Fostering Crowd-Based Open Innovations in Serbian Railways - Preliminary Readiness Assessment

This research addresses the possibilities of applying the concepts of open innovations and crowdsourcing to increase railway traffic safety. The goal is to propose an approach to developing IoT-based solutions through crowdsourcing, where various participants can contribute, and conduct a preliminary assessment study of readiness of students to participate. Crowdsourcing-based open innovations have already shown a great potential for the rapid development of new solutions, but the application in the context of improving railway traffic safety has not been fully explored yet. For piloting purposes, the authors have organized an open innovation project, where the students of the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade, were provided an opportunity to propose and develop solutions for various safety problems in railways. The solutions were expected to include one or both aspects of developing marketing plans for raising awareness and designing and prototyping the IoT solutions for the selected problem. Research results show students’ general interest in participating in this type of project and provide implications regarding the organization of this type of project.