Implementing open innovation: technological, organizational and managerial tools

Abstract

Implementing open innovation: technological, organizational and managerial tools The concept of open innovation (OI) has generated great interest in the last decade (Chesbrough, 2003); many articles have appeared and interesting special issues (SIs) in prestigious journals have been published (Enkel et al., 2009; West et al., 2014), while others are forthcoming (Corvello et al., 2017; Bogers et al., 2016). This means that OI has been and still is a “hot-topic,” with firms asking academics to help them define specific issues such as the “who” issue, i.e. with whom the collaboration should take place (Laursen and Salter, 2006), the “when” issue, i.e. which phase(s) of the innovation process should be opened (Lazzarotti and Manzini, 2009) and the “how” issue, i.e. how openness should be implemented. As regards the “how,” too little attention continues to be dedicated to the set of tools firms can use to support the implementation of OI and, hence, to how firms can create a positive environment that encourages people to leverage existing technological capabilities outside the boundaries of the organization (Hung and Chou, 2013; Aloini et al., 2015; Lazzarotti et al., 2015) or to capture and benefit from external sources of knowledge in order to enhance current technological developments (Huizingh, 2011), thus – achieving a positive impact on performance (Caputo et al., 2016). Building on literature on innovation and knowledge management, we define such a set as the emergent or intentional system of Technological (information and communication technologies (ICT)), managerial and organizational tools through which the firm influences the collaborative behavior of people inside the firm with the external partners, as well as the collaborative behavior of the partners along the innovation funnel, from the idea generation up to the commercialization phase. Basically the main question is: what are the technological, managerial and organizational (TMO) tools that firms can use along all the phases of the OI process? It is from this perspective that this editorial will propose two interpretive lenses through which the contributions of this SI will be presented: the first concerns the TMO tools that support OI, and the second, the OI process along which the tools are adopted

Management Innovation and Open Innovation: For and Towards Dialogue

“…Three now well-known processes describe the possibilities of openness (Gassmann & Enkel, 2004;Enkel et al, 2009): the inside-out process (or outbound process), the outside-in process (or inbound process) and the coupled process, and they are not mutually exclusive (Aloini et al, 2017). Based on a literature review covering 150 articles published in the best journals, Dahlander and Gann (2010) enrich this typology by introducing a distinction between pecuniary and non-pecuniary dimensions of openness.…”

“…This must of course be considered in the light of the extensive research on absorption capacities deriving from the work of Cohen and Levinthal (1990). The outsidein process aims to enhance the corporate knowledge base, and is founded on integration of technologies from a variety of partners: suppliers, competitors, research centres (Aloini et al, 2017). In line with the distinction defined by Dahlander and Gann (2010), it results from transactional mechanisms via "acquiring" logics, or non-transactional mechanisms in "sourcing" logics.…”

“…Huizingh (2010), too, observes that understanding openness requires the study of "OI practices" related to the still largely underexplored 'how to do it' question. More recently, on the same question, Aloini et al (2017Aloini et al ( , p. 1086) also note with regret that 'too little attention continues to be dedicated to the set of tools firms can use to support the implementation of OI'. As this shows, the literature on OI offers a vast field of research that explicitly integrates the organizational and managerial dimension of openness, taking into consideration structures, instruments and practices at different levels of analysis.…”

“…Such is the case of the open innovation (OI) paradigm that has been mobilized to identify the antecedents, obstacles or even effects of product innovations (Gassman et al, 2010). More precisely, through the OI paradigm the research on TI has highlighted the importance of organizations being open to actors outside their boundaries (Chesbrough, 2003;Dahlander, Gann, 2010;Chesbrough, Bogers, 2014;Aloini et al, 2017;Bogers et al, 2018); However, OI paradigm has thus not been clearly mobilized in its own right in the research on MI, as if it were only relevant to TI. A very recent analysis of the field of MI by Khosravi et al (2019) supports this view indicating that the literature on MI rarely covers questions specifically concerning OI.…”

“…The authors concerned consider that research regarding 'formal and informal organisational structures and managerial tools that support different forms of openness ' (2018, p. 23) is still in its infancy. Aloini et al (2017Aloini et al ( , 1086 find it regrettable that 'too little attention continues to be dedicated to the set of tools firms can use to support the implementation of OI'. More generally, knowledge is lacking on 'how to organise for OI?'…”