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2009
Conference Paper
Titel
Taking a closer look into open innovation in SME
Titel Supplements
The "interplay" of openness, performance and innovation management practices
Abstract
"Open innovation" and collaborative innovation are central topics in the recent discourse in business strategy and innovation [1,2,3,4]. This paper examines the openness and "interconnectedness" of the innovation value chain of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME), and investigates how openness and innovation management practices interplay to explain the value creation at three levels of the innovation value chain: the idea funnel, launch and overall firm growth. To do so, we examine the direct effects of 4 aspects of openness addressing the scope of external idea sourcing, the interconnectedness of the overall value chain via co-developments, the size of the innovation network and the utilization of business partners for innovation. Beyond, we model explicit innovation management routines and implicit capabilities as mediating factors and investigate how they interplay with openness. The empirical research is based on a sample of 1440 firms from both manufacturing and service industries. We identified significant effects of openness and interconnectedness on the innovation value chain output. Results support the mediating role of "explicit" innovation management routines for "utilizing" external sources; especially during launch.