State-of-the-art next generation open innovation platforms

Over the last years, more and more companies recognized the potential of external innovative people and experts working as powerful crowd of creativity. This results in a growing number of Open Innovation Platforms (OIPs) and related publications. What is currently missing, is an overview and comparison of existing OIPs considering their strengths and weaknesses and an outlook to the next generation of OIPs in terms of improvements and new functions this next generation is expected to provide. By analyzing seven of the most relevant OIPs (Atizo, Crowdwerk, Ideas4all, InnoCentive, Jovoto, OpenIDEO, Quirky) and one software provider (Qmarkets), this paper points out the current state-of-the-art. Based on literature research, self‐experience and qualitative interviews with experienced persons working in different roles with Atizo and Qmarkets platforms, it turned out that the current platforms offer quite a similar scope in terms of functionality, usability, process, and user support. In addition, the rewarding system for the innovators differs mostly in the naming or height of the rewards only. Hence, we work out ideas for new features the next generation of OIPs should offer to increase attraction and value for both, innovators and companies searching for ideas. By rating the ideas in terms of implementation effort / complexity and value / impact for innovators and companies, insights into the most important and most valuable requirements for the next generation OIPs are provided.