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This dissertation consists of three independent studies - two empirical studies and one literature review - that examine different issues regarding the involvement of employees in innovation within the growing open innovation environment. In particular, I focus on the different facets and vital enablers that influence involving the general workforce in innovation, among which trust plays a critical role for their active involvement and their decision to contribute to innovation. In the first study, the focus is on a powerful set of enablers of high involvement innovation, namely; the new corporate web technologies, and their role in accelerating a wider base of collective innovation. The second study then examines the involvement of a very specialized category of the workforce in innovation which is the highly qualified external workforce. Those employees represent a rich yet underexplored resource of employee innovation. Finally, in the third study, I focus on exploring the different roles played by innovation intermediaries and argue that intermediaries could take a more active role in open innovation, through proposing the ‘trust incubator’ role. New insights coming from this thesis advance the current discussion of actively and effectively involving employees in innovation, as well as uncover important and current related issues and allow us to draw conclusions that are useful for both research and practice.