Open innovation describes “a distributed innovation process based on purposively managed knowledge flows across organizational boundaries.” It provides insights into how firms can harness inflows and outflows of knowledge to improve their innovation success. During the last two decades, open innovation has had profound impact on both the practice and study of innovation. In parallel to open innovation becoming a central feature of innovation management, the concept of innovation ecosystems has also gained much attention from both research and practice. In the face of innovation, one organization’s success will depend on the efforts of other innovators in its environment.

With this year’s conference theme—“The Human Side of Open Innovation”—we want to highlight the potential of applying what we know about human resources, cognition, behavior and other individual-level attributes to open innovation practices, uncovering how we might embrace the knowledge of microfoundations for lasting open innovation impact.