Boundaries of Open Innovation and Games

Over the past decade, systems that are used to support the early phases of the innovation process have evolved from simple suggestion boxes to sophisticated social media platforms for the development and refinement of ideas. Organisations who want to profit from the use of these platforms face the following two significant and interconnected challenges: First, organisations have to motivate (groups of) individuals to participate, and they must place them in a state of high involvement and flow. Second, organisations must inspire individuals in order to generate creative output. One activity that leads to high motivation, to a feeling of flow and involvement, and to creative output, is play. This chapter focuses on the question of how to design social media based on open innovation tools to harness the potential of play by applying game mechanics to innovation management. It is argued that there are two possibilities: either enriching open innovation tools with game mechanics (gamification) or adjusting a multiplayer online game to the purpose of ideation (online ideation game). This chapter sheds light on these two possibilities and gives practical implications for implementation. The first section of this chapter describes how specific game mechanics can be implemented in social media based on open innovation tools. The second section of this chapter illustrates a number of online ideation games that have recently been applied and shows how the previous described game mechanics can also serve as building blocks for those games. The third section of this chapter gives managers key lessons at hand who strive to apply game mechanics to innovation management. The key lessons relate to (1) the planning and design phase and (2) the introduction and operation phase of a gamified open innovation tool or an online ideation game.