Abstract
Firms use open innovation strategy to explore external knowledge or exploit internal knowledge to benefit their product/service innovations, and thus enhance their innovation performance. However, a lack of relational mechanisms makes it more difficult for collaborative partners to share their knowledge assets. Existing literature lacks a clear explanation of how knowledge and relational mechanisms simultaneously function for innovation success. In response, this study attempts to answer: (1) Can archetypes of open innovation strategies be identified by knowledge and relational mechanisms simultaneously? And, (2) Do they differ in their ability to predict innovation success under the condition of innovation process characteristics? An exploratory study of 78 open innovation firms reflects four archetypes of open innovation strategies. A subsequent cross-industry survey of 248 open innovation firms in Taiwan reveals that the four archetypes of open innovation strategies result in varying degrees of innovation success, and innovation process characteristics positively moderate such associations.
Highlights
Firms use open innovation strategy to explore external knowledge or exploit internal knowledge to benefit their product/service innovations, and enhance their innovation performance
Because its knowledge bases offer opportunities for knowledge combination and integration, TSMC and its partners can enhance their innovation performance. This trend, especially in Asia Pacific markets such as Taiwan, results primarily from the difficulty that firms face in developing their research and development (R&D) and innovation knowledge (Liu, Chen, & Wang, 2017). Firms such as TSMC in Asia Pacific developed economies seem to emphasize on knowledge combination and integration for their open innovation strategy
This study argues that relational mechanisms can be powerful means for these Asia Pacific firms who strive to maximize open innovation performance (Bogers, Zobel, Afuah, Almirall, Brunswicker, & Dahlander, 2017)
Summary
We adopt a mixed-methods, four-stage approach. First stage is content analysis of open innovation literature resulting in 12 dimensions of types of open innovation strategies which are trimmed to have 7 dimensions kept for this study. Firms in cluster 2 have moderate levels of two knowledge dimensions, with high levels of three relational dimensions: moderate knowledge linkages, moderate knowledge complementarity, high mutual trust, high relational strength, and high relational commitment They focus more on relationship activities in open innovation activities. Cluster 4 includes open innovation strategies that generally rely only slightly on two knowledge and three relational dimensions: low knowledge linkages, low knowledge complementarity, low mutual trust, low relational strength, and low relational commitment. These firms tend to be aware of the benefits of using open innovation activities, but they score weakly on the knowledge and relational dimensions overall when taking on new open innovation opportunities.
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