Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into the barriers faced by clusters as open innovation intermediaries. Literature review and an empirical study were performed, involving a nation-wide survey, case studies, and in-depth interviews with cluster actors involved in open innovation activities. This article conceptually links open innovation and clusters in the context of the fourth industrial revolution, empirically identifies barriers hindering open innovation in clusters, and indicates factors that might affect the open innovation processes in networked ecosystems. The findings confirm that the perception of barriers hindering open innovation in clusters differs between clusters already implementing open innovation and those which are still not active in this area. The findings contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the potential roles of clusters as open innovation intermediaries in the context of transitioning economies. With clusters playing a role in open innovation intermediary, public support at cluster level could increase openness to cooperation not only for member companies, but all participants in the regional innovation ecosystem.
Highlights
The fourth industrial revolution is a concept of organizational and technological changes along with value chains integration and new business models development that are enabled by innovative technologies, connectivity, and IT integration [1]
Regional clusters seem to provide a conducive environment to open innovation (OI) because significant and beneficial improvements to OI processes are induced by the geographical proximity [5,6,7]
The findings of the survey study show that 17 out of 31 examined clusters (55%) engaged actively in open innovation activity, i.e., undertook at least one type of open innovation actions from the nine actions listed in the survey
Summary
The fourth industrial revolution is a concept of organizational and technological changes along with value chains integration and new business models development that are enabled by innovative technologies, connectivity, and IT integration [1]. To maintain and leverage capability to collaborate, it is necessary to manage open innovation models, involving different actors in the collaboration process, with different motivations and purposes [2]. The concept of open innovation (OI) holds that innovation capabilities are spread among many actors of an innovation ecosystem [2,3,4]. Simard and West [8] recognized regional clusters as a perfect framework to analyze OI because of the existence of two pivotal factors: networking involving many actors and the flows of knowledge. The majority of existing literature, has concentrated on a micro-level view [10,11]
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