Bridging the Gap: From Open Innovation to an Open Product-Life-Cycle by Using Open-X Methodologies

Open-X methodologies describe the application of Open Innovation to different stages of the Product-Life-Cycle (PLC). Open Innovation deals with involving external players in a company’s innovation process. Those can provide ideas from any stage of the PLC, such as lead users in the development stage or product-users in the utilization stage. These ideas themselves can initiate innovations in any PLC stage. However, this typically affects the development of new products. This means that ideas collected are incorporated into early PLC stages only. There is significant potential in using ideas not only for early stages but also for later stages, which means for existing products. Open-Utilization, as one form of the Open-X methodologies, can create innovations in the form of upgrades or new services for a product. Because respective PLC stages are not equally suitable for Open-X methodologies, this paper presents an assessment concept for evaluating each PLC stage regarding their Open-X capabilities and possible constraints. To illustrate the utility of the assessment concept, this paper identifies two PLC stages which demonstrate exemplary capacity for Open-X methodologies.