مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

While individual inventors are key to technological progress, it is becoming increasingly necessary for inventors and their firms to exploit information and opportunities outside the firm in order to combine one’s own capabilities and resources with those from the external environment (Dahlander and Gann, 2010). Open innovation allows firms to better exploit information and the complementary capabilities of external organizations (Chesbrough, 2003; Hayashi, 2003; Motohashi, 2005; Powell et al., 1996).

Building on the literature on innovation collaboration,this study examines rates of collaborative inventing in the US and the effects of research collaboration on innovative performance. Dahlander and Gann (2010) note that open innovation includes different forms of openness: openness in the inputs (for example, through in-licensing or collaborative R&D) and openness in the exploitation of the invention (for example, through out-licensing). In this paper, we are concentrating on openness in the inputs, especially, research collaboration, and test its effects on two different stages: idea generation (i.e., invention) and idea implementation (i.e., commercialization), following the Schumpeterian notion of innovation ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: jpwalsh@gatech.edu (J.P. Walsh). as a two-step process. In other words, we examine how openness in the inputs (i.e., information gained at the idea generation stage) not only affects the quality of the invention as a result of idea generation, but also has an impact on exploitation of the invention at the idea implementation stage.

The first stage, invention, involves the creation of a new, potentially useful technology. Therefore, invention is likely to benefit from broad information access. Moreover, firms’ collaborations with universities will be important to obtain radical or novel knowledge and create high-value inventions. The second stage is commercialization, translating that invention into practice (i.e., innovation). Here, information obtained through firms’ collaboration with suppliers or customers in the inventing stage may be more beneficial in commercializing the invention even after the collaboration is over (March, 1991).