Telematica Instituut and Open Innovation – new perspectives for engagement of SMEs in knowledge production and dissemination

Innovation, in particular ICT-enabled innovation, often failed as a result of a mismatch between technology developers and end users in the market and industry. Therefore the Dutch government established public private partnerships, so called Leading Technological Institutes, to bridge the gap between science and market. In this paper we focus on one of these institutes, Telematica Instituut which addresses ICT-enabled innovation. The institute’s innovation model combines virtues of the Open Innovation model advocated by Chesbrough and the Mode 2 innovation model proposed by Nowotny and colleagues. Increasingly the institute engages SMEs in its research projects as innovation agents. The Integrated Log Family initiative serves as an interesting example. This open source project engages SMEs in the healthcare and sports into content management solutions. This application domain normally suffers from a “technology push” image and collaboration and co-development around open source help to break down those walls. Leading Technology Institutes, and other public private innovation initiatives alike, must shift focus from centralised toward networked system integration, involving SMEs as innovation agents. Open source projects can be an effective instrument to attract SMEs and to realise impact through open innovation.