Innovation Success in the Context of Inbound Open Innovation

Abstract

The concept or paradigm of open innovation has gained more and more attention over the last couple of years. Firms see open innovation nowadays as an important capability to build and maintain innovativeness, even in dynamic global markets. Nevertheless, there is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the question which factors determine successful innovation within the open innovation environment. In this regard, based on the dynamic capabilities view, we hypothesise that a firm’s openness, its absorptive capacity and its flexibility primarily determine innovation success in in-bound open innovation environments. To test these hypotheses, we analyse a large scale survey sample of 496 German manufacturing companies from different industries by applying structural equation modelling. As a main result, we find evidence for a positive association between the three mentioned constructs and innovation success.

External knowledge search, absorptive capacity and radical innovation in high-technology firms

“…These results are similar to those reported in previous research, which, in general terms, found a positive effect of AC on innovation performance (e.g., Escribano et al, 2009;Nitzsche, Wirtz, & Göttel, 2016). More specifically, with regards to Hypothesis 3 on the influence of potential AC, results confirm its positive effect, suggesting that it is worth investing in processes and routines that facilitate greater recognition and assimilation of external knowledge to enhance radical innovation.…”

Renewing the sawmill industry: studies on innovation, customer value and digitalization

“…The findings enable a fluent progress of the innovation project and support organizational learning, but only if the firm has an ability to utilize external knowledge (Rosell, 2014). To foster two-way information transfer, organization-wide positive attitudes toward external knowledge and its sharing are necessary (Nitzsche et al, 2016;Rosell, 2014), in addition to trust. As the motivations for collaboration may not always be reciprocal, both the buyer and the supplier need to understand why the cooperation is taking place and what advantages are expected.…”

“…Although criticized as being "old wine in new bottles" (Christensen et al, 2005;Trott & Hartmann, 2009), and lacking a consistent theory (Gassmann et al, 2010), the emerging interest in new ideas and collaboration technologies makes the topic relevant (Remneland-Wikhamn et al, 2011). Consequently, academic research in the field of open innovation has rapidly increased over the last years (Linton, 2012;Nitzsche et al, 2016).…”

“…The first step in change toward a customer-oriented business (i.e., service-based business) is to embrace customer orientation as an organization-wide attitude: organizational values, norms, artifacts (e.g., stories, rituals) and behaviors (Homburg et al, 2000), including a firm's attitude toward new technologies and its ability to exploit them (Matt et al 2015). By fostering an open attitude toward customer-focus, a firm can improve its relevance for its customers through relationship closeness (Primo & Amundson 2002), more efficient information transfer (Rosell, 2014;Nitzsche et al, 2016) and the ability to address customers' changing and emerging demands (Lenka et al, 2017).…”

Sequential Coherence: A Novel Determinant of Open Innovation Performance

“…Absorptive capacity defined as the ability of an organization to recognize the value of external knowledge, assimilate it and use for commercial ends [28] is often used by researchers in explaining open innovation [52]. It is associated with both inbound and outbound OI practices [61] [62] [63]. Zahra & George (2002) argue that potential absorptive capacity comprising knowledge acquisition and assimilation and realized absorptive capacity that include transformation and exploitation are capabilities built upon each other to produce dynamic organizational capabilities in order to enhance innovation performance.…”