Having a successful innovation process is crucial for any competitive enterprise. Being able to rapidly prototype and validate new concepts can reducethe time and cost from the specification-phase to a final product. This thesisinvestigates how open source hardware and software can accelerate the ideavalidation of proprietary systems.The development of a microcontroller shield and open-source-based softwareis described and how this artifact can take advantage of the open source community, thus making innovation more flexible and concept validation quicker.This thesis followed a five-stage development process, and is evaluated withtwo controlled experiments.The resulting artifact was shown through these controlled experiments thatit was able to improve the idea validation of proprietary systems. The resultof the controlled experiments showed that a new concept could be validatedfaster.