Open Innovation Readiness Assessment within Students in Poland: Investigating State-of-the-Art and Challenges

In light of Poland’s innovation performance level being below 70% of the EU average, open innovation can be a key path for innovation capacity increase. This paper explores the readiness of students in Poland for open innovation (OI). The study is based on a survey of a sample of 500 students using the Computer-Assisted Web Interview research technique. The main aim of this paper is to investigate Polish students’ attitude to open innovation—in particular in terms of social product development, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and the sharing economy—to assess the state-of-the-art and identify challenges. Students are selected as the target group because they are open-minded, eager to use new solutions, and will soon enter the business sector to either become the staff of companies or set up their own startups or SMEs. However, the study shows that Polish students, if they use the OI-based platforms at all, use them passively. The key barriers identified within this study are a lack of knowledge about the open innovation paradigm, its elements and opportunities, and an issue of trust. Therefore, a change of mindset, the adjustment of universities’ curricula, and the development of open innovation culture are critical.