Exploring Open Innovation processes in Greek space industry companies

Abstract

The purpose of this present work is to develop the nature of space entrepreneurship and to evaluate its potential with the application of innovation in space. At the beginning of our analysis we studied the financial footprint of space entrepreneurship in recent years. In addition, we collocate an extensive analysis of the individual areas of space entrepreneurship and the percentage of the total space economy occupies in each sector. In the next step of our work, we dealt with space entrepreneurship in a broader context, in the European Union, and in other countries as well, such as the USA, and India. In further insight, we expanded to space innovation and especially to Open Innovation which is a relatively new concept that was developed. A proper definition of Open Innovation was excessively cited in alliance with an in-depth analysis of the relationship of the entity that creates the innovative concept with the external partners interaction. From this extended reciting was noticed that open innovation has significant advantages, but also disadvantages that came to our attention and covered also carefully. This included different approaches of economic and budgetary implications but also a huge profit margin if implemented properly. In addition, a great analysis was made of the most important features and peculiarities of the space sector, and also developed the reasons why Open Innovation should be used on a large scale in space applications to meet the challenges of the space sector. This paper opens a great discussion about how Open Innovation (OI) can interact with the market, commercialization and the very high level of competition that will pervade the rapidly growing space in a few years. After an examination of several case studies of companies that have achieved significant results by applying OI, we finally present a case of promising implementation of Open Innovation at a time when it is the extremely ambitious idea of extracting mineral wealth such as metals and other elements from celestial bodies. Such celestial bodies could be asteroids. In the last chapter of our work we will list the research we conducted in Greek companies dealing with space and we will list in detail the results we have collected which are of interest for a full understanding of the Greek position and power of entrepreneurship and space innovation.