Artificial intelligence capabilities, open innovation, and business performance – Empirical insights from multinational B2B companies

Abstract

In contrast to the operational nature of business-to-consumer (B2C) enterprises, business-to-business (B2B) organizations emphasizes offering specialized products and services to their clients, which are businesses. Recognizing that B2B organizations are dealing with complex metadata in an ever-changing business context, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies possess the potential in assisting them analyse massive amounts of data, generating actionable insights, and formulating revolutionary ideas, potentially improving collaboration and innovation. As a result, this study adopts an empirical research approach to analyse the relationship among AI capabilities, open innovation, and business performance, with an emphasis on B2B companies, based on the theoretical foundations of social-technical system and contingency theories. This study investigated the relationship between AI capabilities and open innovation practices, as well as the effect they have on business performance, using survey data collected from 398 B2B multinational companies and structural equation modelling. The findings indicate that AI capabilities have a favourable effect on open innovation practices, which subsequently leads to an improvement in business performance. Notably, the impact of AI capabilities on business performance was found to be partially mediated. The examination of the moderating effect of environmental dynamism reveals that it exerts a significant influence on the relationship between AI capabilities and outbound open innovation. However, it does not have a significant moderating impact on the causal interaction of AI capabilities on both business performance and inbound open innovation. The ramifications of these findings are significant for managers and policymakers who are interested in fostering innovation and enhancing competitiveness within the B2B sector. The results underscore the crucial role of cultivating AI capabilities.