مقاله سال ۲۰۱۷

In today’s dynamic and globalized business environment, academics and practitioners agree on an emergent trend toward opening up the innovation strategy (Lichtenthaler and Lichtenthaler, 2009; Spithoven et al., 2013). Thus, an increasing number of firms, especially SMEs, are relying more on external information and research collaborations in order to innovate and gain competitive advantages. This new way of conducting the innovation process has been recently coined as “open innovation” (OI) (Chesbrough, 2003). However, this topic builds upon previous work on well-established concepts such as absorptive capacity, complementary assets or the exploitation versus exploration dyad. In fact, previous literature admits that OI practices, such as looking beyond organizational boundaries for opportunities to grow or using external knowledge to improve internal innovation processes, are not new to companies. The establishment of this new concept and its coincidence in time with the growing interest for outsourcing, collaboration, organizational agility and flexibility permitted researchers to reconsider innovation strategies in the light of an increasingly networked world (Huggins and Thompson, 2015; Huizingh, 2011). As a consequence, OI has become one of the topics that gained most attention in innovation management research over the last decade (Carayannis and Campbell, 2011; Spithoven et al., 2013).

Previous research on OI has focused mainly on high-tech large enterprises, whereas it is widely accepted in literature that OI practices and consequences depend heavily on firm size. Nonetheless, only a few and recent studies have analyzed OI in the specific context of SMEs (Laursen and Salter, 2006; Lee et al., 2010; Spithoven et al., 2013; Van de Vrande et al., 2009), with most of them contributing to the discussion about the differences between OI in small and large firms. Although previous research showed that OI practices have a significant impact on different measures of performance, the relationship between OI and firm performance of SMEs has received little attention. At the same time, there is a lack of research on the antecedents that stimulate or detract SMEs from pursuing OI practices. In addition, a great part of the studies on OI are descriptive by nature and based upon case studies and indepth interviews (Chesbrough, 2003; Dodgson et al., 2006; Huston and Sakkab, 2006).

Firms’ migration toward OI has been driven by a confluence of social, economical and technological changes, such as globalization, increased labor division or the rise of collaborative technologies (Huizingh, 2011). Despite the great pressure of business environment trends, some authors found that many firms are still reluctant to open up their innovation strategy through the use of OI practices (de Wit et al., 2007; Lichtenthaler and Ernst, 2009). Previous literature suggests that besides firm demographics (size, age, market share, location or ownership), organizational culture and employees’ characteristics have a significant impact on the adoption of OI practices (Harison and Koski, 2010; Huizingh, 2011). For instance, the resistance of employees and lack of internal commitment have been pointed out as strong barriers to SMEs adoption of OI practices (Chesbrough and Crowther, 2006; Lichtenthaler and Lichtenthaler, 2009; Van de Vrande et al., 2009). This draws attention on the importance of innovation climate and employees’ commitment for the adoption of OI in SMEs. At the same time, the extent of use of OI practices is contingent on environmental factors. For instance, in a dynamic technological environment firms tend to acquire more external technology as their current technological knowledge and infrastructures rapidly become obsolete (Jansen et al., 2006; Soto-Acosta and Cegarra-Navarro, 2016; Teece, 2007).