How can software support open innovation? Extending community and marketplace perspectives

Fuelled by increased interest among organisations to team up with customers and partners, software for supporting open innovation is emerging. In this paper, we explore how current open innovation software are designed, by whom they are used and reflect on their potential to support open innovation processes. We classified a sample of 51 systems and found, based on a correlation analysis, that most open innovation software focus on supporting online communities of innovation and some software support online 2 S. Hrastinski et al. marketplaces of innovation. A vast majority of open innovation software focuses on the front end of open innovation through an emphasis on the collection of ideas or problem solutions requested by authorities in technology industries. In the end of the paper, we suggest key questions that need to be addressed in order to design the next wave of open innovation software.