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This paper aims to shed light on how family firms execute open innovation strategies by managing internal and external knowledge flows.

First, through a comprehensive literature review, the paper identifies the barriers to the acquisition and transfer of knowledge in open innovation processes. Second, it presents and discusses the results of an exploratory case study on Loccioni, an Italian family firm providing high-tech measurement solutions, highlighting how this family firm managed to overcome the barriers in executing an open innovation strategy.

The case study shows that Loccioni faced specific challenges in acquiring and transferring knowledge in its open innovation processes and developed two idiosyncratic capabilities – labelled imprinting and fraternization – that helped the firm overcome the barriers to knowledge acquisition and transfer. The analysis shows that these two capabilities are enabled by the distinctive goals and social capital characterizing family firms.

The paper creates a link between open innovation and family business research with an empirically grounded model illustrating how the idiosyncratic capabilities of a family firm help overcome the critical barriers to the acquisition and transfer of knowledge in executing an open innovation strategy.

Open innovation (OI) is now recognized as one essential innovation paradigm to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) quell their liability of newness and smallness. However, little is known about SMEs’ OI barriers, particularly in emerging economies. Drawing on both network and transaction cost theory, this study aims to explore the barriers to SMEs’ OI adoption in Ghana.

The study adopted an exploratory sequential research design that involved both qualitative and quantitative study methodologies. A total of 644 responses (21 survey interviews and 623 usable questionnaires) across SMEs in Ghana were collected and analyzed in the study. A qualitative analysis involving quotations extracted from the respondent’s statement was used to present the qualitative findings, whereas SEM-partial least square, co-variance approach, was used to analyze the formulated hypotheses.

Results show that significant barriers to SMEs OI adoption are collaboration barriers – difficulty in finding the right partners and problems of cooperation and coordination of operational functions; organizational barriers – lack of flexible internal procedures and structures and organizational inertia; and strategic barriers – opportunistic behavior of partners and lack of strategic and resource fit. Contrary to existing findings, financial and knowledge barriers were disclosed as driving factors, rather than barriers, to SMEs’ OI adoption; these findings challenge conventional thinking about SMEs’ major OI barriers.

This study focuses on only SMEs in one emerging economy, namely, Ghana, which may limit the generalization of the findings.

The findings of this study, while limited to Ghana, offer useful insights to SMEs managers, development practitioners and policymakers respecting the overall importance of the OI model, its associated impediments, as well as the strategic measures to quell those barriers.

This study provides a pioneering empirical investigation into the main barriers to SMEs’ OI adoption in a less-explored emerging market context through a mixed research approach.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the current practices in “corporate-startup collaboration” and “Open Innovation” (OI) in Europe. OI has increasingly become mainstream. A growing number of European corporates are adopting OI approaches to innovate and benefit from a more agile business environment. As Henry Chesbrough – the father of OI – finds out, there is “no single best model for engagement”. It highly depends on the goals that companies want to achieve. Models and approaches of corporate-startup collaboration are continuously evolving. A study of the variety of their effective-implementations in a real business context is therefore beneficial.

For the purpose of this research, the authors analyzed the European corporates that are considered as “innovation leaders” according to “SEP Europe’s Corporate Startup Stars” annual ranking. According to experts’ evaluations, these companies represent the most advanced case studies in open innovation. The paper analyses the experience of 31 European large corporates implementing effective corporate-startup collaboration. The research approach is exploratory and descriptive.

By adopting a practitioner-oriented perspective, the authors contribute to shed new light on how European corporates adopt OI and internalize arising innovations across organizational boundaries. Six key areas of OI activities have been identified and compared based on required resources’ commitment. Nearly all of the corporates have implemented low-commitment strategies such as organizing one-off startup events and/or sharing free resources with startups. By contrast, only a limited number of corporates engaged actively through acquisitions (M&A), which requires the highest level of commitment. Startup procurement and investments seem to be the most effective approaches to startup-corporate collaboration, while corporate accelerators and innovation outposts are adopted by only nearly half of the companies considered.

Although the research is not a comprehensive survey, it is useful to identify current and future trends of successful corporate-startup collaboration as well as best practices by European leading companies working at the forefront of OI.

This study provides evidence of the main trends in corporate-startup collaborations, both opening up their innovation processes for mutual benefits. The results have important implications both for corporates and policy makers since the study also highlights the main barriers that hinder successful corporate-startup collaborations. Although many of the analyzed corporates report to have introduced “startup-friendly procedures” – including shortening payments times, simplification of vendor registration and qualification process – the vast majority of companies still need to be educated about the opportunities and benefits arising from Open Innovation (OI). This is particularly true for mid-size companies and small and medium-sized companies that based on some preliminary evidences have not yet fully engaged in open innovation due to limited resources and lack of ability to understand the disruption threats posed by recent technology and market evolution.

To date, there is little evidence on current practices of “Open Innovation” and “corporate-startup collaboration” in Europe. Only recently, large European corporations have concretely started to engage with startups. This paper attempts to shed new light on this so-far under-explored issue.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how and how much open innovation is used across Europe. The goal of this study is therefore to provide comprehensive empirical evidence for the adoption of inbound and outbound open innovation activities in Europe.

Data from 180 European companies were used to test three hypotheses on open innovation adoption and the role of internal R&D. Data were collected in 2009 and the sample comprises companies from different industries and 24 European countries.

It is found that 30.3 per cent of European companies are very open to innovation and 38.7 per cent are semi‐open. The results show that inbound open innovation is more commonly used than outbound open innovation, which can be explained by insufficiencies of the market or the organization. Finally, it is found that the type of innovation strategy (vertically integrated, inbound, outbound, or mixed) is related to the R&D intensity.

This paper provides large‐scale empirical evidence for the extent of open innovation adoption in Europe. Moreover, it confirms the role of open innovation generally as a complement for internal R&D. However, results show that firms can reduce R&D intensity through inbound open innovation.

This paper aims to apply innovation networks (INs) theory to the context of domesticated markets, where innovation triggers deinstitutionalization. In such contexts, the success of INs depends on their capacity to transform the business field in which they are embedded, so that it accommodates innovative business models. Such “institutional INs” beget a meso-level finality, and this poses different requirement on their effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to confront extant models of collaborative innovation in networks with this specific context to offer exploratory insights into how innovation can be achieved in domesticated contexts and what the differential implications are for network configurations and strategic “reinstitutionalization” practices.

Based on an illustrative embedded case study in the Dutch steel industry, a framework offering indications on the effectiveness of discrete configurational dimensions and their fit with reinstitutionalization practices for institutional INs is suggested. The case builds on 26 semi-structured interviews and 4 focus groups with top managers in the industry. As the aim is to extend theoretical models of INs to this under-researched context, an abductive approach to theorizing, consistent with the extended case method, is adopted.

Findings suggest that collaborating to redesign an institutionalized business field collectively implies a more explicit attention to interdependencies within the business field.

Besides suggesting modifications to extant frames regarding heterogeneity in and the configuration of networks, this paper has some practical implications. The framework proposed offers managers some support in the largely ignored issue of developing a collective action network. With these findings, we aspire to stimulate further research into this relevant, yet underdeveloped, topic.

The study extends IN theory toward innovation realization in domesticated contexts. In such contexts, IN’s success depends on their capacity to transform the business field in which they are embedded, so that it enables innovative ways of creating end-customer value. Besides suggesting a new area for theorizing about innovation networks, institutional innovation networks are also a useful template for institutional innovation and collective action research. The paper offers a framework to support managers in the largely ignored challenge of developing a collective action network. In an increasingly transparent, connected and consolidated business environment, such a challenge becomes ever more essential.

The exchange of knowledge in social networks is fundamental to innovation. Open, interactive, innovation requires collaboration through social networks. This social networking is increasingly carried out across the Internet through social media applications. The purpose of this study is to explore the use of social media in open innovation, and explain how this practice is carried out in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). With less resources than large firms, SMEs both have a greater need for open innovation and a less resources to invest in the process.

In this paper, the authors study the case of open innovation in start-up Aurea Productiva and induce a framework for open innovation in SMEs powered by social media.

The authors explore how the main advantages of the Web 2.0 translate into opportunities, challenges and strategies for open innovation that can be directly applied by managers.

The authors contribute to research on open innovation by social media and to research on the innovation process of SMEs. Future quantitative research could confirm and extend the authors’ findings.

Companies that want to fully exploit the benefits of social media can create a strategy that emphasizes coevolution of innovation and resources, sharing their vision and objectives and providing a framework for innovation.

The authors introduce an original analysis of opportunities, challenges and strategies for open innovation in SMEs.

The authors aim to investigate the concept of open innovation, identify different open innovation practices which help describe the continuum between closed and open innovation, and propose a framework that suggests an association between innovation contexts and practices.

The authors first identify the variables to describe innovation contexts and practices. Such variables are developed based on the literature and on a previous paper by the same authors in 2011. Then, they establish an association between contexts and practices, and test it through cases drawn from the existing literature.

The paper proposes a detailed assessment of open innovation practices and suggests the association between each of them and diverse innovation contexts. A few case examples drawn from the literature prove coherent with the theoretical framework underlying the proposed association.

The authors' results (and specifically the framework) enhance the organizations' awareness of the open innovation concept and the possible practices to implement it, as well as supporting managers to better select open innovation practices in different contexts.

This paper discusses the concept of open innovation practices to enhance the comprehension of the open innovation concept. Also, to the authors' knowledge, the proposed association between context and practices is original in that there are no similar theoretical frameworks that help organizations selecting innovation practices.

Open innovation is an emerging paradigm which exposes organisations to networked capabilities and competencies though collaboration relationships. The traditional view of the organisational environment raises concerns regarding the mismatch in the methods used to assess business value and understanding service process maturity. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap.

This paper employs a systematic literature review to present a state-of-the-art literature review with particular focus on the applicability of capability maturity models (CMM) within an open innovation context.

The authors present a conceptual account of our research developments and build on the state-of-the-art which bridges open innovation and CMM. The authors provide a comprehensive discussion on the literature and challenge the applicability of individual organisations evolving through maturity stages. The authors identify a significant gap in the emergence of open innovation and CMM and present a service capability sourcing model (SCSM) to bridge these two research areas.

Unpacking the nature of service capabilities allows us to understand the primary components of value co-creation and their contribution towards service maturity within an open service innovation environment. The authors verify the explanation model using a cloud computing scenario within an open service innovation environment.

The contribution of this paper is an explanation model of an open service innovation environment through our SCSM. Though an open innovation perspective, the authors examine the nature of service capabilities and the suitability of traditional CMM in a modern service context.

A comprehensive understanding about open innovation implementation is still lacking. In particular, a compilation of drivers and barriers for OI implementation is absent from the literature. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to identify critical success factors (CSFs) for OI implementation at the firm level.

A systematic literature review was conducted in order to identify CSFs for OI implementation in previously published literature. A total of 2,894 papers were identified, 156 of which were subjected to full independent analysis by the three authors. The following aspects were considered: research strategy, approach (empirical or theoretical) and objectives; theoretical background; methodological procedures; main results; and contributions to the literature. If the paper reported empirical research that included a description of actual OI implementation, additional aspects were analyzed: industry or sector of application; firm characteristics; success of OI implementation and OI tools and techniques reported.

A synthetizing framework with six thematic categories of CSFs was proposed: leadership, internal innovation capability, network and relationships, strategy, technology management, and culture. A total of 22 CSFs for OI implementation were identified within these categories.

The proposed framework is an attempt to systematically generate a comprehensive list of factors that impact OI implementation. As such, it can support the theoretical development of OI-related capabilities, and serve as basis for future research that investigates operationalization and measurement of such capabilities.

The study aims to explore the interplay between open innovation and intellectual property. Differently from previous studies, we argue that open innovation fosters firm's patenting activity.

We use linear regression analysis to test model's hypotheses. Data are drawn from the Eurostat statistics and refer to a large sample of European firms (NACE Rev.2).

The findings confirm that open innovation fosters patenting activity in health care, also thanks to huge governments' expenditures in this market.

The study focuses solely on European firms and it adopts a traditional linear approach. So, we cannot exclude that different dynamics may occur across European borders. Future research should address this concern by focusing on multi-country comparative studies.

Open innovation is the most suitable model for health industry, because it improves both innovation performance and intellectual capital of firms.

The study tackles an existing gap of the literature by considering how the presence of large customers impacts the strength of intellectual property protection.