The Role of Tertius Iungens in Open Innovation Projects

Abstract

This paper deals with the managerial and organizational factors (structures, actors involved, knowledge management systems) leading firms to engage into open innovation projects. After a literature review on open innovation in the software industry, it reviews the role of proximity in the organization of innovation processes. Based on the analysis of two case studies in the proprietary software industry (one exploitation and one exploration innovation case), this paper confirms that spatial proximity may be a favorable but not a sufficient condition to generate the success of open innovation projects. The development of socioeconomic proximity including both coordination and resource-based proximity comes across as a key success factor. The analysis reveals that a third party can play a decisive role in fostering socio-economic proximity between partners. These third parties can be considered as tertius iungens in Obstfeld’s sense (2005). The paper highlights some differences between the exploration and t...