Open Innovation Research Research Articles

The microfoundations of open innovation: CEO overconfidence and innovation choices

How to successfully drive open innovation (OI) has been an important issue. However, the existing literature on the determinants of OI mainly focuses on organizational and contingent factors, and the “human side” of it is still not well understood, which also motivates us to explore it more deeply. This paper attempts to link upper echelon theory with OI research using data from a large sample of Chinese listed companies to investigate how the overconfident tendency of the CEO affects his or her preference for different OI modes. At the same time, what role do other top management team (TMT) members play in this process. The results show that overconfident CEOs favor market and organization‐oriented OI over technology‐oriented OI, and TMT governance can moderate such relationship, that is, as the level of TMT governance increases, the preference of overconfident CEOs for market and organization‐oriented OI will be weakened, avoiding the negative effect of excessive adoption of such activities on firm performance. By focusing on the human side of OI, this paper adds to the literature on the impact of strategic leadership, namely the influence of key individual CEO and other executives within the organization on OI management, which is also a response to the emphasis that more attention should be paid to the microfoundations of OI in the future.

The role of open innovation hubs and perceived collective efficacy on individual behaviour in open innovation projects

The effectiveness of a company's open innovation (OI) strategy strongly depends on the performance of the innovation projects it launches. However, OI research has dedicated only scant attention to the role played by the behaviour of individuals involved in these projects. This study focuses on the role played by an open innovation hub (OIH), an in‐house unit supporting and accelerating OI initiatives, and investigates how OIHs influence the innovative behaviour of employees involved in innovation projects. In particular, this study employs social cognitive theory as a theoretical lens and investigates the role of project members' collective efficacy. Specifically, we developed two hypotheses that were tested using empirical analysis, with survey data from 134 individuals involved in OI projects and operating in 16 Japanese companies. Our study contributes to the literature by illuminating how the perceived collective efficacy of the employees involved in an innovation project influences their behaviours. We find that the support offered by an OIH strengthens the project members' perceived collective efficacy and, in turn, supports their innovative behaviour.

Open innovation research landscape

Subject. This article explores the global space of scientific research in the field of open innovation. Objectives. The article aims to shape a landscape of scientific developments in the field of open innovation. Methods. For the study, we used the methods of bibliographic and bibliometric analyses. Results. Analysis of the activity of Russian and foreign researchers of the problems of open innovation does not reveal clearly dominant regional clusters of publication activity. In terms of the number of views, Russian publications are not inferior to foreign ones. However, these positive statistics do not correlate with the relatively low citation of Russian scientific articles indexed by the Scopus system in comparison with the average value of this indicator. Conclusions. The issues of the digital infrastructure of open innovation, business transformation in the space of innovation networks, as well as the organization of research and development in the system of open innovation are of growing interest.

A Relational Dimension of Open Innovation: Towards A Comprehensive Strategic Communication Research Agenda

ABSTRACT Open innovation is a strategic phenomenon that has arisen in corporate life since the beginning of the 21st century. The management of this process involves a communicative dimension that both management and communication scholarship have overlooked over the last twenty years. At the same time, communication management in open innovation processes enacts the strategic nature of the discipline and practice. However, there is scant knowledge and evidence to be found in this discipline, despite the fact that the topic itself calls for deeper exploration of mainly a relational and communicative phenomena. We argue for the promotion of a comprehensive research agenda that entails delving into the theoretical and empirical challenges of the strategic communication discipline in open innovation. Likewise, this article responds to the call for greater interdisciplinary research. Findings include six research gaps, the examination of nine research lines, as it relates to discussion of specific methods/methodologies which would fill those gaps. Moreover, the proposed research pathways map out a starting-point for the future of this growing field of inquiry while also positioning strategic communication as a catalyst discipline and practice that will help to foster open innovation management and research.

The interplay of open innovation and strategic innovation: Unpacking the role of organizational learning ability and absorptive capacity

We explore the open innovation research model in order to remove barriers in service organizations, where lack of knowledge is the main barrier to innovation. The purpose of this paper is to propose a research model exploring the relationship between open innovation, organizational learning ability, absorptive capacity, and strategic innovation. In this study, we collected data from 330 pharmaceutical companies in Lahore and Karachi (Pakistan). The Structural equation model analysis was used through analysis of moment structures and statistical package for the social sciences to check the relationship between the variables. The results reveal that hypotheses related to innovation have been accepted. The findings of this study are evidence that various types of open innovation have different effects on strategic innovation. The inbound and outbound open innovation directly affects strategic innovation; the mutual effect of exploitative learning ability and explorative learning ability between open innovation and strategic innovation have indirect effects. Similarly, the empirical findings of absorptive capacity also significantly impact open innovation and organizational learning ability. This study contributes to the theory by introducing exploitative and explorative learning abilities as mediators between open innovation and strategic innovation. Moreover, it analyzes how absorptive capacity may enhance learning abilities through the open innovation phenomenon. Practically, this study would help the managers understand and improve organizational productivity and gain competitive advantage by creating, sharing, and utilizing knowledge through internal and external avenues.

Open and sustainable: An emerging frontier in innovation management?

The concepts of openness and sustainability have both enjoyed an increasing popularity in recent scientific literature. However, research has yet to fully utilize their combination and the potential carried toward developing strategies and policies toward solving complex sustainability issues. The primary objective of this paper is to identify and describe the theoretical connections between sustainability and open innovation. We investigate the structural and statistical aspects of recent open innovation literature in search of signs of sustainability using bibliometric metadata and perform a content analysis of articles relevant to Sustainable Open Innovation. Our findings indicate that despite a lack of institutionalized use of sustainability-related keywords, circa nine per cent of the sample articles materially discuss aspects of sustainability or societal concerns from various perspectives, but also lack a holistic and unified approach. As our primary contribution, we shift the level of inquiry in Sustainable Open Innovation research from an organizational-level toward a multi-level system understanding, situating our findings regarding open and sustainable forms of innovation present in the literature as a framework containing the individual, organizational, city, and regional levels and their interconnections.

Open Innovation Process for Inter-Organizational Projects

Open Innovation (OI) research has covered various organizational forms in dimensions of durability (permanent versus temporary organizing) and organizational scope (intra- or inter-organizational). Inter-organizational forms - both temporary and permanent – are regarded mainly as modes of OI. However, these organizational forms also act as initiators of OI activities to extend knowledge transfer across the inter-organizational consortium borders, which is hardly researched. To address this gap, the research presented in this article develops an OI process for inter-organizational projects (IOP) as initiators of OI. The initial model is developed by action research with an IOP of museums and educational institutions implementing a series of hackathons. The model’s applicability is then evaluated for other IOPs by a survey, indicating the model’s suitability for practitioners. Findings point to the importance of collaborative activities for aligning the OI initiative with both individual partners’ and common project goals, while outbound activities are regarded least important despite the time-limitation of the project. The research is limited by its focus on the specific IOP environment of EU-funded projects and the small scope of the survey.

Examining Open Innovation in Science (OIS): what Open Innovation can and cannot offer the science of science

ABSTRACT Scholars across disciplines increasingly hear calls for more open and collaborative approaches to scientific research. The concept of Open Innovation in Science (OIS) provides a framework that integrates dispersed research efforts aiming to understand the antecedents, contingencies, and consequences of applying open and collaborative research practices. While the OIS framework has already been taken up by science of science scholars, its conceptual underpinnings require further specification. In this essay, we critically examine the OIS concept and bring to light two key aspects: 1) how OIS builds upon Open Innovation (OI) research by adopting its attention to boundary-crossing knowledge flows and by adapting other concepts developed and researched in OI to the science context, as exemplified by two OIS cases in the area of research funding; 2) how OIS conceptualises knowledge flows across boundaries. While OI typically focuses on well-defined organisational boundaries, we argue that blurry and even invisible boundaries between communities of practice may more strongly constrain flows of knowledge related to openness and collaboration in science. Given the uptake of this concept, this essay brings needed clarity to the meaning of OIS, which has no particular normative orientation towards a close coupling between science and industry. We end by outlining the essay’s contributions to OI and the science of science, as well as to science practitioners.

The Relationship Between Persuasion Cues and Idea Adoption in Virtual Crowdsourcing Communities

Building on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and absorptive capacity, this study develops a four-dimensional model of idea adoption in Virtual Crowdsourcing Communities (VCCs) and examines the influence of different persuasion cues on idea adoption. The research model was tested using hierarchical logistic regression based on a dataset from the Tableau community. The results show that both community recognition of users and community recognition of ideas are positively related to idea adoption. Proactive user engagement has a significant positive impact on idea adoption, while reactive user engagement has no significant impact. Idea content quality, represented by idea length and supporting arguments, has an inverted U-shaped relationship with idea adoption. Community absorptive capacity positively moderates the curvilinear relationship between idea content quality and idea adoption. These results contribute to a better elucidation of the persuasion mechanisms underlying idea adoption in VCCs, and thus provide important implications for open innovation research and practice.

Crowdsourcing for Innovative Knowledge: effects of Knowledge Synthesis and Centralised Communication Position

ABSTRACT As innovation is increasingly generated via crowdsourcing, factors that enable or impede collective innovation deserve a closer examination. This study advances the literature by examining the roles of knowledge synthesis and communication positions in open innovation challenges. Analysing 3,200 posts generated from 21 organisation-sponsored online crowd-based open innovation challenges. This study showed that when knowledge contributors occupy centralised positions in online knowledge collaboration, they are less likely to generate innovative knowledge, and the benefit obtained from synthesised knowledge tends to be hampered by the contributor’s centralised position in the interaction. This study adds a new dimension to explaining crowdsourcing for innovation by incorporating a perspective of communication position into crowdsourcing and open innovation research. It also sheds light on the practice of crowdsourcing by highlighting the design of platforms that can promote the synthesis of crowd members’ shared knowledge while encouraging diverse voices from non-centralised members of the crowd.

Application of Blockchain for Supply Chain Financing: Explaining the Drivers Using SEM

Owing to the lack of research in emerging Asian nations, this research aimed to unearth the determinants of blockchain acceptance for supply chain financing by a Bangladeshi financing company called IPDC. Centred on a technology acceptance framework called UTAUT (unified theory of acceptance and use of technology) and open innovation research, an expanded model with a mediating variable is developed for this study. This research work employs the deductive inference method in conjunction with the positivism paradigm. A structural questionnaire was used to gather data, which were then processed through Smart-PLS (partial least square) for SEM (structural equation modeling). The survey includes all the people who are directly or indirectly involved in the supply chain financing platform of IPDC. The study consists of seven direct hypotheses and one mediating hypothesis. The results show that all the direct hypotheses except the impact of social influence on the behavioural intention to use (BINTU) blockchain are significant. The mediating hypothesis indicating the role of BINTU in the relationship between facilitating conditions (FCON) and the actual use of blockchain is also supported. FCON and BINTU together explain 88.7% variation in blockchain use behaviour for supply chain financing. The research advances past findings by employing an expanded UTAUT framework and validating observations with the other relevant studies throughout the world.

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR RADICAL INNOVATION IN THE NEW DIGITAL AGE

The beneficial value of leveraging external networks in the innovation process has sparked widespread attention by open innovation scholars. With the rise of novel digital technologies such as social media, the opportunity space for accessing a multitude of external knowledge outside the organisation has significantly expanded. For instance, social media is currently not only vital in monitoring the COVID-19 outbreak, but also in leveraging knowledge to find a treatment for coronavirus. Nevertheless, theory and empirical evidence on how user integration using novel technologies such as social media affects radical innovation remains scarce and inconclusive. Using data obtained from 269 senior managers in new product development departments, this study reveals that the use of social media tools for new product development positively impacts radical innovation. The positive relationship is further strengthened by higher levels of an organisation’s technology acceptance of social media. However, we also find that routinisation with social media technology weakens the positive relationship, suggesting that frequent social media users may be more vulnerable to the systemic challenges of social media tools. This study advances open innovation research and information systems literature, elevating the controversial and debated impact of customer integration and information technology for radical innovation into the digitisation era.

Crowdsourcing for Innovative Knowledge: Effects of Knowledge Integration and Social Network Position

As innovation is increasingly generated via crowdsourcing, factors that enable or impede collective innovation deserve a closer examination. This study advances the literature on crowdsourcing for innovation by examining the roles of knowledge integration and social network position in open innovation challenges. It tests the differential main effects and the interaction effect of knowledge integration and contributors’ centralized network position on collective innovation by analyzing 3,200 posts generated from 21 organization-sponsored online crowd-based open innovation challenges. Findings showed that when knowledge contributors occupy a centralized position in the networked interaction, they are less likely to generate innovative knowledge, and the benefit obtained from integrated knowledge tends to be hampered by being centralized in online interaction. This study adds a new dimension to explaining crowdsourcing for innovation by incorporating a social network perspective into crowdsourcing and open innovation research. It also sheds light on the practice of crowdsourcing by highlighting the design of platforms that can promote the integration of crowd members’ shared knowledge while encouraging diverse voices from non-centralized members of the crowd.

Open innovation for institutional entrepreneurship: how incumbents induce institutional change to advance autonomous driving

Without fundamental institutional change, such as a change in laws and regulations, many new technologies cannot achieve their full potential. Efforts to induce institutional change in favor of such technologies are, therefore, increasingly critical for innovative firms. To study how German automotive firms induce change that accommodates autonomous driving (AD) solutions, we conducted a case study research encompassing analysis of 31 interviews, internal archival documents, and media data. Taking the firm as the level of analysis, we identify ten practices employed by innovating incumbents in the three steps of creating saliency for change, mitigating reservations against the desired change, and institutionalizing it. We find that these practices involve shaping‐oriented and adaptation‐oriented knowledge flows. Through the combined use of these practices throughout the three steps, firms ‘open up’ their development process, utilizing purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to advance innovation. Our findings contribute to the literature on open innovation and institutional entrepreneurship and suggest that future open innovation research can profit from adopting an institutional entrepreneurship perspective.

Sustainability project partnerships in times of crisis: conceptual framework and implications for stakeholder integration

PurposeThis paper aims to analyze the requirements for stakeholder integration in sustainability project partnerships in times of sustainability crisis. Referring to the COVID-19 pandemic as a sustainability crisis that has sensitized consumers and other stakeholders to corporate responsibility for social and sustainability issues, a conceptual framework for stakeholder integration is developed from which implications for designing the potential, process and result quality are derived.Design/methodology/approachIn this conceptual paper, design options for stakeholder integration are derived from open innovation and service management research. Specific crisis-related determinants of stakeholder integration are derived from current corporate social responsibility (CSR) and crisis research taking into account the opportunities and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Design options and crisis-related determinants are then combined to a conceptual framework for stakeholder integration in sustainability project partnerships in times of crisis. Based on this framework, research propositions are derived that provide insights into the design of the potential, process and result quality of stakeholder integration.FindingsThis paper shows that the COVID-19 pandemic can be viewed as a sustainability crisis, which places special entrepreneurial demands on stakeholder integration in sustainability project partnerships. The pandemic offers potential for integrating a large number of stakeholders and has emphasized the need for integrating a broad range of stakeholders. Higher skepticism of stakeholders toward companies' CSR engagement in the pandemic has raised stakeholder demands for early integration. Higher skepticism and CSR involvement have rendered active forms of integration even more relevant, which, however, should still be adapted to the respective stakeholder prerequisites. The pandemic has increased the need for constant and comprehensive exchange of data on project results between stakeholders and the project leading organization. Measurement of target achievement can be promoted by establishing stakeholder commitment with regard to the target measures on the collective and relationship levels of the partnership. Finally, the pandemic has reinforced the need for more dialogical forms of communicating sustainability project results.Originality/valueSolving problems and exploiting opportunities in times of crisis require a high degree of entrepreneurship and creative leadership in order to gain new ideas and overcome resource deficits. Sustainability project partnerships in which various stakeholders contribute resources and knowledge to collaborate on idea development and finding solutions to sustainability issues are suitable for this. However, previous approaches to stakeholder integration in open innovation and service management research largely neglect the crisis context and only a few are related to sustainability. In CSR and crisis research, stakeholder-related approaches to coping with crises tend to be underrepresented, and the comprehensive concept of stakeholder integration has so far hardly been considered as an approach to crisis management. By taking into account the COVID-19 pandemic as a sustainability crisis, this paper provides new impulses for the integration of stakeholders in sustainability project partnerships in times of crisis. Recommendations for the design of the potential, process and result quality are derived, which provide insights for project leaders and stakeholders alike. In addition, implications for public policymakers are derived, who are assigned an increasingly active role in the pandemic and who can contribute to the success of sustainability project partnerships by setting suitable framework conditions. The developed concept can be expanded to include further company-related determinants and offers a starting point for empirical analysis in the still underexplored research fields of sustainability-oriented relationship marketing and sustainability crises.

Network analysis of open innovation in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

ABSTRACT Open innovation (OI) is a crucial strategy regardless of sector, public or private, or academic or practical. However, the concept itself is often considered abstract and broad. Therefore, this study explored the coauthorship network and its groups to empirically observe the phenomenon of an open innovation. It also examined the semantic network of subject fields in open innovation research. We used coauthorship data to observe collaboration among authors. To examine how an open innovation is conceptualised and explained in academia, we used the abstracts of papers and the classification data of the journals where the papers were published. The results of the analysis found a mainstream group, which is a small group-to-group connection. We observed that the small groups are connected by key authors. We found that a social network of authorship and a semantic network of abstracts are both closely related. Our results provide a deeper understanding of an open innovation.

Open Innovation for Sustainability or Not: Literature Reviews of Global Research Trends

The demand for innovative approaches applied to productive sectors is a reality present in the circular economy and open innovation is a relatively new concept that has revolutionized the literature about innovation management. Since the concept appeared in 2003, many articles have focused on its development and application. Although some studies have connected open innovation with sustainability, the relevance of this current on the global literature about open innovation is still unidentified. In this context, this paper tries to cover this gap with a bibliometric analysis focused on the evolution of the open innovation paradigm and the relevance of sustainability in this field of research. A sample of 3087 papers published between 2003 and 2019 in the Scopus database was obtained. The analysis revealed the main topics and the most prolific journals, authors, institutions, and countries, in terms of productivity, citations, and h-indexes. Besides of these contributions, keywords analysis reveals that, in recent years, sustainability and ecosystems are decisive variables in open innovation research.

The 18th Open & User Innovation Conference (OUI 2021): Book of Abstracts

The International Open and User Innovation (OUI) Conference is the leading academic conference on user innovation and open innovation, two closely related paradigms that have changed our thinking about innovation and creativity in the last decades. Organized by the Open & User Innovation Society since 2002, the OUI Conference brings together about 300-400 researchers from around the world to exchange recent research in open innovation, user innovation, open source/open hardware, collaborative innovation, citizen/free innovation, open innovation policies, and related topics. In 2021, the Institute for Technology & Innovation Management at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, hosted the 18th edition of this conference. The community of scholars meeting at OUI is characterized by a very open, developmental academic culture sharing plenty of feedback and ideas. The conference targets mainly an academic audience of faculty, senior researchers, and PhD students, but is also open to reflected practitioners and policy makers interested in open and user innovation. The OUI is truly multidisciplinary, covering disciplines such as innovation management, strategic management, organization design, marketing, intellectual property rights, entrepreneurship, and public policy, but also health care, psychology, and industrial engineering and design. In the center of the conference are its academic tracks, presenting both latest research (full presentations) and research ideas & proposals – hence providing a glimpse into the future of OUI: Open Social Innovation: Healthcare, Sustainability, and Societal Challenges; Open and User Innovation Platforms; Lead users, Toolkits, and User Identification; Firms‘ Capabilities and Interaction for Open and User Innovation; Crowdsourcing and Distributed Problem Solving; Crowdfunding and User Entrepreneurship; Institutions, Innovation Law, and Policy; Open Software, Open Hardware, and Makers; Diffusion of Open and User Innovation; The Internet of Production: Industry 4.0, User Process Innovation, and Data Ecosystems.

How has external knowledge contributed to lithium-ion batteries for the energy transition?

SummaryInnovation in clean-energy technologies is central toward a net-zero energy system. One key determinant of technological innovation is the integration of external knowledge, i.e., knowledge spillovers. However, extant work does not explain how individual spillovers come about: the mechanisms and enablers of these spillovers. We ask how knowledge from other technologies, sectors, or scientific disciplines is integrated into the innovation process in an important technology for a net-zero future: lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), based on a qualitative case study using extant literature and an elite interview campaign with key inventors in the LIB field and R&D/industry experts. We identify the breakthrough innovations in LIBs, discuss the extent to which breakthrough innovations—plus a few others—have resulted from spillovers, and identify different mechanisms and enablers underlying these spillovers, which can be leveraged by policymakers and R&D managers who are interested in facilitating spillovers in LIBs and other clean-energy technologies.

The many shades of ‘openness’: an application of item response theory to open innovation research

This study addresses one of the most basic research questions investigated in the Open Innovation (OI) literature: how open are firms? This question has remained partially unanswered given the challenges encountered by empirical research in assessing the relevance of specific OI practices within the OI model, as well as the types of activities perceived by managers as OI benefits or concerns. To provide an answer to this question, we suggest a framework using Item Response Theory to improve over current measures of firms' openness and test it on a sample of 383 technology‐based SMEs. Our theoretical model conceives openness as an instance of how firms make decisions regarding the adoption of different OI practices based on their evaluation of OI benefits and concerns. Focusing on the relationship between firm‐level differences in terms of openness and the types of OI practices adopted by these firms, we show that significantly different levels of ‘OI maturity’ are required to broaden the scope of external partnerships and to shift from non‐pecuniary OI modes (relation‐based approaches) toward pecuniary (transaction‐based) practices. Our results have relevant implications for the OI literature and provide new managerial insight into OI adoption.