Being inspired by recent developments in the Internet and as an implication of the challenges the telecommunication industry is facing, the leading Austrian mobile carrier developed an open innovation ecosystem together with Thomas Fundneider, CEO of theLivingCore: they translated the concept of offering open platforms and interfaces to mobile services in order that software developers can distribute compelling applications ("App-Store"). Being an innovation leader, the company was the first to experiment with and realize such an approach in Austria together with Ericsson and Nokia.

This open innovation ecosystem was realized as an Enabling Space: a well orchestrated set of activities, innovation processes, supporting technologies, and innovation spaces. Ideas were submitted, collected, discussed, and voted for by the online community; 5 teams were selected and invited for a special prototyping event at the monastery Und (Krems, A). The resulting creative buzz led to interesting and high quality final results: e.g., one product prototype won an award at the RCS Developer Challenge in Madrid. Participating developers evaluated the overall quality of the whole process as excellent (75%) and good (25%).  The InnovationDays became a cornerstone for integrating open innovation activities in the company´s strategy.

Client: 
mobilkom austria AG

Cooperation partner:
osAlliance (Dornbirn, Vienna, Graz, open source software architects)

Copyrights for images:
theLivingCore, J. Hoffrichter and Roland Unger