The Role of Platforms and Platform Thinking in Open Innovation Networks

Firms that identify themselves as innovative have to constantly and continuously generate a stream of value-rich products and services, and improve them by time targeting growth markets and finding new ones for their core technologies. To achieve this, they start to open their innovation practices by adopting the open innovation paradigm, giving the opportunity to actors to engage in innovation networks. This paper discusses the supportive roles of platforms and platform thinking concepts in the practices that take place in innovation networks based on the dimensions of translations in such networks. The paper illustrates two practical examples of such roles, exemplifying how platform adopting can enhance and support the innovative practices.