How open is innovation?

This paper is motivated by a desire to clarify the definition of ‘openness’ as currently used in the literature on open innovation, and to re-conceptualize the idea for future research on the topic. We combine bibliographic analysis of all papers on the topic published in Thomson's ISI Web of Knowledge (ISI) with a systematic content analysis of the field to develop a deeper understanding of earlier work. Our review indicates two inbound processes: sourcing and acquiring, and two outbound processes, revealing and selling. We analyze the advantages and disadvantages of these different forms of openness. The paper concludes with implications for theory and practice, charting several promising areas for future research.     

The rich or the poor? Personal resources,do-it-yourself,and innovation in the household sector

Household sector innovation is significant in scale and scope. Thus far, it has been studied in isolation and with mixed evidence regarding the role of personal resources (consumers' income and discretionary time). We recognize that household sector innovation is embedded in the broader phenomenon of do-it-yourself (DIY) by consumers, as the literature reveals conceptual similarities, parallel motivations, and antecedents. The main distinction is that, whereas DIY goods may replicate existing products, household sector innovation is restricted to goods embodying a novel function. We explore if studying household sector innovation and DIY in an integrated framework helps to resolve previous inconsistent evidence on the role of personal resources. Based on a neoclassical model in which agents optimize their time allocation, we hypothesize that income and discretionary time positively relate to their DIY output, but—given that agents develop DIY goods—we hypothesize that income negatively relates to innovation. For discretionary time, we formulate a research question regarding its effect on innovation which we answer empirically. Our findings suggest that consumers with more personal resources derive more process benefits from DIY but that these benefits crowd out individuals' focus on the function of their objects, hence, the likelihood of developing innovations. Survey data from the United Arab Emirates (n = 2728) confirm our suppositions, showing that the relationship between personal resources and household sector innovation is more refined than suggested by previous studies.     

Organizational and human resource management and innovation: Which management practices are linked to product and/or process innovation?

We examine the determinants of firms’ innovation success, using the firm-level data from the Japanese National Innovation Survey. We focus on the relationship between organizational and human resource management practices for research and development (R&D) and product/process innovation. We find that interdivisional cooperation/teams and the creation/relocation/integration of R&D centers are positively associated with both product and process innovation. Having board members with an R&D background is positively associated with product innovation, implying that top-down R&D decision-making may be important for firms to introduce new products. Among the factors examined, personnel assessment reflecting R&D outcomes appears to have an especially strong relationship with product innovation. Moreover, the positive relationship between the creation/relocation/integration of R&D centers and innovation success suggests that drastic organizational changes can work as a clear signal of firms’ determination to pursue an innovation-oriented strategy and help to accelerate innovation success.     

Coherence or flexibility? The paradox of change for developers’ digital innovation trajectory on open platforms

Innovation is a cumulative process in which past knowledge created by others can be both a source for predictable outcomes and also a barrier to significant change. The recent literature on digital innovation suggests that open platforms, which encourage their developers to build upon each other's knowledge when innovating their add-on apps in the periphery, face a related paradox. Developers face the tension of either being coherent with the past, or flexible to adjust to the future. In this paper, we examine how the trade-off between coherent and flexible search mechanisms affects the individual developer's choice of innovating a certain app as well as his or her cumulative impact, i.e., the degree of modifications to the app. We study an open platform in the multi-disciplinary field of nanotechnology, in which 480 developers perform more than 30,000 problem-solving actions over a period of 10 years. We use relational event modeling to differentially assess the effect of the coherent and flexible search strategies. We find that developers are significantly more likely to choose a certain app that is consistent with both a coherent and flexible strategy. However, a coherent strategy leads to greater cumulative impact on an app compared to a strategy of being mutually coherent and flexible. Thus, our findings indicate both a complementary and a contradictory logic in how the tension between coherence and flexibility unfolds. We make contributions to the recent literature on digital innovation as well as the innovation literature more broadly. Further, our results inform innovation policy and platform design.     

Internal innovation or external innovation? An organizational context-based analysis in China

The purpose of this paper is to explore how enterprises choose innovation pattern from the perspective of internal organization context. This article distinguishes between internal innovation and external innovation, such that human capital and information structure are the core factors affecting firm's choice decision for internal or external innovation. Based on a survey in China, this study analyzes the relationships among specific human capital, information structure and innovation pattern. Further we also examine the moderating effect of cooperative motivation including R&D motivation, technical learning motivation and strategy motivation. The results suggest that with the degree of specific human capital increase, enterprises tend to choose internal innovation pattern and with the information structure more dispersed/horizontal, enterprises more tend to choose internal innovation pattern. What's more, motives related to research and development, and technology learning are two relatively significant moderators in the relationships among specific human capital, information structure and innovation pattern.     

Can behavioural biases in choice under novelty explain innovation failures?

This paper proposes a new framework of ‘behavioural innovation economics’ as a synthesis of behavioural economics and innovation economics in the context of choice under novelty. The standard heuristics and biases framework of behavioural economics is applied to map and analyze systematic choice failures in the innovation process by distinguishing between choice under uncertainty and choice under novelty. Behavioural biases that affect choice under novelty are then elaborated. The paper then suggests 10 ways in which choice under novelty is behaviourally hard, rendering innovation subject to characteristic failure along these behavioural dimensions.     

Ambidexterity lost? Compromising innovation and the exploration/exploitation plan

Although innovation is central to a firm's success and a top priority for most technology managers, firms commonly report disappointment that innovation outcomes do not match their original plans. This paper examines the difference in intended innovation and realized innovation using an exploration/exploitation framing. Its focus is on changes to defined innovation plans that occur after planning phases end. Extant literature and field research form the basis for hypotheses that are then tested using a large scale survey of an entire population of small and medium-sized high-technology enterprises (SMEs).Findings of compromised exploration in favor of exploitation, during the development phase, is quantified. Firms divert resources away from novel emergent exploration and into existing product development, thereby undercutting innovation plans. Intended innovation, established during the planning stages, is found to be compromised.Our hypotheses, that agency and resource dependence underpin a shifting between explorative and exploitative development, have support. The paper's theoretical contributions include the application of novel agency and resource dependence perspectives onto innovation. It informs ambidexterity research by indicating where, how much, and why erosion in the balance of exploration/exploitation occurs and provides new avenues for research into low innovation outcomes.     

How and when information proactiveness leads to operational firm performance in the banking sector of Pakistan? The roles of open innovation,creative cognitive style,and climate for innovation

Utilizing the assumptions of the Resource-based theory, this study examined how and why new, rare, and inimitable resources in the form of information proactiveness motivation influence operational firm performance. We hypothesized open innovation as a mediator between information proactiveness motivation and operational firm performance. We also hypothesized the interactive effects of an individual’s creative cognitive style and information proactiveness motivation on open innovation whereas climate for innovation and open innovation jointly influence operational firm performance. A temporally segregated data (n = 260) was collected in three-time intervals from employees working in the banking sector of Islamabad, Pakistan. Utilizing the PROCESS approach, the findings of the study indicate that open innovation mediates the relationship between information proactiveness motivation, and operational firm performance. Moreover, the creative cognitive style was found to moderate the relationship between information proactiveness motivation and open innovation whereas climate for innovation emerged as a moderator between open innovation and operational firm performance. This research focused on unique information and contextual resources which directly and indirectly play significant roles in promoting the firm's open innovation and subsequent operational firm performance.     

The politics of research and innovation: Understanding instrument choices in complex governance environments – the case of France and Italy

What governments desire to achieve, and how they want to accomplish their goals, represent the core of any policy design process. However, it is still unclear how partisan politics, in its combined effect with path-dependency forces, influence policy makers’ choices over alternative instrument mixes. Through a comparative analysis of Research and Innovation (R&I) instrument choices in countries characterized by different paradigmatic models of policy (Italy and France), the paper investigates how the politics of different cabinets influence the formulation of national R&I strategies and the extent to which these decisions are constrained by the legacy of previous choices. By capitalizing on a new proposed treatment of policy instruments, the paper contributes to the definition of the types of tools found in policy mixes, investigating how national R&I instrument mix variations develop. The results of the analysis indicate how the selection of R&I policy instruments does not closely follow traditional left versus right-wing political cleavages, and their evolution is generally influenced by a combination of different context-dependent dynamics. However, when partisan acceptance of consolidated R&I instrument mixes across cabinets is present, this triggers a consolidating effect on path-dependency forces.     

Testing future societies? Developing a framework for test beds and living labs as instruments of innovation governance

Test beds and living labs have emerged as a prominent approach to foster innovation across geographical regions and technical domains. They feed on the popular “grand societal challenges” discourse and the growing insight that adequate policy responses to these challenges will require drastic transformations of technology and society alike. Test beds and living labs represent an experimental, co-creative approach to innovation policy that aims to test, demonstrate, and advance new sociotechnical arrangements and associated modes of governance in a model environment under real-world conditions. In this paper, we develop an analytic framework for this distinctive approach to innovation. Our research draws on theories from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Innovation Studies, as well as in-depth empirical analysis from two case studies – an urban smart energy campus and a rural renewable energy network. Our analysis reveals three characteristic frictions that test beds face: (1) the limits of controlled experimentation due to messy social responses and co-creation activity; (2) a tension between lab-like open-ended experimentation and pressures to demonstrate success; (3) the opposing needs of local socio-cultural specificity and scalability, i.e. the inherent promise of test bed outcomes being generalizable or transferrable because the tested “model society” is presumed to represent a future society at large. These tensions suggest that thinking of test beds as mere technology tests under real-world conditions is insufficient. Rather, test beds both test and re-configure society around a new set of technologies, envisioned futures, and associated modes of governance – occasionally against considerable resistance. By making social order explicitly available for experimentation, test beds tentatively stabilize new socio-technical orders on a local scale in an “as-if” mode of adoption and diffusion. Symmetric attention to the simultaneous co-production of new technical and social orders points to new opportunities and challenges for innovation governance in test-bed settings: Rather than mere enablers of technology, test beds could serve as true societal tests for the desirability of certain transformations. This will require rethinking notions of success and failure, planning with a view towards reversibility, and greater scrutiny of how power is distributed within such settings. Likewise, rather than envisioning test beds as low-regulation zones to drive innovation, they could be strategically deployed to co-develop socially desirable governance frameworks in tandem with emerging technologies in real-time.     

Varieties of innovation and business survival: Does pursuit of incremental or far-ranging innovation make manufacturing establishments more resilient?

The transition from an industrial economy to an innovation economy poses two critical questions for the manufacturing sector in advanced countries. First, given the diffusion of modern manufacturing practices around the world, what level of innovation (incremental, more far-ranging, or radical) is most likely to support a resilient domestic manufacturing sector? Second, are assumed differences in the innovative capacity across space likely to hasten the decline of rural manufacturing? To answer these questions this research combines comprehensive measures of self-reported innovation able to reliably differentiate incremental and more far-ranging innovation with establishment-level data able to examine the geographical distribution of these different innovation strategies. The data used for the analysis includes a two-period panel of manufacturing establishments surveyed in 1996 and 2013 with annual employment data indicating survival in the intervening years. Our findings suggest that long-surviving manufacturing plants overwhelmingly gravitate away from non-innovation strategies toward incremental or more far-ranging innovation orientations. A survival advantage of far-ranging innovation over incremental innovation is observed for standalone firms. We do not identify a difference in the innovation orientations of rural and urban manufacturing establishments.     

The social as the heart of social innovation and social entrepreneurship: An emerging area or an old crossroads?

This paper aims to contribute to the conceptual debate on the connection between social innovation and social entrepreneurship, considering the role of the ‘social’ within this connection. Supported by a systematic literature review (SLR) with an in-depth analysis of 34 articles from Scopus-indexed and Web of Science databases journals, this paper identifies, analyzes and describes the difficulties and opportunities in the social innovation and social entrepreneurship literature. Little is known about the link between both concepts and the influence of the ‘social’ in their development and implementation. This SLR was conducted to identify and describe definitions and patterns. Results show that the connection between social innovation and social entrepreneurship is in its take-off phase, but it still is a fragmented field with a huge lack of consensus. Thus, it will be important to see where the field will head, as this paper aims to be a first step in the understanding of social innovation and social entrepreneurship through a collective and integrated perspective, providing an elucidation of the different perspectives of the literature.     

Is open innovation imprinted on new ventures? The cooperation-inhibiting legacy of authoritarian regimes

Extant research explores the role played by individuals and, in particular, founders in defining open innovation strategies at the firm level. We join this discussion by combining insights from imprinting literature that explores the enduring impact of a founder's personal history, with inputs from literature that stresses the impact of past experience on trust formation. We suggest that founders are less likely to engage in open innovation if their experiences engender a generalized lack of trust. We use a unique database that includes East and West German founders to identify regional differences in activities conducted by authoritarian regimes that could inhibit trust. We find that founders who were exposed to high levels of secret police surveillance in the former socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) are less likely to engage in interfirm R&D cooperation. We contribute to the literature on open innovation by exploring how a founder's social, political, and cultural backgrounds influence strategic decisions related to open innovation, and to recent imprinting literature by showing that variation in oppressive enforcement practices in authoritarian regimes, such as surveillance activities, can leave an enduring imprint. Our findings complement recent insights on ideological imprinting effects on young firms’ decision-making.     

Same but different? Research and technology organizations,universities and the innovation activities of firms

Research and Technology Organizations (RTOs) and universities are important elements of countries’ innovation systems. As they are both halfway between science and industry, they are often considered to be the same thing. However, recent studies have stressed the differences between the two. In this paper, we analyze the innovative characteristics (impacts and types of innovation and internal R&D investments) of firms that collaborate with RTOs versus universities. Our study is based on statistical analysis of Community Innovation Survey micro-data (CIS 2012). Our results suggest that firms that see RTOs as more important sources of knowledge than universities have a higher probability of developing service innovation, invest less in internal R&D but are less likely to introduce new, groundbreaking innovations into the market. These results have significant policy and management implications, especially regarding the different but complementary contributions offered respectively by RTOs and universities.     

Sicily or the Sea of Tranquility? Mapping and naming the moon

In their race to provide the ultimate guide to the moon, two 17th-century astronomers proposed lunar maps and nomenclatures that they hoped would gain international currency. But the names we use today were those proposed by the Jesuit, a friend of Galileo's persecutors, in a book whose purpose was to refute the Copernican system once and for all. We now believe that Riccioli was wrong about the universe, but why do we still use his nomenclature? The keys to this foundational visual debate in astronomical image-making are the moon maps themselves.     

Concurrent development and strategic outsourcing: Do the rules change in breakthrough innovation?

Concurrent development activities and strategic supply chain management have become staples of the new product development (NPD) process over the last 15 years. Although this is beneficial, often the advice given comes in a “generic” form, based on the assumption that the similarities among NPD efforts are more important than the differences between them. However, variation in the radicalness of projects can make a significant difference in the way that they should be managed. This paper explores the processes associated with the development of radical new products. Based on interviews with project managers and engineers in the United States and Japan, this paper puts forth three propositions, which we summarize in a model aimed to help managers decide whether the “degree of radicalness” of the product may require changes in the organization's NPD process.     

Managing the “Fuzzy front end” of open digital service innovation in the public sector: A methodology

There are many obstacles to effective open innovation in the public sector context, especially at the “fuzzy front end” (FFE), where the need or opportunity is known but serious resources have not yet been committed to possible solutions. In this paper, we report on a theoretically inspired and practically tested methodology for FFE public sector digital innovation. The methodology was purpose-built for the context and has been progressively refined using reflection-on-practice, but broadly consists of a hybrid of private sector open innovation practices, and agile software development processes. We outline the background, context, principles, stages and artefacts. Then we evaluate the method in terms of barriers and opportunities to FFE public sector innovation. We note that establishing the necessary context: a nurturing environment; cross-agency commitments in cash and in kind; and boundary spanning appointments, is as important to success as is the detailed execution of the method.     

Do innovation measures actually measure innovation? Obliteration,symbolic adoption,and other finicky challenges in tracking innovation diffusion

Although innovation diffusion is a central topic in policy and strategy, its measurement remains difficult – particularly in cases where the innovation is a complex and possibly ambiguous practice. In this paper, we develop four theoretical mechanisms that may bias diffusion markers by leading to the understatement and/or overstatement of diffusion at different points in time. Employing the case of “green chemistry,” we then compare three different diffusion markers – keywords, database index terms, and domain expert assessments – and we demonstrate how they lead to differing conclusions about the magnitude and timing of diffusion, organizational demography, publication outlets, and collaboration. We also provide suggestive evidence of extensive “greenwashing” by particular organization types and in particular countries. Building on these findings, we point to potential challenges with existing diffusion studies, and we make a case for the incorporation of practitioners in construct measurement and for the integration of comparative metrics in diffusion studies.     

Users as innovators? Exploring the limitations of user-driven innovation

Considering users as innovators has gained considerable support over the past 30 years. Eric von Hippel’s work in this area forms a significant part of the theoretical underpinning and evidence behind this concept. Many further studies have been undertaken to support it. It has contributed to our understanding of innovation management in general and new product development in particular. Even so, Lüthje and Herstatt emphasise that empirical findings are scarce and that the most radical innovations of the last 35 years were not developed by users. Thus, in this paper we critically review the lead-user theory and focus on three specific areas of weakness of the lead-user concept (conceptual, methodological, empirical), and argue that improvement in these areas would considerably strengthen its standing. We conclude that although lead users can contribute to the innovation process, this contribution should not be overstated, and that insufficient attention has been paid to the limitations of this theory.     

Customer’s role in knowledge management and in the innovation process: effects on innovation capacity and marketing results

Scholars have acknowledged customer knowledge management (CKM) as a key strategic resource for improving innovation and supporting long-term customer relationship management. This study provides a deeper understanding of the internal antecedents of business innovation capacity overcoming previous approaches. A model that had not previously been tested was used to analyse the role of customer collaboration and CKM – measured as a second-order construct – in innovation processes and marketing results. To test the model, structural equation modelling (partial least squares) was applied to a random sample of 210 Spanish companies. Results confirm that CKM and customer collaboration are antecedents of innovation capacity and marketing results. Furthermore, the effect of CKM is greater than the effect of customer collaboration. This paper provides a basis for managers to encourage innovation in their companies and explains how managers can improve marketing results.