Open Innovation means that valuable ideas can come from inside or outside the company and can go to market from inside or outside the company as well (Chesbrough, 2006). This concept is a decade old and is still alive and thriving concept that we need to integrate it into the broader stream of innovation literature focusing on collaboration with external partners (Vanhaverbeke, Chesbrough, & West, 2014). Society of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity (SOItmC) in conjunction with 8th Knowledge Cities World Summit (KCWS) organised a conference at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) in 2015. The theme of the conference was ‘open innovation, knowledge city, and creative economy’. The concrete meaning of this theme is twofold. The first leads us to motivate to make use of open innovation to build up knowledge city. The other motivates us to make creative economy, which is based on creative knowledge and technology through knowledge city. Most articles in this special issue were initially presented at this conference held at Daegu in South Korea. We triggered open innovation to motivate knowledge city and creative economy. Our conference made open innovation as the logical background of eight Korea creative economy centres.