A Project-Level Approach to Green Open Innovation

Abstract

Innovation is a crucial dimension for the transition to a greener Europe, a process that has accelerated notably in the latest years. An open mode has been applied to those innovation that mitigate the impact of economic activities on the natural environment, which is green open innovation (GOI). This is approach is mainly driven by the importance of stakeholders and the specificity of environmental fields, which call for a greater role of the external collaboration in green innovation. Although the interest of management scholars and practitioners in GOI has increased enormously, the empirical GOI literature has overlooked a project-level approach. Firms may have heterogenous openness across different projects depending on the characteristics of the projects or the strategic objective of the firm. This paper contributes to GOI literature by investigating whether green projects are more open than non-green projects in terms of breadth and depth of knowledge sources. Based on a dataset of projects funded by Seventh European research framework, the results confirm the greater openness of environmental-related research projects. These results corroborate the necessity for managers to apply an open mode to green innovation, especially in highly competitive calls such as the European Union framework program.