Equipping Small-and-Medium-Scale Companies (SMSC) Through Open Innovation: A Refined Proof of Concept and OI Redesign for Strategic Implementation

This study presents a novel approach to Open Innovation (OI) as it applies to small-and-medium-scale companies (SMSCs) suffering from multilayer constraints to benefit from such a collective tech value creation model. Building on the decades-long practice of OI, the chapter looked into the model’s evolution, development, and application constraints for the SMSCs and presented a refined concept note that meets the dynamic business and tech environment. Based on this, an OI model that encompasses different stakeholders is designed. The proposed IO model that applies to the SMSCs is built on the Consortium model principles that enable ease of entry and exit for each of the stakeholders, keeping members’ best interest for the common good.