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The purpose of this paper is to explore open innovation (OI) collaborations between high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large customers. The research aims to add new insights into how smaller firms attract and build trusting relationships with larger customers for the purpose of innovation, and to highlight customers’ contribution in SMEs’ innovation process.

This exploratory research is based on three case studies and adopts a process perspective to gather qualitative data on OI collaborations, focusing on the inherent dynamics, and evolution in long-term relationships.

The study provides insights into how SMEs develop OI relationships with both industry and research customers by building trust through various mechanisms. Motivated by the potential benefits of OI in strengthening the firms’ technological edge, the SME managers proactively and strategically developed and managed their OI relationships. The results proved that large customers contributed greatly to the SMEs’ innovation processes both directly and indirectly.

The research provides advice for smaller firms which are considering adopting an OI strategy with customers through mechanisms such as trust building and enhancing legitimacy.

The research adds to the OI literature on SMEs by exploring how smaller firms manage OI challenges, exploit benefits, and develop trusting relationships with larger customers and research institutions.

This paper aims to explore how born global firms (BGs) in business to business (B2B) markets balance the mix of physical and virtual networking through social media to gain access to resources throughout their internationalization process. Further, the research seeks to understand these firms’ network dynamics in their continual adaptation to changing resource requirements throughout the internationalization process.

This research adopts a multiple case study approach based on in-depth interviews with founders and key informants in BGs in the software industry, supplemented with extensive secondary data.

Results reveal that networking through social media is efficient and can be used to access vital resources and to build trusting relationships in a B2B context, yet in combination with physical networking. This research found several boundary conditions related to the mix of physical and virtual networking, i.e. the relationship culture in the industry, strategic importance of partner/customer, type of product complexity and managers’ perceptions of the usefulness of social media in a B2B context. These conditions could evolve over time.

This research contributes to enhanced understanding of how resource-constrained BGs balance the mix of physical and virtual networking through social media in a B2B context, influenced by boundary conditions, achieving a network dynamic to advance internationalization.