Top Management Involvement in Open Innovation Processes: Learning from a Global Carmaker

Elena Candelo, Diego Matricano and Mario Sorrentino

International Business Research, 2018, vol. 11, issue 7, 142-151

Abstract: Over the last decades, management scholars have largely investigated several aspects related to Open Innovation Processes – OIPs that concern the beginning, the diffusion and the future developments of the phenomenon, its typologies, its linkages with strategies and business models, its implementation, and even errors to be avoided when managing them. However, there is one aspect that seems to be underexplored and this deals with the involvement of top management. OIPs, like all the other managerial activities, need to be planned and defined ex ante; implemented, launched and managed; analyzed ex post. Thus, a decisional process – pertaining the activities to be carried out, human resources to be involved, criticalities to be avoided and results to be exploited – needs to be managed. Accordingly, the research question posed herein is: How do top managers handle OIPs? In order to respond to the above research question, a case study is presented hereinafter. This case study deals with an OIP launched by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), one of the top ten global carmakers, and concerning the car of the future. In particular, through this case study, it is rebuilt and analysed how FCA top managers have handled the whole OIP. By leveraging on the achieved results, the paper speculates on the strong commitment that top managers need to put in practice if they aspire to make OIPs successful.

Keywords: open innovation; top management involvement; decisional process; automotive industry; carmakers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ibr/article/view/75458/42135 (application/pdf)
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ibr/article/view/75458 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ibn:ibrjnl:v:11:y:2018:i:7:p:142-151

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Business Research from Canadian Center of Science and Education Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Canadian Center of Science and Education ().