A cyclical governance model of open innovation in experimental spaces

Spaces of collaborative experimentation—such as living labs, field labs, and testbeds—facilitate open innovation by enabling diverse actors to co-develop and test innovations while sharing costs and risks. Yet, they face governance challenges, including goal misalignment, limited complementarities, and opportunistic behavior. This study examines how the governance of open innovation evolves in such spaces through a comparative analysis of four cases in the Brainport region, drawing on 56 interviews, 43 archival sources and 163 hours of observations. We propose a cyclical governance model consisting of three recurring phases—opening up, closing, and nurturing—each reflecting different degrees of boundary permeability and governance modes. In the opening phase, core partners define innovation priorities, expand organizational and meta-organizational boundaries, and mobilize complementary knowledge and resources from peripheral actors and the wider ecosystem. In the closing phase, meta-organizational boundaries are closed and contractual agreements are established to regulate knowledge exchange, partner contributions and use of shared infrastructure, thereby safeguarding intellectual property and clarifying responsibilities. In the nurturing phase, facilitators balance knowledge sharing and intellectual property protection, while fostering trust and goal alignment to ensure the fair distribution of jointly created value. Collaboration evolves through interactions between core and peripheral partners, with governance cyclically shifting between centralized and distributed modes to coordinate and integrate incoming actors.