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Paper short abstract:

Digital technologies hold two conflicting promises: On the one hand a democratization of the innovation process, on the other hand an ever growing efficiency for companies extending their control over a large number of individuals. We argue that these two futures might be two faces of the same coin.

Paper long abstract:

New digital technologies are often hailed as a chance to democratize innovation processes, making them more accessible for non-professional developers (van Hippel 2005). On the other hand, this very openness affords organizations ways to enroll a large number of individuals in their corporate projects (Chesbrough 2003). Using theoretical concepts from both organization studies and STS, we argue that openness and corporate control rather than being mutually exclusive scenarios are often two faces of the same coin.

(1) Different forms of 'openness' may co-exist within the same innovation process either simultaneously or at different stages of the process. These may include top-down forms of openness centered around a focal company as well as bottom-up community based forms of openness.

(2) The very allocation of resources like open standards, hardware and software design tools may function as a way for companies to impose their norms on the developers using them.

(3) Even though independent developers or hackers may use the allocated resources in ways unintended by the company. These may resonate with or deviate from the company's initial goals.

We draw these points from our extended study of Google's "Project Ara", which represents the company's promise to democratize the hardware development process by making it more like software development. By allocating free standards as well as hardware and software design tools, Google hoped to construct a global community of makers in order to develop a modular smartphone for six billion people. However the project soon slowed down due to conflicting enactments of openness and closure.