Creating and Capturing Value from Open Innovation: Humans, Firms, Platforms, and Ecosystems

Open innovation rests on the idea that not all the smart people work only for you, and managing human interaction across organizational boundaries is therefore central to open innovation. This article starts with outlining and reviewing research on this human dimension of open innovation. The article develops seven principles of innovation-producing encounters that can guide managers in enabling value creation through open innovation. We continue by introducing the rest of the special section, which expands beyond the human dimension to also include firms, platforms, and ecosystems, with important implications for the creation and capture of value from open innovation.