Openness and trust in value co-creation: Inter-organizational knowledge transfer and new business models

The on-going paradigm shift from industrial production to value co-creation increases the importance of openness as a central competitive factor. From a systemic point of view, this means that external and internal interfaces within the value creation system need to be created in a way that knowledge can be exchanged more efficiently. However, openness in inter-organizational settings is often blocked by a lack of trust. Hence, concepts are needed to manage trust with regard to varying context-depending degrees of openness. The conceptual framework of this interpretive study is based on the theory of openness, which describes the dependency of the success of networks on the incidence of emergence. The developed concept of trust circles is based on empirical data selected from the aeronautical cluster Hamburg Aviation. It serves to identify circles of trust within the system and activate their potential to enable inter-organizational knowledge flows and new joint ventures.