DR. BRUNSWICKER TO CHAIR SPECIAL SESSION AT R&D MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE 2014

Dr. Sabine Brunswicker of the Research Center for Open Digital Innovation will be chairing a special session focused on the topic of “Open Strategizing in R&D” as a brief description of what will be discussed at the special session please see below: In recent years there has been an increasing interest in “open strategy” among academics and practitioners. The term “open strategy” suggests that openness does not only relate to managing openness in an individual R&D project or in the idea-to-launch process. Open strategizing implies a more open approach towards managing the strategy and policy processes. Open strategy as a process is emerging in private firms which open up their corporate R&D strategy processes. In addition, public organizations emphasize openness when developing strategies and policies. Openness in strategy processes may appear in many different forms, such as the integration of a large number of internal employees. In addition, there are open strategy processes where organizations engage with external stakeholders to co-create novel strategic ideas for emerging strategic areas. In some cases, open strategy making is more concerned with communication to the public. Participatory strategy processes regularly making use of IT (e.g. crowd-sourcing platforms) which affords novel ways to engage a large number of participants. There are two key dimensions that characterize open strategy making, namely (1) greater internal and external transparency as well as (2) greater inclusiveness of various actors in strategy-making, internal and external. Greater openness on these dimensions is clearly opposed to conventional notions of strategy which treat it as exclusive and secretive rather than inclusive and transparent. Information systems may both afford or constrain openness in strategy processes. To learn more about the conference, or to register to attend, please go to http://www.rnd2014.iao.fraunhofer.de/en/r-d-management-conference-2014.html