There is one concept in innovation research and one trend that comes to one’s mind when reading open innovation lab and that’s open innovation. The term has been coined by researcher Henry Chesbrough quit a while ago in 2003 in good old Harvard Business Review. Shortly after there was a boom around Open Innovation that everybody should be adding external innovations following the subline of Chesbrough’s article with „The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology”. But some companies got it partly wrong as the real open innovation is not only about getting the ideas, the innovations into the front door of your company or institutions, but to change the way an institution thinks about generating innovation. This is also a lot about empowerment, mindset but also about bringing in outside oppinion and not being afraid to share information. This is the backbone for open innovation labs and helping also participating students to establish and keep a critical mind to provide outside the box innovation.