Lukas Maier | Open Source Products: The Moralization of Innovation

Firms can make their innovation-related knowledge open source (i.e., freely share it with the outside world) instead of keeping it secret, or protected via patents. Through a series of lab and field studies, this research examines consumer beliefs and reactions to firms’ open source activities and documents a positive open source effect: presenting a product as open source (vs. not) increases its attractiveness to consumers. This effect occurs because consumers view firms that freely reveal innovation-related knowledge as providing benefits for society. Consistent with this societal benefits account, the effect is found to be stronger when (1) moral (vs. selfish) firm motives are made salient, (2) many (vs. few) other firms have already utilized the shared knowledge, and (3) consumers associate the underlying technology with potentially positive (vs. negative) consequences for society. Moreover, the effect can be attributed to the fact that open source activities involve the free revealing of knowledge (vs. collaboration and public exchange). By showing that consumers judge the way firms undertake innovation as more (vs. less) beneficial for society—with important downstream consequences—this research extends the literatures on open source, open innovation, corporate social responsibility, and marketplace morality.

About the speaker: Lukas Maier is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Marketing Management, WU Vienna. Lukas obtained his PhD in Marketing and Innovation from the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). In his dissertation “A Consumer Perspective on Open Innovation,” he focused on the psychological and behavioral consequences of firms’ open innovation activities for consumers. More recently, he is also interested in how to change people’s behaviors for the social good. In particular, he examines how to shift consumers’ attitudes, choices, and behaviors to encourage positive actions such as engaging in sustainable behaviors, charitable giving, and making responsible choices. In his empirical work, he usually combines data from experimental field studies with insights from lab experiments.