Joint forces: Towards an integration of intellectual capital theory and the open innovation paradigm

Jesus Barrena Martinez, Livio Criceli, Esther Ferrándiz, Marco Greco and Michele Grimaldi

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Intellectual capital (IC) is among the most long-lived topics in managerial literature. More recently, the emergence of the open innovation (OI) paradigm has encouraged the understanding that firms should collaborate with other organizations to leverage their own R&D capabilities. We propose that these two streams of managerial literature should join forces since the OI paradigm could be considered an approach to innovation with foundations in relational capital, facilitated by an appropriate level of human and structural capital. Surprisingly, only a few researchers have put IC and OI into relation. Therefore, this paper has two main goals: providing a theoretical model that synoptically presents how IC and OI overlap and testing the theoretical model by analyzing how firms’ IC affects OI-related performance. We analyze a sample of 3744 Spanish firms. We find that the three IC constructs positively affect OI performance, with relational and human capital subject to diminishing returns.

Keywords: Intellectual capital; Open innovation; Innovation performance; Human capital; Relational capital; Structural capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 O30 O31 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:123400

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