(Customary apologies for cross posting)
On behalf of the conference committee and special issue guest editors, I would like to announce an April 2026 conference (www.Chesbrough2026.com) on open innovation and related topics in innovation management and strategy.
This conference is a developmental workshop being held both to honor Henry Chesbrough, and to support two journal special issues and one special section:
1. California Management Review: "Firm Openness and Industry Dynamics"
This special issue seeks papers that address two key questions: 1) What impact has openness had on the shape of firms and industries? 2) What are the implications of such impacts for management? These papers can relate to open innovation, open business models, open ecosystems and platforms, or other strategies of firm openness. The guest editors are Oliver Alexy, Marcus Holgersson, Christopher Tucci, Wim Vanhaverbeke, and Joel West.
2. Industrial & Corporate Change: "Innovation Spanning Organizational and Disciplinary Boundaries: Contributions in Honor of Henry Chesbrough"
Research on open innovation has assumed or examined mechanisms that overlap the work of many other bodies of research on organizational theory and strategy. This special section is seeking papers that explore how these common mechanisms between these other bodies of research and open innovation create opportunities to inform open innovation (or vice versa), as well as synergistic opportunities to combine such research. The guest editors are Carliss Baldwin, Linus Dahlander and Joel West.
3. R&D Management: "Open Innovation in Action: Strategies, Processes, Tools and the Evolving Practice of R&D Management"
This special issue examines the "how-to" of making open innovation work in R&D and innovation functions. It explores how OI is transforming R&D across three core themes: the evolution of organizational processes, the shifting capabilities and roles of people, and the opportunities and challenges of measuring performance. The guest editors are Alberto Di Minin, Federico Frattini, Krithika Randhawa, and Agnieszka Radziwon.
These special issues will be supported by the festschrift conference that will be held April 20-21, 2026 at Luiss University in Rome. We are planning a small conference (less than 100 people) and participation in the conference will be limited to presenting authors, organizers and the guest of honor.
Papers intended for one of these special issues must be submitted to the corresponding conference track by February 1, 2026. Authors may submit to more than one track, but submission of the same (or substantially similar) paper to multiple tracks will result in the rejection of all papers.
Full information on the calls for papers and conference policies can be found at the conference website, www.Chesbrough2026.com.
If you'd like feedback or guidance on a paper idea or any aspect of the conference, please feel free to contact me or any of the guest editors. Representatives of these three tracks will also be attending major AOM conferences this summer, including AOM, RaDMa and OUI.
Conference Chair, Henry Chesbrough 2026 Festschrift
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Joel West
Professor
Joel West Person
Claremont CA
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