Keywords: The paper shows how both intra-national and international strategies of open innovation and crowdsourcing could be used to reduce or even invert the brain drain of Caucasian societies, leading to more sustainable and, above all, local returns on investment in the region s excellent educational infrastructure. open innovation, crowdsourcing, brain drain, brain gain, Caucasus, innovation competition, Diaspora networks, regional development. ' Steffen Roth is Assistant Professor at