Innovative Strategies to Knowledge Transfer in a Context of Open Innovation

In a conventional way, we refer to "open source" as the set of tools achieved without licensing, and available to every user in open environments oriented toward democratization of innovation. In another meaning, it is possible to assume open sources as the set of material and immaterial resources shared in open environments to produce innovation. Thus, the open innovation phenomenon is multifaceted and may be used to explain various issues related to the sharing of knowledge, know-how and competencies in a lot of contexts. In this new framework, this paper explores the open innovation paradigm as an innovative and pervasive method to transfer knowledge from research organizations to industrial world. Among the different ways to transfer innovative knowledge, this paper focuses on spin-off phenomenon, as one of the most effective and suitable approach to transfer innovation from research organizations to industrial world and to capitalize on tangible and intangible outcomes. The main attention concerns inter intra organizational issues of IT spin-offs created within European cooperative research projects.