Open Innovation moves in SMEs: How European SMEs place their bets?

Antonios D. Livieratos, George Tsekouras, Wim Vanhaverbeke and Antonios Angelakis

Technovation, 2022, vol. 117, issue C

Abstract: Although Open Innovation (OI) may be a source of opportunities for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), it also represents risks. How SMEs manage the balance between potential benefits and associated risks remains an overlooked topic in the literature. In parallel, recognizing the need for a more fine-grained level of analysis, we introduce the concept of OI moves to disentangle the OI projects of SMEs. An ‘OI move’ is defined as the set of managerial decisions and actions that are executed to reach specific innovation outputs in the framework of a collaboration with a single partner that is conducted as a part of an OI project. An OI move consist of the combination of two building blocks: a) the type of partner chosen to innovate with - ‘who is the SME innovating with’ and b) the exploitation mode - ‘who is exploiting the result’. Using the OI move as the level of the present analysis, we argue that different OI moves have the potential of delivering different benefits, but they also represent different levels of risk. To that end, the aim of our research is to explore how SMEs weigh benefits and risks at the level of OI move.

Keywords: Open innovation; SME; Multiple case study; Open innovation typology; Exploitation mode; Attention-based view of the firm; Open innovation move (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:techno:v:117:y:2022:i:c:s0166497222001389

DOI: 10.1016/j.technovation.2022.102591

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