Abstract
The burgeoning literature postulates that a firm’s degree of openness for external parties in building its knowledge base undoubtedly enables it gaining competitive advantage though a little attention has been devoted to investigating the phenomena from small and medium enterprise (SME) perspective. Accordingly, this study investigates how open innovation orientation leads nurturing greater innovation and acquiring greater sustainable goals and specifically, how entrepreneurial orientation and resource bricolage facilitate the whole process. Drawing upon a sample of 442 SMEs, the study followed a quantitative approach to investigate the focal research question. The results reveal that open innovation orientation of SMEs significantly influences on nurturing greater innovation and attaining sustainable goals in long-run while the entrepreneurial orientation drives the whole process. The study also finds that the resource bricolage plays a significant role in converting SMEs more open innovation oriented and fostering greater innovation. By doing so, this study provides noteworthy theoretical and managerial insights.
Highlights
Opening organizational boundaries for external knowledge sources as a primary strategy in fostering innovation is at the core of ‘open innovation’ phenomena (Chesbrough, 2003; Christensen et al, 2005; Piller and Walcher, 2006)
The extant literature on open innovation phenomena has predominantly emerged from the experiences of large corporate conglomerates (e.g. Chesbrough, 2003; Dodgson et al, 2006; Laursen and Salter, 2006; Motzek, 2007) while far too little attention has been paid to validate the findings from small and medium enterprise (SME) perspective
Alligned with broad business and management literature, a considerable amount of SME research has been on mere financial indicators in assessing SME performances, (Artiach et al, 2010; Morioka and Carvalho, 2016; Wood, 2010) and how SMEs attempt on achieving overall sustainable goals is still unexplored and needs considerable academic scrutiny
Summary
Opening organizational boundaries for external knowledge sources as a primary strategy in fostering innovation is at the core of ‘open innovation’ phenomena (Chesbrough, 2003; Christensen et al, 2005; Piller and Walcher, 2006). ‘size’ being a staple determinant of resource ownership and capabilities (Garmestani et al, 2006; Gibb Dyer, 2006), compared with large corporates, SMEs’ access to new knowledge is certainly constrained due to the limited investments on new knowledge generation and exposure for quality network partners (GruenbergBochard and Kreis-Hoyer, 2009; McGrath and O’Toole, 2010; Torkkeli et al, 2012) This doesn’t necessarily mean that SMEs are ‘one-man-islands’ though the research to date has generated little understanding on SMEs practise open innovation orientation as a strategic approach to generating new knowledge. The study contributes to open innovation literature with its SME context specific investigations on the phenomena since open innovation orientation is a key identified antecedent of nurturing greater innovation and attaining increased sustainable goals. The contribution to the theory, practice and limitations are discussed
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