The world in which today's businesses operate has become not only riskier but also more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). Organizations that hew too closely to traditional ways of operating will be hampered in their ability to succeed. In contrast, those that focus on new product and process developments coupled with business model innovation will leverage their dynamic capabilities. An essential overlay is entrepreneurial leadership from top management teams. Strong dynamic capabilities are impossible without it. This article examines how business model innovations, dynamic capabilities, and strategic leadership intertwine to help organizations thrive in VUCA worlds.

Open innovation has become well established as a new imperative for organizing innovation. In line with the increased use in industry, it has also attracted a lot of attention in academia. However, understanding the full benefits and possible limits of open innovation still remains a challenge. We draw on strategic management theory to describe some of these benefits and limits. More specifically, we develop a dynamic capabilities framework as a way to better understand the strategic management of open innovation, which can then help to better explain both success and failure in open innovation. With this background, as guest editors we introduce select papers published in this Special Section of California Management Review that were originally presented at the fifth annual World Open Innovation Conference, held in San Francisco, California, in December of 2018.

Universities play an important role in innovation ecosystems. In addition to developing human capital and advancing technology, they are increasingly expected to participate as economic development partners with industry and local, state, and national governments. Models such as the “Triple Helix” have been advanced to frame the assessment of interactions among academia, industry, and governments that may foster economic development. Such models highlight the boundary-spanning roles of universities and provide a predetermined list of actions universities could take to strengthen their ecosystem. Unfortunately, the flexible and entrepreneurial management of universities required to make this model work has virtually been ignored in the academic literature. We propose the dynamic capabilities framework to guide how universities might manage their innovation ecosystems. We use this framework to analyze the role of the university throughout the ecosystem lifecycle. These concepts are then illustrated with three case studies of universities that have engaged with partners in local economies to launch new industries, fostering entrepreneurship, and revitalize neighborhoods.

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