Managing Open Innovation Communities – Development and Test of an Open Innovation Community Scorecard

Company-based open innovation communities (OICs) on the internet in which customers can submit and collaborate on innovation ideas, are an effective means for integrating customers in open innovation processes. Managing these communities needs a flexible management instrument that can cope with the dynamics of OIC. Traditional approaches from R&D are merely applicable as most applied success measures can determined in the long run only and are outpaced by the OIC’s development speed. We present a balanced scorecard approach for managing OICs. This is grounded in traditional innovation and virtual community management approaches and evaluates OIC from an innovation process, community member, organizational learning and financial perspective. We tested the concept in a real world OIC and demonstrate its applicability. Our approach views OICs from a holistic perspective unraveling central cause and effects, enhances our understanding about OICs and helps to develop a comprehensive theory of open innovation.