Abstract
Given the fluctuations in markets and the financial and resource constraints of SMEs, innovation is one of the solutions for improving performance, gaining competitive advantage and increasing survival probability for these companies. The paper aims to determine the best ranking of effective factors in open innovation success in manufacturing SMEs. At the first stage, the most important factors investigated using structural equation modelling based on the opinion of 275 experts. Subsequently, the impact level of each factor on the others calculated by fuzzy DEMATEL among 12 specialists’ viewpoints. In the end, optimized ranking of studied factors obtained by Ant Colony Optimization algorithm. As a result, economic factors, suppliers, competitors, partners, firm’s strategy, firm’s structure, reward system, employees, IT support, organizational learning, universities, research institutions, and ecological issues hold the first to the thirteenth rank with the highest cumulative impact on open innovation success. Developing relations with universities and research institutions for improving innovation process is recommended to manufacturing SMEs. In addition, these companies should coordinate firm’s strategy as one of the most important open innovation success factors with partners to gain competitive advantages against competitors.
Highlights
Nowadays innovation is considered as a key factor in businesses’ success in market and economic sectors [4], which can result in competitive advantage, and performance improvement [25]
In terms of using fuzzy DEMATEL and metaheuristic algorithms in Open Innovation (OI) researches, there are several researches which focused on different dimensions of innovation by fuzzy DEMATEL or DEMATEL
In the field of OI, Shafiei Nikabadi and Hakaki [43] presented a dynamic model of effective factors on OI based on a hybrid approach including fuzzy DEMATEL and System Dynamics
Summary
Nowadays innovation is considered as a key factor in businesses’ success in market and economic sectors [4], which can result in competitive advantage, and performance improvement [25]. Feng and Ma [24] conducted a research in the field of service innovation to investigate effective factors by fuzzy DEMATEL. In the field of OI, Shafiei Nikabadi and Hakaki [43] presented a dynamic model of effective factors on OI based on a hybrid approach including fuzzy DEMATEL and System Dynamics. They conducted another research to present causal diagram of OI effective factors by fuzzy DEMATEL [44]. Overall, reviewing of the OI literature shows that combined approach of fuzzy DEMATEL and metaheuristic algorithms such as Ant Colony in the field manufacturing SMEs has not been used yet
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