"In increasing competitive and global environments companies most often have no choice but to open up and engage in open innovation networks. The engagement in open innovation networks, however, is often accompanied by a number of obstacles and drawbacks, and even failures are common. This book describes the way of a number of companies who went through the process from setting up to exploiting an open innovation network. The process was thoroughly accompanied by research including observation, interviews, document analyses, and even video recordings of group sessions. Based on this research material and a comprehensive literature review the book offers new insights in how to set up, run, and exploit open innovation networks. For managers, the book offers a step by step description of how to engage in open innovation networks, plenty solutions for possible problems and a detailed list of points which should deserve special attention. For researchers and students the book is a comprehensive source of literature from different fields, offers a wide range of methods how open innovation networks can be empirically investigated, and raises new issues for future research.

Next to the four authors three persons significantly contributed to this book, Rob Schlichter, Henk Teuben, and Bert-Jan Bruning."