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At a time when remote work is increasingly up for debate among companies, it remains an often underestimated lever for fostering open innovation. This article examines how initiatives designed to encourage collaborative work outside the workplace can contribute to the development of open innovation.

Open innovation traditionally refers to purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge across firm boundaries. Through various collaborations with external entities, firms will be able to be more innovative and accelerate their product development process whatever their sector. Our latest research explores the reasons why remote working is frequently undervalued as a means of open innovation.

Companies, both large and medium sized, operating in various sectors tend to use co-working spaces and makerspaces to support their open innovation initiatives.

This approach is particularly relevant in cases where co-working spaces and makerspaces function as “open labs”. They offer a physical location that acts as a symbolic totem place, an innovation–driven community, and a set of services (incubators, coaching, etc.) that promote experimentation across a variety of specific subjects.

Some companies send their employees to these open labs, where they become affiliated coworkers within the open lab communities. These affiliated workers spend varying amounts of time there, from a few days a week to regular full week residency over several months or even years. Although affiliated coworkers represent only a small proportion of open lab residents, they have a specific profile, driven by individual motivations such as curiosity and open mindedness, as well as organisational targets set by their employer.

Exploring hubs where innovation thrives

From the firms’ perspective, regularly sending employees to work in open labs reflects the diverse opportunities to foster open innovation strategies.

Remote working in open labs can be divided into three categories that each contribute to the development of firms’ open innovation initiatives in a different way:

1) Remote working for fostering a new innovation culture

Open labs give affiliated workers the opportunity to develop new innovative work practices and workplace behaviours. In open labs, people interact on the basis of reciprocity mechanisms, use various creative methods, and engage in rapid prototyping activities. Learning by doing enables affiliated workers to acquire new creative skills as well as new representations of innovation. These experiences give them confidence in their ability to play an active role in collective and innovative processes. When they go back to their offices, they in turn, help spread a new innovation culture within the workplace.

• For three years, French bank Société Générale sent more than 1,000 employees per year from its business hubs based in the greater Paris area to various open labs located in Paris to learn new innovative practices. Société Générale employees benefited from residency programs at La Paillasse, Makesense or liberty living lab where they worked on innovative projects during several weeks.

• Makesense Space offers co-working spaces and supports intrapreneurship programs for large companies. Its team supports intrapreneurs who have the opportunity to work within Makesense co-working space, and become “embedded” in Makesense’s community of innovators.

2) Remote working for finding new partners, ideas, and expertise

By regularly sending knowledge workers on short stints at open labs, companies can access new ideas and expertise that enrich their projects. This enables affiliated workers to become embedded in open lab communities that are characterised by heterogeneous expertise and collective creative projects. These environments allows them to explore new topics in depth and gain fresh insights for exploratory activities.

• In France, a number of large construction and transport companies such as Eqiom and SNCF work with ICI Montreuil. ICI Montreuil is both a makerspace and a co-working space dedicated to the crafts and creative industries. The ICI Montreuil’s community is made up of artisans from 50 different types of crafts and creative industries who are able to support the development of new original tools and products.

• Electrolab is another example illustrating original relationships with private actors. Electrolab is a hackerspace that contributes to developing new technologies based on the hacking ethos. Its community is made up of engineers, unemployed people, students, researchers, artists, etc. All members of the open lab share the same value of developing technologies based on hacking principles. Medium sized companies are also welcome. They have the opportunity to participate in the community’s activities and harness new creative ideas and ways of developing new technologies.

3) Remote working as a way of managing collaborative multi–partner projects

Firms increasingly need to develop multi–partner collaborations to explore user-centric innovations and address emerging societal challenges such as environmental sustainability. For companies, it is becoming essential to reconcile different perspectives: technological development, economic value and environmental issues. They must identify new partners and design new ways of operating and doing business.

Sending employees to work inside open labs can be an effective way to manage multi–partner projects. Open labs provide a neutral space that encourages out of the box thinking. As affiliated workers, employees don’t just come to the open lab for meetings and brainstorming sessions; they stay there one, two, or three days per week over several months to work on dedicated collaborative projects.

Collaborative remote working respectively helps employers to remain project–centred and accelerate the innovation process. It also increases their ability to adopt new collaborative practices when working off–premises. TUBA in Lyon, specialising in urban project development and Liberté Living Lab in Paris are hubs that have attracted interest from large companies such as Roche, ENGIE, Société Générale who design collective experimentation projects for smart cities or healthcare. Employees from these firms go there on one or two day per week placements over a three month period to work on dedicated collective projects.

Keeping collaborative work environment options open

The contribution of remote working to open innovation has been barely formalised by companies, even though many of them are already implementing such initiatives.

These practices help address the human element behind open innovation challenges, particularly in terms of skills, culture, and collaboration.

When companies reduce remote working, they may also deprive themselves of valuable opportunities to strengthen their capacity to manage open innovation.

As our results in the EU-backed Remaking project show, remote working can be an opportunity to build experiences beyond corporate physical boundaries to foster companies and organisations’ capacity for innovation.

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Valérie Mérindol a reçu des financements de BPIfrance pour mener cette recherche.

Paris School of Business a reçu un financement de la Commission européenne pour le projet Horizon “REMAKING” (G.A. Nº 101132685) .

Alexandra Le Chaffotec ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.