5 - The impact of open innovation on innovation performance: the case of Spanish agri-food firms

Abstract

This chapter examines the level of innovation and the degree of openness of Spanish agri-food firms and how the firms’ openness affects their innovation performance. With a sample of Spanish agri-food firms and using three dimensions of openness: breadth and depth of information sources, breadth of co-operation agreements and external R&D expenditures, we find a positive effect for breadth and co-operation agreement breadth for achieving radical innovations, but they do not affect incremental innovations. Incremental innovations seem not to be affected by the firms’ openness, rather, they depend on firms’ internal capability. External information depth and external R&D do not enhance any type of innovation. For the rest of Spanish firms we observed that the level of openness affects both incremental and radical innovation achievement.