The purpose of the paper is to illuminate the costs and benefits of crossing firm boundaries in inbound open innovation (OI) by determining the relationships among partner types, knowledge content and performance. The empirical part of the study is based on a survey of OI collaborations answered by R&D managers in 415 Italian, Finnish and Swedish firms. The results show that the depth of collaboration with different partners (academic/consultants, value chain partners, competitors and firms in other industries) is positively related to innovation performance, whereas the number of different partners and size have negative effects. The main result is that the knowledge content of the collaboration moderates the performance outcomes and the negative impact of having too many different kinds of partners. This illustrates how successful firms use selective collaboration strategies characterized by linking explorative and exploitative knowledge content to specific partners, to leverage the benefits and limit the costs of knowledge boundary crossing processes.

PurposeMany companies claim they are adopting an open approach to innovation, but each of them with its own way. This paper aims to explore the different models for opening up the innovation process adopted in practice.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employs an extended survey among Italian manufacturing companies; cluster analysis; and ANOVA.FindingsThe study distinguishes four different open innovation models with respect to two variables, representing the degree of openness: the number and type of partners with whom the company collaborates (partner variety) and the number and type of phases of the innovation process actually open to external collaborations (innovation phase variety). They are: open innovators, closed innovators, integrated collaborators and specialised collaborators. The paper describes each cluster in terms of firm‐specific variables that characterize and support open innovation choices; finally, it tries to draw some tentative explanation of the influence of openness on the innovative performance of companies.Research limitations/implicationsThe number of respondents is still limited (i.e. about 100). Moreover, only the relationship between some firm‐specific factors and the degree of openness (defined specifically in terms of partner variety and phase variety) is studied: a wider investigation is recommended to include more contextual factors, i.e. external/environmental ones, or more variables that can help to define the openness degree.Practical implicationsThe paper provides managerial implications because it suggests that open innovation is not an “on/off” choice, but it can be interpreted and adopted with different degrees, consistently with the company's specific context.Originality/valueThe paper introduces a new perspective that integrates both the number/typology of partners and the number/typology of phases, in order to understand if such a perspective can confirm the existence of different open innovation models.

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PurposeMany companies claim they are adopting an open approach to innovation, but each of them with its own way. This paper aims to explore the different models for opening up the innovation process adopted in practice.Design/methodology/approachThe paper utilises an extended survey among Italian manufacturing companies, cluster analysis and ANOVA.FindingsThe study distinguishes four different open innovation models with respect to two variables, representing the degree of openness: the number and type of partners with whom the company collaborates (partner variety), and the number and type of phases of the innovation process open to external collaborations (innovation phase variety). They are: open and closed innovators, integrated and specialized collaborators. The paper describes each cluster in terms of firm‐specific variables that characterize Open Innovation choices; at last, it tries to draw some tentative explanation of the influence of openness on the innovative performance of companies.Research limitations/implicationsThe number of respondents is still limited (about 100). Moreover, it studied only the relationship between some firm‐specific factors and the degree of openness (in terms of partner and phase variety): a wider investigation is recommended to include more variables to define the openness degree and more contextual factors.Practical implicationsThe paper provides managerial implications because it suggests that open innovation is not an “on/off” choice, but it can be interpreted and adopted with different degrees, consistently with the company's specific context.Originality/valueThe paper introduces a new perspective that integrates the number/typology of both partners and phases, in order to understand if such perspective can confirm the existence of different open innovation models.

Open firms are not equally successful. This is because, in order to benefit from external sources of knowledge, firms must be able to absorb such knowledge. The paper outlines a firm’s context as a set of organizational and social features, which may be considered absorptive capacity antecedents. It explores the mediating role of such antecedents in the relationship – hitherto insufficiently researched – between the degree of openness\ud and innovative performance. The use of a methodology combining both direct interviews and survey of Italian firms has allowed us to confirm the supposed mediating role. We also identify different modes for companies to open up their innovation process and, for each of them, the antecedents that are consistent with choices regarding the degree of openness

Knowledge management (KM) is relatively new, but still a very hot topic in management research and practice. Leading companies are reshaping their organizations in order to increase their ability in managing knowledge sharing and transfer within and across their organizational boundaries. KM is today considered by many scholars the next arena for global competition. Product innovation (PI), in particular, is one of the most promising areas, where KM is today applied and studied. Management literature has underlined how knowledge becomes the only source of sustainable competitive advantage in turbulent contexts, and the cognitive perspective represents the most adequate approach to analysing and understanding PI as a continuous learning process rather than as a sporadic event. Since the early 1990s, many contributions emerged from different fields, but after nearly one decade, KM is not yet a unitary stream of literature but reflects very diverse roots. In this paper, the different streams and approaches emerging in literature on KM in PI are reviewed and described, aiming at providing researchers with an interpretative tool and some directions for further research.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) still compete on efficiency/flexibility in manufacturing existing relatively stable products. This source of competitive advantage will hardly be viable in the near future for Western Europe SMEs that have to compete with low cost companies from Eastern Europe and developing countries. To survive, they will rather have to improve products and processes, exploiting their intellectual capital in a complex network of knowledge-intensive relations inside and outside their boundaries. The managerial challenge, then, consists of creating new knowledge management (KM) configurations ± in terms of technological and organizational tools ± leading to organizational models sustainable from the competitive point of view. By providing quick and easy access to external sources of knowledge, new information and communication technologies (ICT) can erase traditional constraints on SMEs innovation ability and foster intra/inter-organizational integration. In the area of product innovation (PI) the use of Internet based applications, product data management (PDM)[1], virtual prototyping, computer aided design (CAD), is expected to substantially reshape the overall KM process

Challenged by competition pressures and unprecedented pace of change, firms can no longer choose whether to concentrate on the needs of today's customers or on the anticipation of those of tomorrow: they must be excellent in both. This requires managing two related balancing acts: on the one side, being excellent in both exploitation and exploration of their capabilities and, on the other side, being excellent in managing both incremental and radical innovation. These balances are critical since exploitation and exploration, on the one side, and incremental and radical innovation, on the other, require different approaches that have traditionally been considered difficult to combine within the same organization. Working on evidence and discussion from the 7th CINet Conference held in Lucca (Italy) in 2006, this Special Section is aimed at contributing to theory and practice on these two complex balancing acts that today represent a hot issue in innovation management