Open!NEXT – Open and community-based innovation processes

Recent socio-technological evolutions in Europe and around the globe show: hardware innovation is not the exclusive remit of R&D departments anymore. Online and grassroots communities have demonstrated an increased interest and capacity to manage and perform open source hardware projects, leading to the development of convincing, high quality hardware innovation. The so-called “maker movement” promoted technological literacy for everyone and produced transformative effects on citizen participation in technological innovation.

This general evolution of open source innovation practices blur the lines between professionals and laypeople, between R&D and tinkering, and tends to redefine the traditional roles of the producer and the consumer. It also crystallizes in the concept of open source hardware (OSH) transposing the intellectual property management logic successfully used in Open Source Software (OSS) for 40 years into the realms of physical products.

OPEN!NEXT – a Horizon 2020-research project with international partners

By sharing ideas and knowledge openly on digital platforms, a network of 19 partners in EU-countries, called OPEN!NEXT, will investigate new collaborations between company and consumer to foster the idea of open source hardware and open innovation systems. The team at HIIG is headed by Prof. Dr. Hendrik Send and Dr. Stephan Bohn. We especially investigate how companies implement open source innovation ideas in their open source hardware projects and daily business processes.

Click here for the Open!NEXT website