Conceptualizing open distributed innovation: A framework for the collaboration of private companies with grassroots‐driven open communities

Abstract

In the scholarly discussion of inbound innovation, open innovation approaches for how private companies (PCs) can collaborate with grassroots‐driven open communities (GOCs) have received much less attention than crowdsourcing approaches. At the same time, research acknowledges that PCs struggle to collaborate with GOCs in open distributed innovation (ODI) processes due to the incompatibility of central values, structures and activities. Based on the results of a systematic literature review that identifies (1) incompatibilities and (2) collaborative practice(s) and structures to resolve incommensurability between the parties, this paper conceptualizes a GOC‐PC ODI framework and propositions for successful collaboration.