Design Driven Innovation in Clusters

Collaborating with experts from other fields of knowledge may be an attractive way for small and medium (SME's) sized companies to gain new knowledge and improve innovativeness. As a consequence, open innovation in different forms have gained increasing popularity the recent years. A gap in current research is the limited focus "how to do" open innovation, as most research focus on the strategic intent in open innovation. Hence, this paper reports from an open innovation cluster to cluster project, which developed a full-scale working prototype of an intelligent energy pylon made from aluminum. The project was based on collaboration between two Norwegian Center of Expertise clusters in Norway. Aiming at understanding better why this project was successful, success factors were identified within the categories innovation networks, knowledge management, managerial challenges and individual motives. The article provides a contribution to how companies better can organize for open innovation, which should be relevant and useful both for professionals and researchers.