Controlling risk in Opening R&D process

Looking into the research of the last 20 years, opening up the R&D process seems to help companies to be more successful. Looking for external ideas, based on market demands or external solutions to internal technical problems helps to save time, reduce costs or find entirely new solutions. Having said that, opening up the R&D process also bears risks. If a company is willing to open up their R&D process, to what point should the process be opened? In a quantitative study with 100 German companies, followed by a qualitative study conducting interviews at 20 companies, an approach how to define the value of the ideal openness (IO) was developed. This value of the ideal openness is compared to the value of the real openness (RO) which can be measured directly. Using the difference between the values, recommendations to open companies to an ideal level can be developed.