SMEs’ Open Innovation: Applying a Barrier Approach

Abstract

This article identifies barriers that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) encounter when they openly innovate, according to the open innovation (OI) mode used (inbound, outbound, coupled). A qualitative analysis—involving seven case studies of SMEs active in digital (high-tech) or social economy (low-tech) sectors—reveals that they face more internal than external OI barriers. Overall, the nature of the barriers does not vary across OI modes, but their intensity does. With regard to external barriers, the results reveal a “tribe syndrome,” such that SMEs resist opening up to other firms that do not share the same values.

Worldwide Research on Open Innovation in SMEs

“…OI is driving companies to reinvent themselves and participate in this innovation process [12,13]. This business model allows firms to be more effective at creating and capturing value, obtaining collective intelligence and saving costs, time and new revenue opportunities [14][15][16]. The study of this type of innovation has various approaches, such as the triple helix model of university-industry-government collaborative relationships [17][18][19], governance theories [20,21] and absorptive capacity [22][23][24].…”

“…The study of this type of innovation has various approaches, such as the triple helix model of university-industry-government collaborative relationships [17][18][19], governance theories [20,21] and absorptive capacity [22][23][24]. In addition, other authors have inquired about its effects on requirements and strategies [16,25,26], levels of engagement [27,28], practices and routines for managing open innovation [29][30][31] and risks and barriers [16,32,33].…”

“…Despite this importance, these types of companies face limitations compared to large firms, such as scarcity of monetary funds [29,42,43], difficulty in hiring specialized workers [44][45][46], leadership deficiencies [47], lower absorptive capacity [48] and deficiencies in value capture [49,50]. However, their size can offer some advantages, such as focusing on a niche market to increase their expertise, flexibility and speed in implementation and decision making [16,38,51].…”

Lean and Green Product Development in SMEs: A Comparative Study between Small- and Medium-Sized Brazilian and Japanese Enterprises

“…This is coherent with the increasingly important role SMEs play in innovation. These firms often lack resources to develop and commercialise new products in-house and consequently, are more often motivated or forced to collaborate with other organisations [11,97]. The development of relations with universities and research institutions is recommended for enhancing the innovation process for manufacturing SMEs [98].…”

Impeding factors for the generation of collaborative innovation performance in ecosystem-based manufacturing

“…According to Almpanopoulu et al (2019, p. 6357), "a comprehensive understanding of barriers and constraining mechanisms is largely absent in the innovation ecosystem literature". Moreover, there are calls for future studies to clarify typologies and managerial perceptions and differentiate innovation barriers and barriers for open and collaborative innovation to develop a clear understanding of the generation of collaborative innovation performance (Bag et al, 2022;Dubouloz et al, 2021;Dziurski and Sopiska, 2020).…”