Knowledge Management Integrated with E-Learning in Open Innovation

This paper presents a framework aiming to support an «innovation chain» in an Open Innovation (OI) perspective. In order to transfer research results from producers to users, it is necessary to develop a Knowledge Manage-ment System supporting formalization, packaging and characterization to be able to select, understand and collect research results and/or innovations deriving from them. Suitable skills are required to transfer and collect innovation. Since in OI the knowledge producer and fi nal users are by defi nition geographically distant, the required specialist skills have to be acquired through an e-learning system. This system must offer Learning Objects that can be combined within a course that also takes into account the user’s past experiences. This work proposes an approach based on the integration of these two systems, and presents PROMETHEUS, a tool supporting this approach. The results of preliminary experimentation highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. They will be used to plan further experimentation and initiatives serving to facilitate the transfer of research results from state of the art to state of practice.