Open Innovation Marketing. A Case Study

Social networks and communities like facebook and myspace gain increasing importance in people’s everyday lives. Companies start to see these platforms as a chance for communicating to an attractive target group and deriving innovation ideas from this group. Yet, methods and tools to efficiently initiate and use open innovation projects in these environments are limited. This article explores open innovation projects as a new method for systematically utilizing the creative potential of social community users and turning them into brand ambassadors. 1 Open Innovation Marketing For open innovation as a competitive strategy, rather than a marketing tool, customers are seen as great source for creating innovative products and services. [Ch06] This trend has been a buzz-topic in marketing as well as innovation management in recent literature. Another buzz topic is social media, therein especially social networks like facebook, and the marketing therein [Ro05]. This article discusses how the two trends open innovation and social network marketing can be combined. It shall answer the question of how companies can reach consumers where they spend their time as well as how to create viral effects using open innovation projects. These topics will be discussed using the case study of the facebook application prototype “unserAller”. The open innovation enabler innosabi has established this new platform in order to enable communication about new products between users and companies inside the social network facebook. It can be seen as a demonstration of a new service to enable open innovation and leverage its marketing potential.