Melanie Oßwald

Melanie Oßwald is a Doctoral Student at the School of Business, Economics and Society, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), affiliated with the Chair of Information Systems I, Innovation and Value Creation. She also manages Science Policy for the Fraunhofer-Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS. Her research focuses on the side effects of co-creation processes, particularly the IKEA Effect, and explores how design evaluation principles extend to Open Innovation frameworks.

Her work spans interdisciplinary domains including

• Co-Creation
• Open Innovation
• Design Thinking
• Behavioral Economics
• Innovation Management
• User-Centered Design

. Melanie contributes to projects like CoDi and JOSEPHS, with publications analyzing subjectivity in co-creation, psychological ownership, and co-creator selection dynamics.

Her recent publications (2019–2023) explore behavioral aspects of innovation, stakeholder roles in collaborative ideation, and design principles in open systems. Melanie holds a diploma in Design from the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg and a Master’s in Marketing Management from FAU.