How firms use inbound Open Innovation practices over time: evidence from an exploratory multiple case study analysis

Giordano Pinarello,Daniel Trabucchi,Federico Frattini,Vito Manfredi Latilla

doi:10.1111/radm.12500

Abstract

Firms are increasingly making use of Open Innovation in an attempt to get the most out of external ideas and knowledge in their innovation processes. The existing research on Open Innovation documents a broad set of practices that firms may use to implement inbound Open Innovation, which entail various degrees of integration with the external partner. There is also empirical evidence showing how firms move from a closed to an open approach to innovation over time. However, there is limited empirical work that documents if and how firms that start using open innovation change and evolve the practices through which inbound open innovation is implemented over time. This paper, relying on an exploratory analysis of nine case studies, adopts a temporal perspective to examine how and why firms use different practices for inbound open innovation over time, with attempts at offering a tentative explanation of the underlying drivers triggering this evolution. This paper contributes to the scholarly debate on the organisational enablers of Open Innovation and provides managers involved in open innovation activities with insights into the factors that may determine changes in their use of different inbound open innovation practices over time.

Highlights

Open Innovation (OI) has become a dominant approach in innovation management over the last 10 years (Enkel et al, 2020)
This paper aims to contribute to this scholarly debate and is based on an exploratory multiple case study analysis which sheds light on this peculiar evolutionary aspect associated with the adoption of OI
This section is structured as follows: each case will be introduced in a short paragraph which provides preliminary information about the firm and its industry and identifies the factors that have led these firms to dynamically change the inbound OI practises they use over time

Summary

Introduction

Open Innovation (OI) has become a dominant approach in innovation management over the last 10 years (Enkel et al, 2020). It was introduced by Chesbrough (2003) who popularised the idea that firms can –and should –seek out external sources of ideas and knowledge and look for new paths to market for their technologies in order to maximise their returns on their innovation efforts. Open innovation has quickly become one of the most hotly debated topics in innovation research, with a vast number of papers generated over the years It still needs to be further explored and studied in spite of the many years of intensive research that has already gone into it (West and Bogers, 2017)

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