Open Innovation (OI) is a knowledge management model assuming that – in a world of widely distributed knowledge – companies cannot afford to rely solely on their internal resources but should explore a wide range of innovative opportunities and exploit them through multiple channels.

The Lombardy Region's Smart Specialisation Strategy vision, that has an important impact on the regional innovation policies, represents a cultural leap regarding involvement of citizens in policy - decision-making process through innovative tools, both financial and enabling. Thus, a regional Open Innovation Platform has been built around the key principles of the Quadruple Helix Open Innovation model*, where “Government, industry, academia and civil participants work together to co-create the future and drive structural changes far beyond the scope of what any one organisation or person could do alone”.

Focusing on the following key objectives:

• Continuous identification and involvement of key competence holders, essential to face the technology challenges
• Continuous recognition and endorsement of strategic innovation challenges
• Promotion and implementation of enabling conditions, facilitating successful functioning in challenging environment of technology and market changeability
• Exploitation of R&D projects and initiatives

The Platform contains a set of tools and methodologies to support the creation of innovation ecosystems around strategic topics, identified earlier in the RIS3. The Platform is "open" and inclusive, with very low entry barriers while ensuring a good quality of transactions through an "orchestration" methodology relying on "facilitators" and "community managers" supporting other participants when they become active, validating content and rules for routing. A "reputation-based" approach is promoted at all levels, limiting centralised activities to a minimum. Multilingual interface and an open licensing of the code is foreseen in 2017, as the Platform has reached a sufficient maturity.

The Open Innovation Platform has been opened to the public in the first months of 2015. As of October 2017, there are over 7000 registered participants. Over 200 communities have been created thus far, out of which 85 regarding topics of the Smart Specialisation Strategy. Until October 2017, over 1000 discussions have been initiated by the Platform users, more than 200 project proposals have been launched which have received over 430 expressions of interest.