Domenico Consoli - University of Bologna

In the global world, companies to innovate must exchange information with other subjects like customers, suppliers, enterprises, partners. In this way it is possible to acquire new ideas from the external environment and gain competitive advantages. Nowadays the new concept of Open Innovation is affirming. Small Businesses can exploit this model to be more competitive in a global market using web 2.0 tools to interface with external subjects of the value chain. Between customers/business partners and companies a bidirectional channel is established and a process of co-creation and co-production to improve products/services is stimulated. In this paper we present a model of Social and Open Innovation. We analysed a sample of small enterprises that use social media to interact with the external environment and then we describe a business case of the sample which implements the model

open innovation, web 2.0, social media, co-production