Awareness of Open Innovation and Innovation Contests among Young Millenials in Austria - Results of a Representative Study in Q1/2020

While Open Innovation (OI) becomes an increasingly valuable method for companies to not only foster innovation, but also enhance customer engagement, the awareness of it among the younger general public has not been assessed. In Q1/2020 a representative study to investigate the awareness of Open Innovation (OI) and Innovation Contests (IC) among young millennials (between 20-29 years of age) was conducted in Austria. It was found that ICs are more well-known than the superordinate concept of OI, at which gender specific differences could be found. Men have participated in more OI campaigns and report a higher familiarity with ICs. Overall, there is above-average agreement that ICs are a contemporary method to create successful innovations. Although participants tend to disclaim the unfairness of ICs, the disagreement is not substantial, which indicates that possible underlying doubts surrounding the fairness of the method might exist in the public opinion