Co-creation and Innovation-Driven Business Model: Linked Open Innovation & Crowd Sourcing

Today, the world's societies face a severe economic and social challenges amplified mostly by crisis. To recover, countries need to find new and sustainable sources of growth. Innovation is widely recognised as an important engine of growth. The paper supports a broader approach to innovation analysis and policy based mostly on open and linked innovation approach. Although the dedicated international literature is highly diverse and there is nothing like a unified concept of innovation that has been developed, some common approaches can be identified. A key feature of the core literature is that much of it is focusing on the key role of knowledge and innovation today as the most important engines of growth and development. Among policy specially dedicated to stimulate innovation and knowledge, education is considered an important way to empowering people to innovate. Entrepreneurial education is very important to support the innovation. It challenges also the traditional business models by highlighting the importance of the innovation driven business model. The paper presents the open innovation model targeting the crowd sourcing method developed by NineSigma, known also as Linked Innovation. This broader approach of innovation based on co-creation and collaboration enlarge the capacity to identify more creative and innovative solution providers and to share benefits within a group of enthusiastic people. The two authors represent two domain of research (engineering and economics) and support the broader vision of innovation as an open / linked innovation.