Open Innovation
Open innovation is a model where organizations build and share products, knowledge, and tools openly with the wider community, instead of developing everything behind closed doors. The term was popularized by Henry Chesbrough in 2003 to describe companies that combine internal ideas with external collaboration to create value faster.
Open innovation vs open source
These two terms are often confused, but they describe different things:
- Open source is about licensing. The source code is published so anyone can read, modify, and redistribute it.
- Open innovation is about approach. A product can be built and shared openly, often free of charge, without its source code being public.
A product can be one, both, or neither. A tool can be open innovation without being open source, for example by being free to use, freely available to the whole community, and developed in response to real-world needs.
How it works in practice
- Sharing usable tools with the community at no cost.
- Building on external feedback, research, and real user needs.
- Removing paywalls and access limits that would otherwise restrict adoption.
- Contributing back to the ecosystem, including open-source libraries.
Open innovation and Sandtime.io
Sandtime.io is a recognized case of open innovation. It is free, available to everyone without seat or project limits, and grew out of a real internal need for honest time reporting.
The project is listed in the United Nations WSIS Stocktaking 2021 Global Report as a digital solution from Sandstream Development (now Sanddev) in Poland, contributing to WSIS Action Lines 1 and 5 and relevant to Sustainable Development Goal 3. It is also analyzed as an open-innovation case study in the peer-reviewed paper "Enablers of Open Innovation in Software Development Micro-Organization" (Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, 2022).
To be clear, open innovation does not mean open source. For the full explanation, see is Sandtime.io open source?.
Related Terms
Open innovation is often contrasted with open source. Both shape how time tracking tools are built, funded, and shared with their users.