Open Source Product Development: The Meaning and Relevance of Openness: Forschungs-/Entwicklungs-/Innovations-Management

Kerstin Balka obtained her doctorate with Prof. Cornelius Herstatt at the Institute for Technology and Innovation Management at the Hamburg University of Technology.

Open source software development has received considerable scholarly attention, much of which is based on the presumption that the ‘open source model’ holds some lessons of broader applicability. Kerstin Balka focuses on the open source development of tangible objects, so-called open design. To explore the landscape and mechanisms of open design, she presents a comprehensive study of 104 projects and an in-depth case study of six projects. The subsequent quantitative study explores openness as a gradual and multi-dimensional concept showing that companies can successfully implement strategies of partial openness to safeguard value capture without alienating their developer community.