Open Innovation Processes as Drivers for Business Model Developments Enabling a Successful Energy Transition

Renewable energy systems are a key enabler for a successful transition of our current energy systems. However, in every transition process numerous different interests and requirements, often diverging or opposed to each other, must be considered. “Open Innovation” approaches overcome this divergency and increase one’s own innovation potential by involving all relevant actors along the value chain. This work presents approaches, experiences, challenges, and results of Open Innovation processes applied to stakeholder groups in three different use cases. In these use cases, multi-stage, iterative processes for stakeholder integration are applied. The results of the first use case stages show a high degree of diversity in terms of different stakeholder treatment. These conflicts are tackled by the Open Innovation process, proving that a fruitful collaborative business model development is feasible.