The use of Open Innovation in the Requirements Engineering Practice - An Empirical Investigation

Abstract: In this paper we present the results of an empirical study carried out to gauge common experiences within open innovation (OI) practices in the requirements engineering (RE) process. The purpose is to understand the barriers and drivers and measurement of innovativeness that the implementation in the RE may enforce. A total of 35 participants answered the compulsory questions of the survey, which results are the main contribution to the study. Our results show that implementing requirements in an open innovation context can be challenging, as requirements and implementation are freely available for several potentially contributing organizations. However, our results show that OI in RE is becoming more and more fully exploited from both the outside and inside and it is useful for most development process type. Potential drivers such as new generated ideas and higher costumer benefits are only some of the drivers mentioned among participants that implement OI requirements, barriers such as hard to find the right partner and innovativeness such incremental innovation are also revealed in this study.