Piracy in innovation processes: violation or collaboration?

Piracy as infringement of intellectual property is considered a major issue in innovation processes. The assessment of what piracy is mainly bases on legal criteria and is done from an organisational perspective. Current innovation processes particularly with regard to small and medium-sized enterprises are characterised by nonlinear collaboration forms which involve different stakeholders from various origins. Within such communities intense knowledge exchange across firms’ boundaries is inevitably and can be seen as a source for idea development. In this paper, the mechanism of innovation and knowledge processes are therefore discussed from a practice-based and process perspective. It is argued that current assessments of piracy do not meet practice demands of open innovation processes and rather restrain idea development. An example case from a SME type firm illustrates practice of innovation-based collaboration.