Open innovation going societal?: Open data as boundary breaker

The recent opening up of government data in open digital formats is believed to emerge into a new innovation scene. This paper analyses two Swedish open data initiatives from the perspective of inside-out open innovation in order to develop a better understanding of this on-going process from within a public sector perspective. Findings reveal that the governmental context leads to a dual mode of innovation; where the providers of resources for innovation act in an inside-out innovation process but the users of the very same resources acted as innovators in an outside-in innovation process. Together this formed a broad societal framework for innovation. For the cocreation of innovations, public sector participation was also found to vary on a passive-active scale, while the external data users as innovators were always actively involved. This study also contributes to business open innovation with its findings of open innovation on a societal level.