 Open innovation practices in SMEs and large enterprisesAndre Spithoven, Wim Vanhaverbeke and Nadine Roijakkers Small Business Economics, 2013, vol. 41, issue 3, 537-562 Abstract: Few studies on open innovation (OI) address OI practices in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and how their use of OI and the resulting benefits differ from those of large enterprises. The lack of resources in SMEs to engage in looking outward is said to be a barrier to OI, but at the same time this shortage is cited as a motive for looking beyond organisational boundaries for technological knowledge. We investigate how OI dimensions impact the innovative performance of SMEs in comparison to large companies. The key finding is that the effects of OI practices in SMEs often differ from those in large firms. SMEs are more effective in using different OI practices simultaneously when they introduce new products on the market, whereas this is less the case for large firms. Turnover from new products in SMEs is driven by intellectual property protection mechanisms, while large firms in this case benefit more from their search strategies. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 Keywords: Open innovation; SMEs; Large enterprises; Product innovation; Innovative performance; L25; O31; O32; O33; O34; L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:41:y:2013:i:3:p:537-562 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/s11187-012-9453-9 Access Statistics for this article Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer |
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