2133 - OPEN INNOVATION IN SMES: PREREQUISITES FOR THE ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPMENT Authors : Agnieszka Radziwon - UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN DENMARK, Marcel Bogers - UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN DENMARK Thursday, June 18, 2015 - Slot 4 (11:30 - 13:00) D 309   Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) face increasing pressure on gaining and maintaining competitive advantage through increasing the quality of their products and services. In all of these processes, due to limited resources they are very much dependent on their external partners. Strengthening their relationships with other companies facing the same difficulties could be one of the ways of overcoming some of the everyday challenges. Therefore in this paper we focus on SMEs perspective on value creation and capturing process in the regional business ecosystem, perceived as their direct network. The analysis is based on six cases of manufacturing companies, which share their views on the prerequisites for the development of the ecosystem that they are embedded in. In order to increase the gain of being a part of a larger ecosystem, there has to be a commitment and contribution from each of the members. Therefore in this paper we investigate what are the conditions for the ecosystem development that should be fulfilled in order to satisfy, potentially the largest group of stakeholders which are SMEs. The key findings discussed in the paper include a general organizational requirements and governing structures like shared goals, commitment and the role of leadership and ownership of the initiatives, involvement of additional resources and other potential stakeholders like large firms, universities and governmental institutions as well as some suggestions for potential collaborative areas. These findings highlight specific attention points for managing and developing open innovation in a regional ecosystem, where both the SME and the ecosystem levels of analysis need to be considered. Keywords : Open Innovation, Ecosystem, SMEs

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