Crossing Horizons: Leveraging Cross-Industry Innovation Search in the Front-End of the Innovation Process

Abstract

Open innovation" and "external search" for new ideas are central topics in the recent discourse in innovation research. External search helps firms to identify new opportunities for innovation and alleviates the risks of local search. It is widely acknowledged that novel ideas regularly emerge from the combination of distant pieces of knowledge and interaction with "idea suppliers" from distant knowledge domains. However, the current discussion on open innovation has hardly touched upon the question of how firms can systematically search for cross-industry innovation inputs in the fuzzy front-end of the innovation process. This paper links relevant concepts of cognitive psychology and management theory -such as analogical problem solving and the principle of isomorphism -with open innovation in the front-end. It discusses relevant dimensions of systematic search for innovation across industries. A piloted framework is presented that assists firms in systematically and interactively searching for external innovation inputs in distant industries. This framework supports external innovation search in distant industries for a fuzzy customer problem. The results of this participatory action research indicate that a systematic and interactive search process is of practical value to innovation managers. It also points out contingencies of cross-industry innovation search.

R&D Internationalization and Green Innovation? Evidence from Chinese Resource Enterprises and Environmental Enterprises

“…By means of R&D internationalization, REs and EEs have opportunities to acquire diversified and complementary knowledge as well as other R&D resources in the external space [41], which may lead to a high level of green innovation. Second, R&D internationalization helps REs and EEs participate in the richness of ties and networks maintained by other enterprises [42][43][44] and interact with a large number of organizations within those networks. Those ties and networks can serve as an importation source such that teams import ideas or relevant information from contacts outside of the team into the team domain [45][46][47].…”

When general recommendations fail: how to search in single innovation project settings

“…While many anecdotic examples of cross-industry innovation (Herstatt and Engel, 2006;Gassmann et al, 2010) were reported, only first insights on the cross-industry process itself exist (Herstatt and Engel, 2006;Gassmann and Zeschky, 2008;Brunswicker and Hutschek, 2010). Moreover, there are first hints on the outcome of cross-industry innovation such as helping to cut development costs and speeding up the process of NPD (Kalogerakis et al, 2010).…”

“…Moreover, external knowledge may help overcome a firm's inner competency traps (Levinthal and March, 1993) which might especially be relevant for industries with rapid technological developments (Powell et al, 1996) or in a rapidly changing environment (Wang and Chen, 2009). Cross-industry innovation is a specific framework (Brunswicker and Hutschek, 2010) under the open innovation umbrella for accessing external sources from outside a firm's own value chain. It focuses on transferring knowledge from a foreign industry to a firm's own context in order to solve creative problem-solving tasks and to develop innovations.…”

How Do Firms Open Up the Front-End of Service Innovation? A Case Study of It-Based Service Firms in Thailand

“…Specifically, the open teams might try to increase their information-processing capacity by exploring and assimilating information and knowledge externally (Brunswicker and Hutschek, 2010;Chang et al, 2012), and to share the information-processing burden by co-developing new products or services with external partners (Ettlie and Pavlou, 2006;Tsou and Chen, 2012). Furthermore, we also found that in open cases, customers were involved early.…”

“…Firstly, to acquire and assimilate ideas and knowledge from external sources (Chang et al, 2012;Chiang and Hung, 2010) and, secondly, to co-develop with external partners, such as suppliers, customers, competitors, universities, firms in other industries etc. (Brunswicker and Hutschek, 2010;Fey and Birkinshaw, 2005;Oliveira and von Hippel, 2011;Ordanini and Parasuraman, 2011). This is termed as "inbound openness" by Chesbrough (2003), who argues that openness underlies innovation success by allowing the innovating firms to lower R&D cost, increase innovation productivity and newness, and reduce time to market (Chesbrough, 2003;Enkel et al, 2009).…”