How to assess actors for an Open Innovation-Project?

Companies are confronted with an increasing variety of challenges such as shortened development cycles or higher demand of market orientation. One potential solution is collaboration with external partners/actors in terms of Open Innovation (OI). This allows several advantages such as the utilization of external expertise and reduced risk of market fails. However, OI itself bears "new" risks which are often related to the choice of external actors, e.g. insufficient effortbenefit ratio or knowledge drain. So far, adequate methodical support is limited. To allow an efficient identification and selection of actors, established approaches from other fields, such as stakeholder (SH) analysis, are enhanced by OI-specific methods. This paper presents an integrated assessment approach for determining relevant actors within a previously identified pool of SH. The approach combines elements from SH-analysis and Lead-User identification, enhanced by elements from complexity management.