The ‘Open Enough Challenge’ — investigating tensions in open innovation approaches to aerospace R&D

In this paper, we investigate the transformative potential that emerging eVTOL- / dronetechnology exerts on the relationship between established aerospace R&D processes and their adaptation of open innovation (OI) approaches. Empirically, we draw on the ethnographic and digital ethnographic study of two open innovation challenges, the Boeing GoFly-Prize and the Airbus Deep Drone Challenge. We investigate how tensions emerged in the negotiation process between open and closed innovation approaches throughout the challenges and which measures were taken to mediate them. The concept of ‘infrastructuring tensions’ is applied to shift the perspective from tensions as unwelcome hindrances to integral parts of this negotiation process that require maintaining and that are indicative of opportunities in the adaption of OI approaches. We differentiate the investigation in terms of the challenges’: a) frameworks toward shared eVTOL-innovation; b) accessibility for their participants; c) compatibility between internal R&D processes, market requirements, and participants’ expectations. We conclude that such challenges are examples of what we consider ‘flattening innovation’, a process that builds on open innovation approaches, yet cannot fully employ them. Instead, we observed an interplay where challenges that are communicated as fundamentally open require continuous navigation and re-evaluation to both satisfy participants’ demands for accessible open formats as well as companies’ demands for compatibility toward their own R&D processes and available markets.