The research proposal addressed in this paper is to investigate Open Innovation within mi- cro-businesses and small businesses within the automation industry, that are part of their customer’s production development. Previous research on Open Innovation has mainly its standpoint in larger companies, and evidence from SMEs, especially micro and small businesses, is yet limited. Empirically this study is based on an evolving network in the manufacturing automation industry, which has poten- tial of becoming a cluster, ie a geographically concentrated network in the same line of business. Inter- views were carried out in the twenty-one companies in the network, and are planned also with their cus- tomers outside the network. The contribution of this research is to describe how Open Innovation is conducted within and around an automation-network. Another important difference is the production innovation focus, where earlier research have been focusing on product innovation and not the produc- tion innovation.