Fifty shades of innovation – from open toward user, and open collaborative forms of innovation – an overview

Abstract

Starting from the Schumpeterian producer-driven understanding of innovation, followed by user-generated solutions and understanding of collaborative forms of co-creation, scholars investigated the drivers and the nature of interactions underpinning success in various ways. Innovation literature has gone a long way, where open innovation has attracted researchers to investigate problems like compatibilities of external resources, networks of innovation, or open source collaboration. Openness itself has gained various shades in the different strands of literature. In this paper the author provides with an overview and a draft evaluation of the different models of open innovation, illustrated with some empirical findings from various fields drawn from the literature. She points to the relevance of transaction costs affecting viable forms of (open) innovation strategies of firms, and the importance to define the locus of innovation for further analyses of different firm and interaction level formations.

Open innovation in the context of organisational strategy

“…The opening of innovation processes is related to the ability of an enterprise to absorb knowledge from its surroundings. However, the ability to absorb Engineering Management in Production and Services knowledge can become an obstacle to seeking and acquiring knowledge (Cohen-Levinthal, 1990;Faludi, 2014;Matricano et al, 2019). Large businesses have a better knowledge-absorption ability and often a lower demand for external sources, and it is the other way around for smaller enterprises (i.e.…”

“…Large businesses have a better knowledge-absorption ability and often a lower demand for external sources, and it is the other way around for smaller enterprises (i.e. higher demand for external knowledge, but a much poorer absorption ability; Barge-Gil, 2010;Faludi, 2014;Matricano et al, 2019). The levels of "openness" of innovation processes in an enterprise are presented in Tab.…”