Stepping out of the zone of territorial protection enables open innovation collaboration.

This paper explores the challenges organizations face in practice as they engage in open innovation projects with multiple partners. Open innovation as a way to increase competitiveness has become popular among many organizations, but its success is not guaranteed. It appears to sometimes be challenging to reap the benefits of bringing multiple, diverse partners together, as it is difficult to turn the differences into something constructive. Using empirical findings from a project in the field of vehicle- and traffic safety, this paper contributes with a proposal for a refined methodology, iKCP, to enable and facilitate open innovation collaboration. Inspiration has been sought in methods used for managing innovative design processes. The strength of the iKCP methodology is that it supports, encourages and even forces the participants to leave the zone of territorial protection and be at ease in the zone of expansive exploration.