Innovation is sometimes referred to as the engine of growth, which is especially true in competitive environments. Organizations who have the capability to innovate possess a sustainable competitive advantage, which means that they have a competitive edge over their competitors. In the field of studies about innovation, “open innovation” has become a popular and important approach to stay competitive. Open innovation is both a cost and resource effective approach to innovate, as well as being helpful for solving some of the most critical challenges, as sustainability, healthcare, climate change, financial stability, etc. To fully benefit from the open innovation approach, past studies have concluded that the dynamic capabilities are of great importance. This study has focused on the dynamic capability of sensing, as all innovation projects must make use of it, regardless of the outcome. To better understand the dynamic capability of sensing, this capability could be divided into some key activities and other capabilties. Past studies have also suggested that there is a need for more research and understanding of the underlying micro-foundations of the dynamic capabilities in open innovation. Therefore, we aimed to investigate: “How are different tools and techniques used to utilize the dynamic capability of sensing and its related capabilities in open innovation?” This study was conducted through a qualitative multiple case research method. The data was collected through six semi-structured interviews with project managers and other initiators of open innovation projects. Previous studies in this field assisted us in the construction of the interview guide, which contributed with deductive elements to this predominantly inductive study. The projects included in our study either resulted or were about to result in different kinds of innovations, the organizations behind them were either in the public or the private sector, and all of them had a social or/and environmental sustainability focus. The findings of this study derived from a template analysis, which consisted of both preliminary themes, which were based on past literature, as well as some inductive and new themes, which was unique for our study. The results showed that there was a total of 60 tools and techniques (some overlapping) that were used in the six cases analyzed. Many of the identified tools and techniques could be recognized from past research in this field, but many of them were also new for this study. From these findings, we could see that these tools and techniques belonged to four different clusters, which related to the sensing capability. The four clusters (highest-level themes) were: Macro analysis, Project analysis, Realization, and Other tools and techniques. The first three clusters could be divided into different phases, based on when these activities occurred in relation to the timeline of the project. These phases contained 14 different categories of activities, which the tools and techniques were sorted into, namely: Trends, Market information, Internal needs analysis, Customers, External innovation, Opportunities, Threats, Resources and capabilities, Partners, Information sharing, Trial and error, Working practices, Filtering process, and Common industry knowledge. The common thing of all tools and techniques identified was that they were used for a similar purpose: To gather information, process information and/or plan a response.

In Sweden, Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are supported by government programme at the EU and national levels to decrease unemployment. The Skåne-Blekinge programme is an EU programme to increase job opportunities in Region Skåne and Blekinge. While the Simplifying the pathways to jobs and competence programme is a national programme to decrease unemployment rate among new arrival and long-term unemployment. This study aims to assess the nature and function of indicators utilized in the process of implementation of policy programmes using two case studies from Sweden. The understanding of indicator’s functions and characteristics are important to help the actors designing indicators which can measure the goal achievement. This study employed document analysis and interview for data collection, and for analysis, this study used a narrative analysis to describe the programme’s characteristics, indicator’s functions and indicator’s characteristics at programme and projects levels. In summary, the Skåne-Blekinge programme has guidelines which are tools to govern the programme. On the contrary, the Simplifying the pathways to jobs and competence programme utilizes dialogue to create and learn about the projects. Generally, the results-based management is not yet performed. Instead, it starts to be implemented by utilising an indicator that aims to measure the programme’s impact. In term of indicator’s understanding, there is a difficulty to understand it because some people do not notice that an indicator is a measurement tool. At the programme level, indicators are not fully functioned as it should be. In the Skåne-Blekinge programme, indicators should be more reliable, credible, realistic, and accepted. In the Simplifying the pathways to jobs and competence programme, indicators should be more credible, measurable, realistic, reliable, and accepted. At the project level, indicators are more useful for project leaders under the Simplifying the pathways to jobs and competence programme than for project leaders under the Skåne-Blekinge programme. In detail, the characteristics that make indicators are useful for the project leaders are appropriate, relevant, and accepted. These findings contribute to increasing knowledge about indicator’s influence at the programme and project levels both in the Skåne-Blekinge programme and the Simplifying the pathways to jobs and competence programme in practice.

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