Opening up for competitive advantage — How Deutsche Telekom creates an open innovation ecosystem

摘要

When, on 21st September 2006, 'The Economist' compared incumbent telecommunicationoperators with dinosaurs that could soon face extinction, most readers were ready to agree.The mixture of declining revenues and fierce competition was believed to shake the marketand soon to dethrone former national champions. However, there are ways to fight thatextinction and one way is to open up for competitive advantage. This paper reflects on a casestudy at Deutsche Telekom, the German national telecommunication operator. The aim ofthis study is to analyse to what extent the open innovation paradigm has been embracedinside this now multinational company. Using empirical evidence from 15 in-depth inter-views, we identify 11 open innovation instruments and detail their value contribution. We canshow that Deutsche Telekom has successfully enhanced its innovation capacity by opening upits traditional development process and embracing external creativity and knowledgeresources.