Why Inbound Open Innovation Practices are Driven in Japanese Manufacturing Firms: Technological Turbulence, Competitive Intensity

Abstract

As an engine of innovation, more companies focused on the importance of open innovation (OI) practices and utilize external resources (e.g. technologies, information). It is meaningful to show that what kinds of drivers influence the degree how companies proceed inbound OI practices and the extent of the innovation performance. Especially, there were few empirical evidences about environments in Japan, so by researching about relations between the awareness about external environments and OI practices in Japan, new insights should be provided. Purpose of this paper is to clarify the relations among external environments (technological turbulence, competitive intensity), inbound OI practices and OI performance with the empirical evidence based on the survey towards Japanese companies. This survey was conducted toward Japanese larger companies belonging to the manufacturing industry by mail in December 2016. In the process of the evaluation about the hypotheses, this paper utilized structural equation modeling.