On 23rd of October 2008, the company called Dutch organized a masterclass on the topic of Open Innovation. Based on the resume and some smart and innovative questions, 25 students were selected to join the masterclass from professor Piller.

Luckily I survived the selection process, and I was really excited to see if the professor Piller looked from a different perspective at open innovation theory, since his other specialties are mass customization and customer co-creation. I hoped for a cross-pollination of the different topics, as well as for the backgrounds of the attendees of the masterclass.

Professor Piller used two companies from practice as a steppingstone, for the highly interactive masterclass.

1. Threadless T-Shirts — Collective Customer Commitment
2. Innocentive — Open Innovation Marketplace

Ruben Nieuwenhuis assisted professor Piller with some interesting comments on the open innovation theories, both from a practical background as well as a theoretical perspective. I would like to share the most interesting topics in a brief summary:

• Crowdsourcing / Interactive Value Creation;
• Two information-”problems”, when “innovation is modeled as problem solving based upon directed trail and error”;
• Innovation requires two kinds of information:  need information & solution information;
• Innocentive, the process behind a knowledge broker;
• Lead Users are … (Von Hippel, 1986; 1988);
• Ways to profit from the Lead User Idea;
• Zooming in on the “search for lead experts in analogue markets”;
• Conclusions & open discussion on our send-in research questions; [ref06]

Although the masterclass was scheduled from 13:00 – 15:00 it was almost 15:30 when we had to finish the Masterclass at the Webster University, WTC Building D, Amsterdam. “Time flies when you are having fun”, is what they say and this masterclass was really fun. Both professor Piller and Ruben Nieuwenhuis had really good examples on innovation theory and combined theory and practice in a highly interactive appealing package.

Finally many thanks to the people from Dutch, who organized a great event on a top location. Please feel free to read some background information on the speakers / organizers and case studies.

Reference list:

1. WEBSITE:  Webster University Netherlands
2. WEBSITE:  Dutch Organizational Consultants — Building Better Business
3. WEBSITE:  Homepage RWTH Professor Frank Piller
4. BLOG:  Frank Piller’s Web Site on Mass Customization, Customer Co-Creation & Open Innovation
5. THREADLESS:  Threadless T-Shirts Homepage
6. INNOCENTIVE:  Open Innovation Marketplace
7. SHEETS:  Open Innovation Masterclass, Research Issues & Research Questions

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