz et al (2022) investigate students' readiness to OI-based platforms for social product development and sharing economy and finds that students still have a passive attitude towards these tools, based both on a lack of knowledge about the OI paradigm and a lack of trust in these paradigms of development. Chandna (2022) focuses on the relationship between crowdfunding, OI and social entrepreneurship, arguing that crowdfunding digital platforms can facilitate the remobilization of idling resources and co-creation of value, the sharing of knowledge and ideas and gathering several knowledge-based, non-financial resources.…”

“…Finally, the last stream of research addresses OI through crowdfunding for social entrepreneurship projects (Rosienkiewicz et al. , 2022).…”

Open Innovation and Sustainable Innovation Performance: The Moderating Role of IP Strategic Planning and IP Operation

“…Open innovation is a distributed innovation process based on purposively managed knowledge flows across organizational boundaries [1]. Open innovation thus has been seen as an essential tool to broaden their competences and resources, share ideas, and consequently increase sustainable competitive advantage and innovation performance [2][3][4]. Notwithstanding some literature, the relevance of open innovation to sustainable innovation performance has not yet been fully addressed.…”