Open Innovation Concept and a Success Case Study: Hack’n Break

In August 2016 Hack’n Break was organized at Technopark Izmir, located at Izmir Institute of Technology campus. The event lasted for one week and involved hackathons, seminars, talks, and social activities. Nearly 1000 young enthusiasts and students from all over the country joined the activities and they have contributed to the success of the event. Companies sponsoring the event brought up their problems and solutions were proposed by the participants, some really contributed with creative ideas. Hack’n Break was completely consistent with the philosophy of Technopark Izmir, where we believe in open innovation through which ideas are disseminated and may be transferred to useful applications by the companies from everywhere. In the remainder of this paper we shall summarize our understanding of open innovation and then give a more detailed description of Hack’n Break. We shall then attempt to show how Hack’n Break contributed to Technopark Izmir residents.