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Most industries face continuing pressures from rising R&D costs, shortening product lifecycles and global competition. These challenges have increased the focus on shortening development times, which again puts pressure on the efficiency of front end innovation (FEI). In the attempt to overcome these various challenges companies are looking for new models to support FEI. This theoretical paper explores in what way idea management may be applied as a tool in facilitation of front end innovation and how this facilitation may be captured in a conceptual model. First, I show through a literature study, how idea management and front end innovation are related and how they may support each other. Secondly, I present a theoretical model of how idea management may be applied in support of the open source front end of new product innovations. Thirdly, I present different venues of further exploration of active facilitation of open source front end innovation through idea management.