| Summary: | The research field of Open Innovation (OI) has grown exponentially since
Chesbrough coined the term in 2003. But after more than a decade of research,
some essential areas of research in the OI literature, such as OI practices and
the context factors relevant to their implementation, are still fragmented and
uncompleted, as noted in the reviews of the OI literature in recent years. In this
thesis, I aim to enrich the literature on OI by analysing two specific issues:
taxonomy of OI practices; and identifying the relevant context factors that
most influence in the implementation of OI practices.
Accordingly, the first objective of this research is to conduct a comprehensive
literature review of OI practices, which is necessary in order to clarify the
concept and propose more precise terminology. This review includes the
identification of the different typologies of OI practices defined in the literature
and the dimensions used by authors to describe these practices. Secondly, we
propose the identification, also based on the literature review methodology, of
the internal and external factors that influence the implementation of these
practices and the analysis of their relation with each OI practice typology. Then,
according to the conclusions of the literature review, we propose a theoretical
framework for establishing relations among different typologies of OI practices
and the internal and external factors (firm-specific and contextual) relevant for
their implementation. The empirical work of this thesis consists of an
experimental contrast of the proposed theoretical framework, particularized for
OI practices in SMEs in the automotive industry. This empirical work includes
two steps, the first is a multiple case study of SMEs in the automotive sector
and the second one is a retrospective case study of an SME from the
automotive sector that has successfully implemented OI practices over a long
period of time.
From the academic point of view, this thesis contributes to the OI literature
with two main results. The first one is a classification of OI practices typologies,
according to their main dimensions, which helps to establish a taxonomy in this
research stream. The second one is a theoretical framework for establishing
relations among different typologies of OI practices and context factors. From the managerial point of view, the empirical research developed in this
thesis, also yields some interesting results. In relation to OI practices typologies,
we have shown that the studied SMEs have implemented the following OI
practices typologies, which are identified in the theoretical framework:
Innovation contest, Inward licensing of IP, Joined development, Joint venture,
Lead user method, Outsourcing R&D, Outwards licensing of IP and Regional
innovation clusters. Moreover, some specific typologies of these practices are
more commonly used by the SMEs from the sample, such as Joined
development. When using the theoretical framework developed in the
theoretical section to look for relations between the implementation of the OI
practices and the context factors, some interesting contributions arise from the
multiple case study in relation to the relevance of specific context factors. We
identify some relevant factors, from the internal and external contexts that
facilitate OI practices implementation, such as absorptive capacity, IP
management, Corporate culture, Technological turbulence, Proximities and
Intermediaries, along with one factor from the internal context that hinders,
namely Ambidexterity. Furthermore, the retrospective case study provides
experimental evidence for the substitution effect between the absorptive
capacity internal factor and the Intermediaries external factor when
implementing a specific OI practice, Innovation contest. This contribution
opens up an interesting stream for research and also for application issues. This
contribution is a significant advance in the state of the art of current research in
the field of OI, not only in general but also, particularly in OI in SMEs.
Finally our work is a door to open future research directions in the OI field
that, if based in the proposed theoretical framework, could contribute to the
strengthening of the theoretical foundations of this innovation management
paradigm.
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