What is Open Social Innovation

Three public European case studies are presented as an evaluation of a preliminary test of an adapted questionnaire to measure open social innovation. Findings include the differences and similarities between public and private performance. Public practitioners integrate these experiences later than private. The reasons for engaging in open innovation are different: whereas improving citizens´ relationships is the major public reason, creating partnerships is the private driver. Finally, technologies help open innovation in both public and private cases. Furthermore, it may be concluded that there is a lack of open social innovation professionals that leads to a barrier in the development of these policies in the public sector.