OPEN!NEXT supported SMEs to build better company-community collaboration in order to push co-development and market exploration in the field of Open Source Hardware (OSH) and related services. OSH is an increasingly viable approach to intellectual property management extending the principles of Open Source Software (OSS) to the domain of physical products.
These principles supported the development of products in a transparent process allowing for participation of non- institutional contributors such as consumers, makers and citizens; enabling the emergence of innovation ecosystems around the co-development of user-centric products. Although OSH has the potential to follow the same successful path, it has not yet found its way into mainstream business applications.
OPEN!NEXT built upon the vision that SMEs are the best placed to release the formidable potential of OSH in terms of product innovation and business incubation. The project aimed to establish a company-community ecosystem, facilitate the engagement of SMEs in efficient collaboration with OSH communities and open up new avenues for value creation. Something to be achieved through the realization of four objectives:
1) demonstrating the potential of company-community collaboration through cases studies with business partners;
2) delivering the necessary ICT infrastructure, standards and methods to enable seamless collaborative engineering;
3) synthesizing adapted business models for SMEs, and
4) establishing a network of consulting actors to support SMEs adopt these business models.
Thus, OPEN!NEXT fostered SMEs’ abilities to gather contributions from volunteer communities, reusing existing open source designs, leading to a reduction of 15% in time-to-market and 20% in development costs while further expanding societal relevance of open source development.
