Intermediate conclusions and implications for proceeding

The potential of external volunteers for product (co-)development was demonstrated starkly by the success of OSS development in recent years. In view of this phenomenon, many experts from academia and practice suggest that the ‘open source model’ may be applicable to other industries. This assumption notwithstanding, little is known about the preconditions, opportunities and barriers of OS development in other domains, especially concerning the open design of physical products (Lerner & Tirole, 2002). My first two empirical studies aim to point out the recent upsurge of practical cases (Chapter 5 treating research question 1) and to derive first tentative findings on the mechanism of the open design model of new product development (Chapter 6 treating research question 2).