Openn

One of the key issues in the current information society is the easy and open availability of required resources. The concept of “openness” covers several resource categories, such as data, software sources, services, innovation and education. Open Data is seen as a promising source of new business. The concept of open innovation is based on the idea of distributing “useless” innovations for beneficial use in a new context. The role of open education has grown quickly at different education levels - especially university level. Open social networks are important platforms both for information distribution and as a source of information. There is a bidirectional influence between the availability of open resources and applications based on them: On the one hand, new applications create trends that demand open availability of resources, while on the other hand, the availability of resources creates opportunities for new applications. From the technology perspective, important change factors include mobility, big data technologies, digitalization, and context recognition. At the beginning of our paper we build a “big picture” of the important phenomena in the modern information society; open resources are seen in the role of enabler. National (Finland) and regional (AVARAS Project) initiatives are used to concretize the overall discussion.