Risks, obstacles and gains in open innovation activities: Anexploratory research on a private bank

Open innovation can be expressed as businesses using external stakeholders to make their innovation processes more effective. Businesses cooperate with parties such as universities, research institutions, customers, suppliers, venture capital, and sector representatives for open innovation practices. Open innovation is one of the new issues theoretically investigated in Turkey. In practical terms, most businesses do not use open innovation. The purpose of this thesis study is to reveal the risks, obstacles and gains in open innovation that is developing rapidly today. Research was carried out on a global banks operating in Turkey. The research using the semi-structured interview method is an exploratory research in this aspect. As a result of the research, the results of turning to open innovation activities of the bank have been found in order to reach high technology in the bank, to cooperate with research centers, to cooperate with universities, to cooperate with customers, to use innovative, flexible and non-routine technologies. Barriers to open innovation in the bank were found to be slow internal processes, too much focus on avoiding risks, too many management layers, lack of commercialization due to key performance indicators (KPI), and lack of qualified and appropriate personnel. Sources of information for financial service innovations are customers, consultants, scientific journals and commercial / technical publications, competitors in the industry, R&D centers, equipment, materials, software suppliers and universities. The gains of open innovation activities implemented at the bank as a result of the research are as follows: increase in customer satisfaction, increase in sales, increase in new product development, development of new technologies, increase in new service development, increase in profitability, increase in market share, increase in customer loyalty, improvement of the bank's innovation process, accelerating the bank's internal innovation processes and gaining new skills for employees.