WOIC 2017: World Open Innovation Conference 2017 San Francisco Airport Marriott Waterfront San Francisco, CA, United States, December 12-15, 2017 |
Conference website | http://woic.corporateinnovation.berkeley.edu |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=woic2017 |
Abstract registration deadline | August 15, 2017 |
Submission deadline | November 1, 2017 |
Call for Papers
4th Annual World Open Innovation Conference (WOIC 2017)
San Francisco Airport Marriott Waterfront, Burlingame, California, December 14-15, 2017
Submission Deadline for Extended Abstracts: August 15, 2017
Conference Theme: Strategic and Public Policies for Open Innovation
We are proud to announce our call for papers for the 4th Annual World Open Innovation Conference (WOIC). Open innovation describes “a distributed innovation process based on purposively managed knowledge flows across organizational boundaries” (Chesbrough & Bogers, 2014: 17). It provides insights into how firms can harness inflows and outflows of knowledge to improve their innovation success (Chesbrough, 2003; Enkel et al., 2009; Laursen & Salter, 2006; Zobel, 2017). It has become a popular (and well-cited) area of innovation research (Dahlander & Gann, 2010; Huizingh, 2011; West & Bogers, 2014; Randhawa et al., 2016).
The goal of the WOIC is to bring theory and practice closer together. We seek the latest in academic research on open innovation, and combine that in our program with challenges faced by industry executives who manage innovation in their organizations. As a new addition, the 4th WOIC will also engage policymakers to better understand the opportunities and challenges associated with designing effective open innovation policy measures. This is also in line with this year’s conference theme (see more below).
Recently Bogers et al. (2017) stressed the importance to study open innovation at and across different levels of analysis. Open innovation has implications for how innovation activities take place at the individual, organizational, inter-organizational and even higher levels of analysis, such as regions or industries (Chesbrough & Bogers, 2014; West et al., 2014).
To help identify and develop the best new theoretical and applied research in open innovation at and across different levels of analysis, we are organizing the 4th Annual WOIC. The first two WOICs were held in Napa Valley in 2014 and in Silicon Valley in 2015, respectively, after which it moved to Barcelona, Spain in 2016. The 4th WOIC will be held in San Francisco, California.
We are seeking both traditional research papers and those with a more managerial or policy orientation. From the accepted submissions, we will be selecting two academic award winners: the Best Student Paper Award and the Best Emerging Scholar Paper Award.
A separate Call for Challenges will be used to identify relevant practical issues faced in managing innovation and attract industry participants, while the conference will also feature particular practitioner awards.
Conference Theme
This year’s conference theme is “Strategic and Public Policies for Open Innovation”. This theme reflects the increasing interest in and practice of open innovation within industry and policy making. Open innovation policies are designed to promote a course of action that encourages knowledge flows across organizational boundaries in a way that it benefits relevant stakeholders, including individual, organizations and the society at large. In order to better understand how open innovation can become embedded into firm strategies and into national and global innovation systems, more research on open innovation “policies” is needed. For instance, what kinds of policy levers (e.g., IP systems, competition policies, innovation policies, etc.) need to be designed in order to promote and support open innovation initiatives? What are the mechanisms through which such policies achieve their impact? Which contingencies do strategic and public policies generate in the context of open innovation? What is the role of Shared Value practices inside corporations, in shaping policies that support and sustain innovation? We hope to explore these and other questions during the conference.
Possible Topics for Submissions
Besides specific submissions in relation to the above-mentioned conference theme, the conference more generally seeks original research on a wide range of topics related to open innovation that contribute to a better multi-level understanding of open innovation.
Following Bogers et al.’s (2017) recent conceptualization of open innovation “research categories” that embrace a multi-level perspective, we are seeking submissions related to the following themes:
1. Open innovation behavior & cognition, e.g.,
- Individual-level attributes and behaviors associated with open innovation (e.g., identity, commitment, motivation, resistance to change, communication and learning)
- Human resource management in the context of open innovation
2. Open innovation strategy and design, e.g.,
- Formal and informal organizational structures for open innovation
- Nature and outcomes of entrepreneurial opportunities that open innovation can enable and help to enact
- Combinations of “open” and “closed” strategies
- Business model innovation
3. Open innovation communities and users, e.g.,
- Leveraging knowledge produced by individual users with different abilities and motivations
- How to sustain different forms of open innovation communities
- Alignment between organizations and communities of innovation
4. Open innovation ecosystems, e.g.,
- How new network forms combine value creation and value capture
- Interactions (and their governance) between heterogeneous actors in innovation ecosystems
- Governance of digital platforms
- Crowd-based search and financing
5. Open policy & governance, e.g.,
- The design, implementation, and effects of policies for open innovation
- New forms of democracy and collaborative public management (e.g., cities, regions, governments)
- Open strategy, both in process and in content
6. Others topics that do not directly fit the above themes, such as
- Technology, digitization and open innovation
- Open innovation in different contexts (e.g., services, SMEs, international business, different industries)
- New metrics or methodologies for studying open innovation
- Linking open innovation to broader theories of management or economics
Submissions
We invite submissions of extended abstracts (1,500-3,000 words, all inclusive) for empirical or conceptual papers — with theoretical and/or managerial implications. These will be considered for the research paper portion of the program (see separate Call for Challenges for the submissions sought for the managerial/practitioner portion of the program). During the submission process, we kindly ask authors to select one of the above “open innovation topics” that best fits their submission. These topics will be used in the review process and design of the conference program.
The extended abstracts will be reviewed by the WOIC Editorial Board and the reviewer scores will be used as a basis for acceptance decisions. The reviewers will also be asked to provide a short feedback on each of the abstracts they review.
Abstracts for research papers will be evaluated along the following criteria:
- Theoretical contribution
- Methodological rigor
- Clarity of writing
- Overall fit to open innovation
While acceptance decisions will be based on an abstract submission — and thus in some cases, the analysis of data may not be fully complete — the submission should describe completed (rather than planned) research. We expect that at least data are collected and initial analyses are done to present preliminary results and conclusions (still noting the above-mentioned criteria). Proposals that talk about data to be collected will be deferred to a future conference. Note that submission of a full paper that reflects the proposal will also be required, if the proposal is accepted.
The reviewers will also be asked to provide their assessment of the submission in terms of fit to the conference theme and whether it should be considered for an award. However, these criteria will not be used directly for acceptance decisions.
“Rule of One”
Every author is allowed to present only one paper at the conference. It is allowed to have more than one paper accepted, if it is presented by a co-author.
Research Papers Authors of papers accepted for presentation will be required to submit a complete paper prior to the conference; no paper will be required for the poster presentation. The full papers will be shared among the conference participants, and a Book of Abstracts will be made available.
Awards for Best Paper by a Student and Emerging Scholar The conference will also feature an award for the best student (needs to be enrolled as a student during year 2017) paper and best emerging scholar (PhD awarded 2012-2017) paper. To be eligible for the award, the student or emerging scholar, respectively, must be the lead author or single author of the paper AND he or she must be the presenting author at the conference. At the time of submission, authors will be asked to indicate whether or not they are eligible for either of these awards.
The finalists of the awards will be honored during the conference and on the WOIC website. The winner of each award will receive a plaque and a $1,000 cash reward.
About the Conference
The conference will include plenary sessions, industry panels, policy panels, parallel tracks of paper presentations and a poster session. There will also be events prior to the conference, which will be communicated on the conference website (http://woic.corporateinnovation.berkeley.edu). Note that some events may require signing up.
The conference will be held at the San Francisco Airport Marriott Waterfront. A pre-conference event will be planned on December 13, 2017. More information about the location, including logistics, can be found at the conference website.
Important dates:
- July 1, 2017: Submission website opens.
- August 15, 2017: Submission deadline for extended abstracts.
- September 15, 2017: Notification of accepted papers.
- October 15, 2017: Registration deadline for accepted papers.
- October 15, 2017: Deadline for Early Bird registration.
- November 1, 2017: Submission of full papers.
- December 13, 2017: Pre-conference event.
- December 14-15, 2017: Conference dates.