ORGANISATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF OPEN INNOVATION: AN ANALYSIS OF INTER-INDUSTRY PATTERNS

Abstract

Although Open Innovation has been a highly researched and debated topic in the last decade, many relevant issues remain largely unexplored so far. An interesting question to address is whether and how Open Innovation has a dissimilar impact on the organization and management systems of firms working in different industries. The paper investigates this topic using a rich empirical basis gathered through 8 case studies involving large Italian corporations, which operate in heterogeneous industries. Managers will find a number of insights about how to streamline the adoption and institutionalization of Open Innovation practices, taking into account the specificity of the firm and the industry in which it works. The empirical analysis shows that some firms tend to leverage exploitative inter-organizational networks, characterized by strong ties and by the presence of several heterogeneous actors such as customers, suppliers and universities. Moreover, they establish dedicated units to institutionalize structured and formalized screening processes for managing Open Innovation projects. Other firms enter instead into networking relationships mainly for explorative purposes, establishing weak ties with public research centers or universities. They adopt more informal, ad-hoc structures and evaluation procedures, very often embedded in the already existing R&D departments. The paper explains that such differences descend from a number of industry-level variables, i.e., R&D intensity, strength of the appropriability regime, turbulence and uncertainty.