Creating universal recommendations on how to open up the R&D department

Integrating external knowledge into the product development process has a variety of benefits. But next to the opportunities the opening of the R&D process also bears risks. This is one of the reasons why R&D managers oppose the opening of their processes. Taking this into account the objective of this paper is the development of a methodology to produce recommendations, which help companies open-up their R&D processes, controlling the related risks and benefitting from the arising opportunities. The recommendations developed, depend on the industry a company is part of, the collaborative partners the company works with and the process step within the R&D process. Unlike other approaches, this methodology does not develop just a fuzzy point of ideal openness but specific recommendations. Using a self-learning software tool companies are able to define their specific point of openness, where risks are controllable and opportunities are at a maximum.