Open innovation practices in Sri Lankan tech-startups: a pilot study

Abstract

Tech-startups are vital entities in a business context, which are contributing to the economic and social development of a country. Tech-startups are identified as a booming industry segment in Sri Lanka that involves innovative solution development. Innovativeness is an unavoidable concept in today's business world because innovativeness has become a competitive advantage in each industry. In terms of innovations, there are open and closed innovations. Open innovation is the most attentive topic in the innovation field and in the global context also this field is still emerging. The open innovation perspective in the Sri Lankan context is having much more avenues to explore within many industries. This pilot study is completely focused on identifying the open innovation practices in the Sri Lankan tech-startups; to get an understanding of the current situation of Sri Lankan tech-startups in open innovation perspective. The study was conducted to do a situational analysis of open innovation practices while interviewing the key personalities of Sri Lankan tech-startups including CEOs, founders and co-founders of the tech-startups. The interviews were conducted in distance mode and each interview has taken 20 to 25 minutes. As a pilot study, the findings were really interesting and the findings of the study will be used in future studies for the uplifting the open innovation practices in Sri Lankan tech-startup culture.