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Besides SMEs may not have a thorough understanding of their target market or customer needs, making it
difficult to develop innovative products or services that meet their customers' needs, plus too often
employees are resistant to change, particularly if it involves leaving their comfort zone of established
processes or ways of doing things and starting new procedures which imply studying/learning. Therefore
no wonder if the sectors where Open innovation models seem to be more diffused are

- high-tech, information and communication by far the most active;
- manufacturing
- financial and insurance activities
- building, construction and landscaping
- transport, packaging and storage
- large gross-retail distribution

Another key problem that has emerged resides in the organisational and cultural difficulties that limit the
development of Open Innovation in all the considered partner countries. Actually despite positive
adoption rates in large companies, still many of them do follow this innovation model only occasionally,
and in fact many initiatives (calls, contests, challenges, hackathon etc) are undertaken without a real
overall strategic plan; definitely the lack of a systematic approach and vision strongly undermines the
effectiveness of this tool and its beneficial impact on the business.

It came out also that a large number of SMEs are not aware or interested in the Open Innovation
approach, or if they did have some intention they gave up almost at the very beginning considering it too
risky and/or expensive. It was pointed out, though, that this lack of awareness or interest may result in
the loss of many good business opportunities and entrepreneurial growth.

Yet it was duly stigmatised that Open Innovation is not necessarily a universal model to be forcedly
adopted. As well as not every department in a company can innovate the process and outcomes of their
work, as this all depends on the focus of the department. Plus it must be considered that some
companies may experience practical difficulties in implementing it such as management skills,
organisational complexity (human behaviour impact on employees), increased costs and poor perception
of benefits. On the other hand the technical aspect is only one of the many components necessary for
the creation of an innovative project: there must be also communication, administrative, accounting skills
- without these skills, it becomes difficult to create a viable Open project.

A major problem with the adoption and diffusion of Open Innovation is the real threat in view of
intellectual property. Indeed, many innovative project ideas have been, and are, copied and replicated.
For these reasons, Open Innovation sometimes is avoided as designers and project leaders are obliged to
keep their project confidential for their own good and this has the effect of limiting the growth of their
project and therefore the growth of the country.

Focus group Findings show that to succeed with Open Innovation there are certain factors that
particularly stand out. In order to fully exploit the potential of Open Innovation employees must be
motivated by working with external contacts and collaborations, and their efforts/results must be
recognized. Employees need to have self-awareness that Open Innovation poses an opportunity to take
advantage of external competence for his/her advantage in terms of professional development as well as

OPEN4U: intrOducing Practices in opEn innovatioN 4U - project number 2022-1-IT01-KA220-VET-000085295
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the
European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
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