Open hardware as an experimental commercialization strategy: challenges and potentialities

This article discusses recent knowledge transfer (KT) case of CERN flagship open source hardware (OSH) technology commercialisation for high frequency trading time stamping purposes. The case seems at first sight as KT success story par excellence: it enables viable business model without eroding market prices, increases the industrial innovation adoption clock-speed, and the technical complexity and operational importance of the adopted technology are high. However, questions of development community engagement, and sustainability of the core OSH technology and infrastructure resourcing models are raised, as they are of essence and actuality for the fast-growing CERN OHS community