In design education, students benefit not only from their project courses' content but also from the information resources they contain. When it comes to the repetition of unique problems and solution-oriented approaches in the design professions, the resources used to research solutions for the problems encountered in design education are also specific to that problem. This situation highlights resource diversity, and especially resource sharing, at various stages and thus opens a view into innovation habits among designers' behaviors. This empirical study explores whether or not designers' behaviors can be related to their practices in design project courses, regarding their open innovation tendencies. Semi-structured interviews with 20 designers are used to form a case study. Interviewees had experience with both in-house designers and freelancers, therefore purposive sampling was used. The results were analyzed thematically and discussed under open innovation practices.