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This paper aims to present a framework that includes six essential factors and four strategic intervention points that provide the necessary context to sustain and support innovation.

Based on our academic and consulting experience, this article summarizes our knowledge of what it takes to be a top innovator and how organizations should best pursue innovation agendas. The model presented is supported by our research which considers assessments from 3,642 employee responses assessing the innovation cultures of organizations.

We find that companies need to ask six questions to assess their innovation cultures. These questions relate to creativity, incentives, processes, leadership, knowledge management and resources. Our framework presents four intervention points to support implementing and sustaining an innovation culture including objectives, behaviors and actions, context and management for execution.

Our framework is effective, but we acknowledge that there are other means to creating and sustaining an innovation culture.

We present six questions that companies need to ask themselves to assess their innovation culture and offer strategies to enhance it.

Given the contribution of innovation culture to competitiveness and performance, our recommendations will allow managers to set themselves apart from their competition and further their financial and nonfinancial corporate objectives.

Everyone likes the idea of change, but it is the process of change that is difficult. We offer strategies that put such intentions to work.

Prior innovation orientation research has mostly focused on performance consequences, with some recent work examining its relationship with innovative practices such as open innovation. Yet, despite this growing body of open innovation research, there are still gaps and limitations. Notably, most prior studies have been conducted in Europe, limiting their generalizability to the rest of the world, and are replicative, exploring performance and competitive outcomes. There is very limited work examining the potential limitations of open innovation. This study extends innovation orientation research and examines the limitations of open innovation in North America.

This study explores the relationships between innovation orientation and performance, open innovation and performance and innovation orientation and open innovation among 386 North American companies.

This study is novel as it examines the relationships between innovation orientation and performance, open innovation and performance and innovation orientation and open innovation among North American companies. The research uncovers a linear relationship between innovation orientation and performance, a correlation between innovation orientation and open innovation and a counterintuitive curvilinear relationship between open innovation and performance. The curvilinear relationship, shaped as an inverted u-shape, suggests there are limitations to the strategy's effectiveness, actionable insight to companies, consultants and scholars alike. In the discussion section, findings are further unpacked with regard to their implications for the scholarly literature. The paper concludes with managerial considerations for creating an innovation orientation and the most effective level of open innovation for maximum competitive and performance implications.

Beyond the innovation orientation and open innovation research contributions, this study offers managerial insight for executives seeking to enhance competitiveness and drive firm performance.