Enabling Open Innovation in a World of Ubiquitous Computing – Proposing a Research Agenda

Detlef Schoder, Christian Schmitt, Kai Fischbach, Steffen Muhle

University of Cologne Department of Information Systems

Pohligstr. 1 50969 Cologne

{schoder | schmitt | fischbach | muhle}@wim.uni-koeln.de

Abstract: This article proposes a new Ubiquitous Computing (UC) infrastructure for open access to object data that will come along with a new research agenda especially for the field of Wirtschaftsinformatik. Our guiding hypothesis is that by fostering an “Open Object Information Infrastructure” new ways for product, process, and business model innovations may emerge. We assume that the unrestricted access to a large amount of sensor network data is the basis for new and often unanticipated innovation. Two major trends fuel our thoughts: Firstly, the ever increasing connectivity among people and more recently things extends present communication and information technology infrastructures. Thereby we get hold of the virtual pendants of an enormous number of physical entities. In addition, advancements in the areas of sensor networks, Auto-ID techniques, including RFID, and in related fields like telecommunications, HCI, and computer science catalyze each other. Secondly, increasing deployment and insight in new business concepts, like open innovation and business ecosystems, show remarkable potential for innovating products, processes and eventually business models.

This paper structures the various facets that emerge by the combination of the two trends. Furthermore it reveals how these trends may induce lasting and fundamental changes for business and society. The authors would be delighted if the issues and arguments outlined here will stimulate a discussion on a new, major research agenda for the Wirtschaftsinformatik community.

1 Introduction

Particularly influential on future business services will be the connection of the real with the virtual world by embedding computers or smallest processors, memory chips and sensors into the environment and into physical objects, as well as using natural, multimodal customer interaction.

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Google is a prominent case which distinctly underlines the creative power of combining both worlds [Ro05]. In June, 2005 Google released an official API for Google Maps and Google Earth. Through this, consumers and external developers now have access to detailed aerial and satellite maps and advanced geographical visualization tools that can easily be used to display data atop the Google maps. Almost immediately, a community of “geotagging” map makers was formed that ties information on the Web to geographical coordinates in order to build geospatial applications (examples of so-called “map mash-ups” can be found in [GS06]). Geotagging means amplifying physical places with information so that, for instance, users of mobile devices with location technologies can retrieve additional information related to their current locations. This includes location-based ads and listings for nearby shopping, dining, entertainment, and business outlets or even photographs, videos, stories, and other personal information uploaded to the Internet and pinned to specific latitudes and longitudes. As a result, the community participates in the innovation process and in building “a browser for the earth”, as John Hanke, general manager of Google's Keyhole Group, describes Google Earth [Ro05]. This could enable a new and natural means of accessing location-based information. Wade Roush describes this vision by drawing a comparison: “Every page on the Web has a location, in the form of an URL. Now every location can have a Web page [...] it means that navigating both the Web and the real geography around us is about to become a much richer experience, rife with occasions for on-the-spot education and commerce. It means that we will be able to browse the Web - and the virtual earth encompassed within it - simply by walking around.” [Ro05] Moreover, the “browser of the earth” could be enriched with information about what currently happens around us by integrating data of sensors, which are scattered in our environment. A step towards this vision takes the project “CitySense” that aims at building up an open urban-scale wireless sensor network in Cambridge. The network should gather data about weather conditions, air and water pollutants, as well as biochemical agent concentrations to provide these to the public via an API [Mu07]. By combining this data with Google Earth new services could be offered, e. g. a pollution data based service that advises asthmatics to stay away from certain areas at certain times of day. By incorporating more sensors even information about traffic flow and parking space may be provided via Google Earth [Gr07].

As the Google case also illustrates and as it has been recognized by Chesbrough [Ch06], closing up one’s intellectual property (IP) is not always the best way of managing it. Opening access to information systems and to IP for complementors, suppliers, users, and even for competitors encourages innovation, increases the attractiveness of platforms, and enriches service provision through the incorporation of external information sources. With the world evolving from Electronic Business to Ubiquitous Computing [We91] (and Pervasive Computing [Ha03] or Ambient Intelligence [AHS01] respectively), even more comprehensive opportunities for implementing innovation are likely to arise. Innovative information gathering and access is enabled by the connection between the real with the virtual world by embedding computers or the smallest processors, memory chips and sensors into the environment and into physical objects [Ge99], as well as using natural, multimodal user interaction [Va01].

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However, existing approaches frequently rely on rather proprietary information systems that reveal their data and services only partially or under certain conditions. Bearing in mind that Ubiquitous Computing entails the interaction of mobile smart objects and local smart environments hosted by different service providers, we propose using an open approach to encourage the development of new and innovative smart applications and services. Considering the Open Source community, we assert that such an open approach reveals innovation potentials that cannot be achieved in proprietary information system environments. Various developers with different perceptions can then search for relevant smart services as well as information gathered by smart objects or environments, combine them freely and hence create their own innovative services.

The remainder of the article is structured as follows. The subsequent section presents related work. Then, we present the design of an architecture called the Open Object Information Infrastructure (OOII) that enables Open Innovation in the context of Ubiquitous Computing. Thereafter, we point out relevant fields of research that emerge with the realization of the proposed architecture. Therefore we introduce our Framework for Ambient Business that structure the field of research in four layers and reveals high level research questions that may shape a new research agenda. The article concludes with a summary.

2 Background

Several authors have considered the impact on business that comes with Ubiquitous Computing. Most work starts with a discussion of technological progress and the business impact arising from that progress. Roussos adopts this perspective [Ro06]. In his view, contingencies for Ubiquitous Commerce arise from emerging technologies which again have an impact on business innovation as well as on society. Similar to that view, Mattern discusses technological progress that allows deploying smart objects in an informatized world around us [Ma05]. Within this world, informational counterparts of everyday objects and of people induce social and political challenges and pave the way to new applications. Fleisch and Tellkamp act on this assumption and provide a framework that helps to identify value-creating application areas and discus challenges in implementing these applications [FT06]. Whereas Fleisch and Tellkamp focus on processes within a company or between companies, Fano and Gershman consider the impact that smart services will have on relationships between customers and the service provider [FG02]. These relationships will be profoundly affected by new classes of services emerging in smart environments. Based on the vision that a service provider will steadily be able to access customers, they make a set of assumptions about how services will be provided in a world of ubiquitous computing.

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By discussing technology, smart environments and several business aspects, present literature gives considerable insights into how Ubiquitous Computing will impact future business. However, current frameworks do not consider the potentials for innovation. For example, the German Federal Office for Information Security provides a framework to discuss the socio-economic impact of Ubiquitous Computing [BSI06]. It considers “determining factors”, “enabling technologies”, “Pervasive Computing features” and “Impacts” without addressing innovation. Therefore, we focus on innovation in the following section by proposing an infrastructure that facilitates Open Innovation in the context of Ubiquitous Computing. Furthermore we reveal major research fields that emerge when applying Open Innovation in the area of Ubiquitous Computing by building up our Framework for Ambient Business.

3 Enabling Open Innovation in a World of Ubiquitous Computing

The idea of encouraging innovation throughout openness with regard to IS was widely discussed in the early 1980s when mainframe vendors started to restrict the use of object program and source code of formerly unrestricted software. As a countermove and in order to gain independence of the software industry, Richard Stallman propagated the idea of free software [St99]. This paradigm shift away from the conventional IP regime resulted in software that can be used, modified and redistributed by everyone. Related movements like Open Source [Or99][LT02], Open Standards [We04][Pe06], Open Systems [Ga87], and Open Content [Wi99][Ci03] all follow a similar idea: By modifying and recombining existing work, innovation can be collectively achieved. Thus self-organized ecosystems of Open Innovation emerge when independent actors contribute to a product system (the product and its complementary assets). These Open Innovation ecosystems have proven that they are able to compete with companies that are reluctant to open up their systems and their IP. Software like Apache, Mozilla and Linux has achieved a considerable market share and Wikipedia comes close to the quality of the Encyclopaedia Britannica [Wa05].

Accordingly, opening up Ubiquitous Computing systems enables innovation in a world of Ambient Business. If smart devices and smart environments are built on common standards and are opened up mutually, new possibilities for innovation arise through the combination of information pools, devices and services. Furthermore, natural, multimodal and tangible interfaces may simplify remote interaction within an Open Innovation ecosystem (e. g. [PP04]).

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Xerox took the first steps to implementing smart environments in their research project Parctab [Wa02]. Since then, many more research projects, as well as commercial initiatives, have appeared (for an overview of selected projects, see [EBM05]). However, these initiatives focus mainly on specific, proprietary applications like smart shopping environments and do not incorporate further prospects of using an open approach (for an overview of smart environments in general, see [CD05]). Implementing an open approach as proposed in this article means, in essence, granting access to mobile smart objects and local smart environments hosted by different service providers, and to information gathered by them. To enable the reuse of smart environments and information gathered by smart objects, a common understanding of their semantics is essential to the recombination and to the creation of new smart applications and services. Accordingly, we propose a research agenda which may span over a large part of the scientific Wirtschaftsinformatik community. The nucleus of our proposal is an Open Object Information Infrastructure (OOII) as shown in Figure 1, which complies with the requirements to enable Open Innovation. The various components will be explained below.

Figure 1: The Open Object Information Infrastructure (OOII)

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3.1 Building up Smart Environments

The embedding of computers or smallest processors, memory chips and sensors into physical objects, referred to as smart objects, constitutes a step toward connecting the real with the virtual world. Other examples are sensor networks - smallest sensors introduced into the environment, forming ad-hoc networks in order to recognize, for example, the whereabouts, speed, size and form of objects and to observe them over a period of time [CES04]. Sensors may perform an important role in the context of managing object information. This is particularly true for the use of sensors which permit a clear identification of smart objects by remote enquiry. With the assistance of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), objects are identified automatically without line of sight, by transponders which are attached to them [Fi03].

It has to be taken into account that the information content of sensor data is rather limited. Hence, the data must be gathered and formed into usable events by means of appropriate filter and aggregation procedures. Numerous projects for the development of suitable middleware have already commenced, but focus primarily on integration of sensor data in closed, business-related applications or communication between smart objects (for an overview of selected projects see [Sc05][HR06]). Most projects, however, ignore the further use of the information in other contexts or by external developers.

Ensuring the utilization of gathered data for external developers requires extending existing middleware technologies with mechanisms for the semantic markup of sensor data. Semantic Web standards such as Topic Maps [GM06] [DNB07] or RDF(S)/OWL [BG04][MH04] can be employed for this purpose. Several middleware technologies have already been extended with mechanisms for the semantic markup of sensor data. SOAM (Smart Object Awareness and Adaptation Model) [VSI06] is one initial approach. SOAM is a smart environment reactivity model in which user preferences are formalized using the Standard Ontology for Ubiquitous and Pervasive Applications (SOUPA) [CFJ05]. These preferences lead to adaptation on smart objects without explicit user intervention, because of the use of automatic, semantic reasoning with respect to the environmental conditions.

An extended version of this ontology is also used by the Context Broker Architecture (CoBrA) [CFJ05]. This is a broker-centric agent architecture for supporting context-aware systems in smart meeting rooms. The project goal is to create a meeting room that can facilitate typical activities as setting up presentations (allowing users to control services via speech), or adjusting lighting and background music in a room in a manner that is tailored for the specific meeting.

Even if these projects incorporate semantic technologies, they do not consider the reuse of their smart environments within external smart services. Nevertheless, they could be suitable for application within the OOII, as they enable the combination of ubiquitously gathered information with additional semantically-enriched information provided, for example, by the Semantic Web.

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3.2 Building up Open Information

In developing smart environments the large number of smart objects must be taken into account. Additionally, the prevailing energy and capacity limitations of embedded computers and sensors make it necessary to save accompanying virtual data objects and to process information on additional network nodes which have sufficient memory capacity and computer power. These prerequisites advise the implementation of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks that offer better scalability and a self-organized and decentralized coordination of unused or limited resources, compared to the alternative client/server architecture [Ba01][Or01][Mi02][SFS05]. Other characteristics, including a higher fault tolerance and a more effective support of spontaneous networking of entities, may be advantageous as well, because no continuous connection can be ensured for smart objects, due to their mobility.

In order to enable Open Innovation, arbitrary access to the stored semantically enriched object information must be ensured for external developers. As the Napster case revealed, central approaches tend to limit access to the information offered or even deny it completely. However, P2P projects like Freenet [Cl00] and Free Haven [DFM00] have demonstrated how an anonymous and censor-free information access can be made possible. Using P2P networks for storing and retrieving semantically enriched information requires an extension of possibilities to pose semantic queries. On the one hand, scientific research is pursuing scheme-based approaches, and, on the other hand, ontologies or P2P Semantic Web Services are applied (for an overview of selected projects, see [SS06]).

Using semantic query facilities, various developers with different perceptions can search for relevant (object) information, combine the information freely and hence create innovative services (as indicated in Figure 1). For example, information about the speed of vehicles (low speed for a number of cars) combined with their actual location (they are all in a certain area) and additional information (a road map) might indicate that they are stuck in a traffic jam on a highway. This information could then be provided to others as a traffic-information service. In order to facilitate even the reuse of this new smart service, the service has to be specified semantically and published in the OOII. Subsequently, other developers can reuse this service (and the connected smart environments and objects), combine services with information gathered by another local sensor network (the outdoor temperature in a certain area is below zero), and set up a warning system (you are traveling to a snowy area - do not forget your snow chains).

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In order to discover and integrate semantically enriched information, a number of semantic web services [Fe02][AS04] and smart agents [Le05] have been developed. However, these projects mainly solve negotiation problems with respect to a common understanding of certain application contexts. The user-oriented framework of Task Computing [MLS04] is a promising approach in the context of Ubiquitous Computing. It uses the Task Computing Environment Object Ontology [TCE04] and is designed to operate dynamic ubiquitous environments in which a mobile computing user dynamically discovers the current set of available semantically defined services [SLM04]. The end-user can easily and seamlessly integrate and manipulate services found on their own computer, the nearby devices and relevant remote web services. However, Ben Mokhtar et al. claim that even this opportunity to select the right composition among all the possible compositions suggested to the user, presents a major drawback of this framework [MGI06]. Accordingly, they developed a COnversation-based service Composition middlewAre (COCOA) that minimizes the necessary user interaction by enabling the automatic and transparent deployment and execution of user tasks.

Nevertheless, these approaches are limited to the discovery of smart services within smart environments in order to improve user interaction. They do not address global service discovery as needed within our OOII. METEO-S WDSI [Ve05] and GloServ [Ar05] are approaches that perform global service discovery by the use of P2P networks. METEO-S WDSI presents a scalable environment for Web service publication and discovery among multiple registries in general. It uses an ontology-based approach to organize registries into domains and enable domain based classification of all Web services. Each of these registries supports semantic publication and the discovery of Web services. GloServ is a global service discovery architecture that can be used to build a distributed context-aware service discovery system related to Pervasive Computing scenarios [AS06]. An example for building up smart services on top of open accessible data is given in Schmitt et al. [Sc08][SFS07].

4 Further Research Directions: A Framework for Ambient Business

In order to focus further required research activities on enabling Open Innovation in the context of Ubiquitous Computing, we introduce our Framework for Ambient Business that divides the analysis of Ubiquitous Computing in the context of entrepreneurial activities into four perspectives (see Figure 2).

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Figure 2: The Framework for Ambient Business

First, the Emerging Technologies layer focuses on research in technology that allows the development of new types of IT-infrastructures. These emerging technologies present new qualities and open up new forms of IT usage that have to be covered in the Smart Environments layer. Thus, new applications (Smart Services layer) have to be implemented within smart environments. Finally, the Ambient Business layer addresses the impact of these innovative smart services on economy, business environment and society.

4.1 Emerging Technologies

Advances in networking as well as embedded technology, display technology and nanotechnology have been driving the research on Ubiquitous Computing during recent past decades [Hi05]. Smaller and more powerful, but less power-consuming, information technology has facilitated the development not only of common IT-devices. Even objects such as coffee cups [GBK99] and pens can be equipped with sensors, processors, storage capacity and actuators. The objects can be connected with each other in order to “cooperate” and thus to form joint embedded IT environments. As a result, new opportunities for applications scenarios arise.

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Current progress in the layer of emerging technologies is indeed quite remarkable. However, due to the wide range of technologies, which are scattered between different industries, questions arise for the organization of inter-organizational value creation and therefore for IOS: How can companies be supported in searching partners for technological co-operations and the commercialization of inventions? How can flexible inter-industry networks be built up and resolved for such co-operations? How can standards be created and enforced that include all relevant industries? In this context, Semantic Web [BHL01] technologies will gain particularly great relevance.

4.2 Smart Environments

The second layer addresses the qualities of emerging technologies. The role of these qualities is twofold. First, they are the means for revealing new applications and services based on the emerging technologies. Second, when analyzing the shortcomings of current applications and services, the qualities can pave the way for satisfying people’s innovation needs at the emerging technologies level.

An environment equipped with an IT-infrastructure as described above is able to gather information about people, things and other surrounding conditions. Therefore, the following research questions have to be addressed: How can information be used to recognize the context of people and things, so that smart environments become aware of the real world? How can environments estimate users’ needs that arise from in the real world? Will smart environments adapt itself to (mobile) users and situations [Co05]? Will they even act autonomously and thus become “smart”?

Emerging technologies not only facilitate extensive information gathering, but also provide new ways to interact with users. So further questions arise: In which way can information be made accessible and how can services be presented by the smart environments in such a way, that information and services are almost seamlessly integrated into a user’s world? How have interfaces to be designed to become natural and the interaction to become subliminal, so that technology even disappears from the user’s perception [We91][No98][Wa02]?

Although different qualities reveal different potential applications, the qualities of emerging technologies are not independent from each other. In fact, like the emerging technology layer, only by analyzing the interplay of different qualities and transferring them to the application domain, the full breadth of application potentials can be revealed. Accordingly, these qualities point to smart services that may be developed on top of smart environments.

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4.3 Smart Services

Merging the real and the virtual world, every relevant object in the real world acquires an informational counterpart in the form of a data object [Ma05]. Thus, a service that uses this informational counterpart may know the location and condition of a physical object. Such services are already applied to ensure efficient logistic processes and for asset management purposes. Due to the decreasing costs of corresponding technology, services can not only be offered to companies, but a vast range of services is also conceivable for individuals. Therefore further research has to focus on the design of so called smart product [MF06] as well as possible application areas. By analyzing the current and past context of an object, which comprises additional information from outside the environment, appropriate supportive services can be developed and offered through a smart product [SFS06a][SFS06b]. Additional services may be presented to the use, for example, at a medicine cabinet when the medicine runs short [FLS03]. Such services can also be individualized, so that they adapt to the preferences, habits and current situation of the user [Co05]. When services become fully aware of their context, they could be invoked automatically, without explicit manual interaction by the user [Te00]. However, despite a wide range of prototypes, which have been emerged from research projects, it remains unclear, what kind of smart services are commercial feasible. So we still have to answer how the meaningfulness of services can be appraised from a business and a usage perspective, what methods can be adopted to create and analyze usage models and which methods can support the design of smart services.

4.4 Ambient Business

The ability of smart services to adapt themselves to situations and to instantly provide a huge amount of information not only supports current business processes and distribution channels, but it also opens new ways of doing business.

Services in the application domain of supply chain and asset management reveal opportunities for monitoring tangible assets more closely and thus for creating a higher degree of control. Yet, the costs of control decline at the same time. Not only high-value products, but also lower-value ones can efficiently be managed by smart services. This results in a very tight mesh of control throughout the company [FM05]. Therefore process management has to address, how processes can be adjusted to incidents that are internal or external to the processes and which areas become feasible for a process management that previously not had been monitored in detail.

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Inter-organizational processes that utilize smart services may also cut costs in the supply chain. Through crossing internal company boundaries, information flows that are highly aligned with the flow of physical goods reduce losses, and control overhead that frequently occur at such boundaries [SPS05]. Furthermore, by opening up their data base, companies are able to offer smart services to each other, for example, control and information services [FM05]. Going one step further, smart services may be used to involve users in the R&D-process, whether directly or via mediators like Innocentive. So further research has to investigate which functions that were previously closely linked to an organization can be outsourced and which outstanding capabilities that were previously bound to the organization can be offered to suppliers, customers and even to competitors in a world of Ambient Business.

In the future, products may be provided more as a bundle of the physical product itself and the services linked to it. Therefore research questions arise like: How will such smart products change the vendor-customer-interaction? Will products form a platform for generating additional revenues by means of services in the after-sale phase? Will customers be not only addressed through traditional sales channels like a store but at the preferred location [FG02]? Which impact may this have on business models and sales channels? How can usage information be utilized that users provide to the vendor for receiving special services? How can vendors use this information to align R&D-efforts more closely to users’ needs?

Because of an exchange of information is the foundation for Open Innovation in smart environments, information spheres have to be managed. On the users’ side, questions regarding privacy issues come alongside with revealing of information. What information do users consider as private in certain situations and what information should not be freely available to service providers. How can it be arranged that smart environments autonomously share information according to users’ privacy perceptions? How should laws be formulated in a world in which information is freely exchanged? The first studies have already appeared that analyze the perils associated with the emergence of UC [Bo05][Hi05][Bi06][BSI06] and that accordingly derive system design guidelines [LJ03], but they are only the first steps towards answering the core questions. On the companies’ side, it has to be analyzed, under which conditions certain information should be allowed to cross organizational boundaries. Which products and processes should be opened and to what extent? What are the company’s distinctive information resources that have to be maintained inside the company? What kind of information can be utilized more effectively outside? Control of the information transfer may have to be established. Furthermore, organizational structures and processes have to be adapted to facilitate the adoption of external information and employees have to be trained to interact with external stakeholders. Moreover, questions arise regarding how external innovators can be attracted. When increasingly more companies try to harness users’ resources and creative power, how will users react? Will their attention and time become a limited resource so that companies have to compete for it? Have companies to reward the users’ contributions?

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With the origin of Ambient Business companies may have to adapt to a changing market environment. Like the internet, smart environments follow the end-to-end principle. This principle states that the intelligence of an information system rests in the end-user-devices, not in the network [SRC84]. Lessig argues that systems putting the end-to-end principle into practice will encourage innovation and that short innovation cycles in the internet can largely be explained by the implementation of this principle [Le02]. This raises the questions whether smart environments should also follow the end-to-end principle by giving users control over the intelligence of the systems. By doing so, will smart environments enjoy the same degree of innovativeness as the internet does and will innovation cycles become shorter? Moreover consideration must be given to the fact that smart services can be invented around all instances of our life. Does the resulting wide diversity of innovation potential lead to new markets players [Wat02]? How can companies cope with new competitors in a high-velocity market and which strategies and business models can be applied?

When smart environments and services are deployed in our surrounding, social, ethical and legal questions arise. How will smart services influence our daily live and which activities will be supported or even substituted? In particular, elderly people and handicapped persons are expected to benefit from supportive applications and natural interfaces [Co03]. Will everybody who is in need of such supportive services get access to them? Will digital divide between those with and those without access to computing facilities be closed or expanded [BSI06]? Will positive effects resulting from efficiency enhancements be partially undone by side effects, e g. by increasing people’s stress level? Will smart environments help to avoid or will they cause pollution and health hazards [Hi05]? Are current legal regulations sufficient to cover emerging conflicts? How will social, ethical challenges and shifts in legal regulations affect the business perspective?

In summary the world of Ambient Business offers a broad spectrum of highly relevant research question, including legal, economical, systems engineering, information systems etc. It therefore comes at no surprise that research and development capacities of the Wirtschaftsinformatik community are best suited to contribute to the idea of an OOII and its implications for Ambient Business. Hence the authors would be delighted if the issues and arguments outlined here will stimulate a discussion on a new, major research agenda for the Wirtschaftsinformatik community.

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5 Conclusion

Previous research and the movement towards openness suggest that an opening of information systems may reveal new contingencies for innovation. By designing the OOII, we show how this insight can be utilized by merging the worlds of UC and open innovation. Within this infrastructure information pools that emerge from smart devices are connected by existing Semantic Web standards. This allows developers to search for and combine information they need, create innovative services and reuse and combine them in an innovative manner. Thus, the innovative strength of companies that act in open systems cannot be achieved by those that rely on rather proprietary information systems.

However, the open approach is not only applicable from the technological point of view. Economic rationality can argue similarly in favor of opening information systems and thus companies’ intangible assets. In some instances, property rights cannot fulfill their aim of fostering innovation, but in fact encumber a further development that builds up on the protected assets. Therefore, in terms of economic and social welfare, the guarantee to freely use innovation as well as the incentive to commercialize innovations has to be perfectly balanced.

Additionally, a cross-boundary flow of intellectual resources can be beneficial. In high-velocity markets as can be expected in Ambient Business, the alignment of company resources to the corresponding market becomes critical. In particular, innovation-related resources have to cope with market developments. Opening up the company’s borders can be a strategy for acquiring external innovation-related resources and therefore a head start in competition with closed innovators.

To reveal upcoming research questions that arise by merging the worlds of Ubiquitous Computing and Open Innovation, we applied the framework of Ambient Business. It presents an integrated view on technical and business aspects that are associated with opening up smart environments as well as smart services and the potentials for innovative services that can be created by external developers. The framework reveals that the innovative strength of companies that act in open systems cannot be achieved by those that rely on rather proprietary information systems.

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