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How to be an open innovator when you are an SME? An institutional work analysis
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Open innovation (OI) is a strategy that firms adopt to innovate by incorporating knowledge from both outside and inside their firms, exploiting their knowledge, and exploring the knowledge of their environment. OI is relevant for small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) because it allows them to adapt and thrive in increasingly turbulent and dynamic competitive environments, generate competitive advantages, and increase their performances. The method adopted for measuring OI is heterogeneous because of the breadth of the concept and application of various OI metrics and practices. This study analyzes the various methods used for measuring OI in the SME context through a systematic review of the empirical literature. To meet this objective, a two-step methodological approach was implemented: first, a systematic literature review, and second, a bibliometric analysis. Finally, 125 empirical articles from 2009 to 2020 were selected from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The results show that the empirical literature uses a wide variety of methods to measure OI activities. While this adds to the richness of the concept, it makes theory development difficult. Based on the systematic literature review conducted, it is clear that there are different perspectives pertaining to the measurement of OI: (1) external knowledge sources, internal knowledge, and collaboration; (2) technology exploitation and technology exploration; (3) inbound, outbound, and couple; and (4) openness. This study has important implications to researchers and SME managers, will help them develop a better understanding of how OI activities can be measured.
Collaboration between corporations and sart-ups can dramatically accelerate respective actor’s innovation process. Previous research on this phenomenon has mostly considered the large company’s point of view on sart-up collaboration. There is therefore a research gap related to sart-ups’ objectives, processes and outcomes from corporate collaboration, as well as to the relation between these three categories of variables. The purpose of this study is to identify the critical factors for sart-ups in collaborating with corporations. The paper synthesizes and discusses the findings from 12 qualitative case studies of corporate-sart-up collaboration in Sweden, including different collaboration models and different industrial sectors. It contributes to fill the current knowledge gap in research focused on critical factors for sart-ups in collaborating with large companies for innovation. The study identified three important dimensions: antecedents, outcomes, and collaboration characteristics. For each dimension the main variables and relations among variables are identified. This framework can be useful primarily for sart-ups and could guide them in their decisions related to partnering with large firms. The framework is, however, also useful for other stakeholders involved in corporate-sart-up collaboration initiatives, such as large firms, intermediaries like external accelerators, and the government. This is one of the first studies that explicitly addresses the phenomenon of collaboration between sart-ups and large companies from a sart-up’s point of view. The study is not limited to a specific collaboration model such as for example ‘accelerators’, but includes different models used by large firms. Further, it identifies the factors that could guide sart-ups in analyzing opportunities offered by partnering with larger companies, and therefore could be important parts of their collaboration strategy.
Purpose
This study examines how technology-intensive small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engage in open innovation. The purpose of this paper is to add to the literature on open innovation in SMEs, which has received considerably less attention than open innovation in large companies. Also, the study adds on the literature on open innovation in the commercialization phase.
Design/methodology/approach
A multiple case study of 13 technology-intensive SMEs in forestry sector was conducted. The forestry sector in Finland was chosen as a target context, there were many innovative pioneering SMEs operating in the industry and because the sector was going through significant changes.
Findings
Three multi-firm collaboration modes in the commercialization phase were identified: networks with a lead partner, equal partnership, and partnership for external technology commercialization. The study shows that in SMEs, open innovation is used for commercialization rather than research and development. The main conclusion of the study is that the mode of collaboration in commercialization is determined by the core competence of the firm and the strategy for open innovation.
Practical implications
The study results imply that SMEs benefit from opening up their innovation process in the commercialization phase. The firms in this study employed a blend of strategies that capitalized on their internal strengths. They collaborated actively with external firms and outsourced from specialists. This way they were able to compensate for their internal weaknesses and gain competitive advantage.
Originality/value
The study extends our understanding of open innovation by providing a detailed analysis of how open innovation takes place in the commercialization phase of innovation process. Also, the study extends understanding of the strategic use of open innovation in SMEs by showing how SMEs balance the risk of losing their competitive advantage built on innovation and the benefit of creating a broader competence base with partnerships.
Purpose
Open innovation in start-ups is a relatively unexplored field and studies focusing on collaborative innovation between start-ups with large companies seen from the former’s point of view are virtually inexistent. The authors address this gap in an exploratory study built on in-depth case studies. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how start-ups successfully organize and manage open innovation with large companies. The paper highlights common challenges and barriers faced by start-ups in adopting open innovation practices along with its benefits for them.
Design/methodology/approach
This is an exploratory study based on two case studies. The cases are diligently selected to examine two key forms of open innovation – inbound and outbound open innovation – in start-ups.
Findings
The paper provides an insight on how start-ups organize and manage open innovation activities with large companies and how it benefits them in overcoming liability of newness and smallness. The practices significantly differ from those followed in large companies. The paper highlights the advantages and challenges of inbound and outbound open innovation for start-ups. This paper also ascertains the crucial role of start-up manager for successful implementation of open innovation and shows how start-up’s managers with prior experience of working in/with a large company can proficiently deal with the larger counterpart in the innovation network.
Research limitations/implications
This research is based on exploratory case studies so the conclusions drawn from these two cases may be hard to generalize. The findings of the study could be used for further development of the theoretical framework. Future research, including quantitative studies, will be helpful in examining the conclusions and providing more in-depth understanding of open innovation in start-ups.
Practical implications
The paper includes several practical implications for the managers including the role start-up managers play in organizing and managing open innovation activities. Furthermore, this paper suggests how start-ups could orchestrate open innovation ecosystem.
Originality/value
The paper is a step forward in filling the literature gap about open innovation and start-ups with some definite implications for start-up managers. A lot is written about the collaboration between large firms and start-ups from a former’s point of view but the start-up’s perspective has been left unexplored.
Purpose
Little is known, about the role played by start-ups in open innovation networks. Start-ups – due to their nature of new and emerging companies – can largely benefit from the knowledge that can flow intentionally or unintentionally from external partners during open innovation practices. When open innovation networks are not set among peers on both sides the authors expect to have more unintended knowledge flows. Such knowledge “leaks” – as the authors named them – in open innovation networks are totally unexplored in literature. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to focus “whether and how knowledge leaks occur in open innovation networks with start-ups”.
Design/methodology/approach
The research design of this study relies on social network analysis methods and techniques to disentangle the role of start-ups in open innovation networks – in a major Italian aerospace cluster – vis-à-vis the three types of knowledge considered in this study. Then the authors confirmed knowledge leaks to occur through a multiplexity analysis. In the second stage of the research, the authors decided to strengthen the results, making them more vivid and thorough, relying on four case studies.
Findings
The paper sheds light on a totally unexplored phenomenon, theorizing on the role of start-ups in open innovation networks and suggesting intriguing implications both for theory and managers on whether and how knowledge leaks occur.
Research limitations/implications
The main limitations arise from the specific research context, in fact the study has been conducted in an aerospace cluster. So future studies might consider to explore knowledge leaks in non-cluster settings and in low tech industries.
Practical implications
The results have practical implications both for policy makers and for managers. First of all, the research confirms how open innovation often originates from a combination of different knowledge types acquired through the collaboration with heterogeneous players, start-ups included. Hence, managers may design open innovation strategies balancing their portfolio of collaborations to maximize the absorption of relevant knowledge and start-uppers may consider to engage in open innovation practices to accelerate knowledge absorption. Nevertheless, the study warns managers against the risk of knowledge leaks, especially in cases like start-ups where the eagerness to participate or the prestige associated with participating in open innovation networks with key players may hamper the control over knowledge leaks.
Social implications
This opens up for possible interventions for policy makers too. First of all, policy makers may consider incorporating the concept of knowledge leaks in their campaign in favour of open innovation. Second, the study may help policy makers in designing programmes for knowledge transfer partnerships amongst the various players of a cluster in a more conscious way, especially warning new to business companies, like start-ups, about possible leaks. Finally, there is also the need of developing professional figures like consultants capable of supporting start-ups in their open innovation practices.
Originality/value
Findings reported in the paper confirm multiplexity and heteromorphism in knowledge exchanges and shed the light on a completely unexplored field (i.e. open innovation and start-ups), focussing on knowledge leaks. Relevant implications for policy makers and managers are included in the study.
This paper proposes design propositions for an open innovation approach for small and medium-sized enterprises based on the open innovation lifecycle framework. The design propositions direct small- and medium-sized enterprises in implementing, executing, and improving open innovation in their organisations. The design propositions are developed through a synthesis of the literature on open innovation and other implementation and improvement best practices.
A design sciences method is followed, using context interaction mechanism outcome logic to conduct a systematic review of the literature on open innovation, and using the open innovation lifecycle framework as boundaries. Twenty-two design propositions are formulated as a result. A case study is also discussed as an initial test of the application of the design propositions.
The study of institutional work has emerged as a dynamic research domain within organization studies. In this essay, we situate the papers published in the Special Issue. We first review the evolution of institutional work as a scholarly conversation within organization studies. We then introduce the papers in the Special Issue, focusing in particular on where they fit into the current scholarly conversation and how they move us in important new directions. Finally, we discuss a set of neglected issues that deserve further attention.
In this paper we explore how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engage in external knowledge sourcing, a form of inbound open innovation. We draw upon a sample of 1,411 SMEs and empirically conceptualize a typology of strategic types of external knowledge sourcing, namely minimal, supply-chain, technology-oriented, application-oriented, and full-scope sourcing. Each strategy reflects the nature of external interactions and is linked to a distinct mixture of four internal practices for managing innovation. Both full-scope and application-oriented sourcing offer performance benefits and are associated with a stronger focus on managing innovation. However, they differ in their managerial focus on strategic and operational aspects.
This paper analyses three case firms whose innovation management processes have been consolidated. The companies Natura, IBM (Brazilian Subsidiary) and Siemens (ChemTech/Brazil) were studied with the purpose of analysing the implementation of OI, particularly in terms of: (a) its alignment with existing corporate strategy; (b) its requirements such as culture, skill and motivation; (c) the strategy and the implementation process; (d) the results achieved (e) the present barriers and enablers. The research is qualitative in nature and employs a descriptive approach. The main results of this study, obtained using a method called 'Collective Subject Speech' , show that the implementation of OI, both structured and non-structured, is mainly challenged by cultural issues. It has been observed that the implementation of OI process is at its embryonic stage in all case firms and that this occurs along with investments in closed innovation, meaning that OI results cannot be explored at this stage of the implementation, as there is a long way to consolidate these practices in the case firms studied.
Beginning with this article, our special issue advances the understanding of the role of professions in processes of institutional change and through this it proposes a retheorization of contemporary professionalism. Using institutionalist lenses in professional settings, we highlight the relationship between professionalization and broader institutionalization projects. We start by critically reviewing existing approaches in the sociology of the professions, identifying a functionalist and a conflict-based approach. Then, we build on and further elaborate an institutionalist perspective on professional work. Such a perspective affirms the importance of studying professions as institutions and connecting professionalization to broader patterns of institutionalization; it highlights the role of professions and professionals as agents in the creation, maintenance, and disruption of institutions, and recognizes the importance of accommodating contemporary patterns of professionalization within the organizational context. We also illustrate how, empirically, the eight papers in this issue advance our understanding of professional agency in contemporary change and, theoretically, contribute to the reconceptualization of the study of professionalism. Finally, we briefly summarize our contribution and identify a series of directions for further research.
In this paper, we discuss an alternative focus for institutional studies of organization - the study of institutional work. Research on institutional work examines the practices of individual and collective actors aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions. Our focus in this paper is on the distinctiveness of institutional work as a field of study and the potential it provides for the examination of new questions. We argue that research on institutional work can contribute to bringing the individual back into institutional theory, help to re-examine the relationship between agency and institutions, and provide a bridge between critical and institutional views of organization.
The growing popularity of institutional work suggests a broad agentic turn in institutional approaches to organizational studies. We briefly describe the contribution of the evolving institutional-work research agenda. Then, we identify two problematic areas in this line of research: the privileged causal status of “actors” and the under-theorized nature of institutions. We suggest that re-engagement with insights of the earlier, foundational work in neo-institutional theory would benefit this emerging research agenda.
The authors focus on the dichotomous crisp set form of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The authors review basic set theoretic QCA methodology, including truth tables, solution formulas, and coverage and consistency measures and discuss how QCA (a) displays relations between variables, (b) highlights descriptive or complex causal accounts for specific (groups of) cases, and (c) expresses the degree of fit. To help readers determine when QCA’s configurational approach might be appropriate, the authors compare and contrast QCA to mainstream statistical methodologies such as binary logistic regressions done on the same data set.
In this chapter, we aim to provide a summary and synthesis of research on what we refer to as 'institutional work' - the purposive action of individuals and organizations aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions. Thus far, research on institutional work has been largely unconnected as such - literatures on institutional entrepreneurship and deinstitutionalization have emerged as semi-coherent research streams, but the overall focus has remained largely unarticulated. Thus, a key contribution of this chapter will be the provision of a framework that connects previously disparate studies of institutional work and the articulation of a research agenda for the area. By focusing on empirical work that has occurred in the past 1 5 years and mapping i t i n terms of the forms of institutional work that it has examined, we are able to both provide a first cataloguing of forms of institutional work and point to issues and areas that have been under-examined.
Few studies on open innovation (OI) have addressed OI practices in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and how their use of OI and resulting benefits differ from large enterprises. The lack of resources in SMEs to engage in looking outward is said to be a barrier to OI, but at the same time this shortage is cited as a motive for looking beyond organizational boundaries for technological knowledge. We investigate how OI dimensions have an impact on the innovative performance of SMEs in comparison to large companies. The key finding is that the effects of OI practices in SMEs often differ from those in large firms. SMEs are more effective in using different OI practices simultaneously when they introduce new products on the market whereas this is less the case for large firms. Turnover from new products in SMEs is driven by IP protection mechanisms while large firms in this case benefit more from their search strategies. However, the strengths of these differences between SMEs and large firms.
We argue in this paper that when the knowledge base of an industry is both complex and expanding and the sources of expertise are widely dispersed, the locus of innovation will be found in networks of learning, rather than in individual firms. The large-scale reliance on interorganizational collaborations in the biotechnology industry reflects a fundamental and pervasive concern with access to knowledge. We develop a network approach to organizational learning and derive firm-level, longitudinal hypotheses that link research and development alliances, experience with managing interfirm relationships, network position, rates of growth, and portfolios of collaborative activities. We test these hypotheses on a sample of dedicated biotechnology firms in the years 1990-1994. Results from pooled, within-firm, time series analyses support a learning view and have broad implications for future theoretical and empirical research on organizational networks and strategic alliances.•.
Open innovation has so far been studied mainly in high-tech, multinational enterprises. This exploratory paper investigates if open innovation practices are also applied by small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on a database collected from 605 innovative SMEs in the Netherlands, we explore the incidence of and apparent trend towards open innovation. The survey furthermore focuses on the motives and perceived challenges when SMEs adopt open innovation practices. Within the survey, open innovation is measured with eight innovation practices reflecting technology exploration and exploitation in SMEs. We find that the responding SMEs engage in many open innovation practices and have increasingly adopted such practices during the past 7 years. In addition, we find no major differences between manufacturing and services industries, but medium-sized firms are on average more heavily involved in open innovation than their smaller counterparts. We furthermore find that SMEs pursue open innovation primarily for market-related motives such as meeting customer demands, or keeping up with competitors. Their most important challenges relate to organizational and cultural issues as a consequence of dealing with increased external contacts.
Open innovation can introduce new ways of organizing the innovation process within companies, but these new activities and processes naturally require some time to mature and work effectively. Continuous improvement of capacities and results is therefore required (Teece et al., 1997; Winter, 2003). The basic aim of this research was to develop, in collaboration with 15 companies, an open innovation maturity framework to measure and benchmark excellence in open innovation. The open innovation maturity framework that was developed combines metrics in several areas of open innovation to illustrate the expertise of that organization. It can reveal organizational excellence as well as areas of improvement in order to reach the next level of maturity.
In spite of increasing interest in open innovation, discussion about the concept and its potential application to the SME sector has been excluded from mainstream literature. However, given that the argument about the effect of firm size on the effectiveness of innovation is still ongoing, it is worth addressing the issue from an SME perspective. That is the focus of this article, which seeks, firstly, to place the concept of open innovation in the context of SMEs; secondly to suggest the input of an intermediary in facilitating innovation; and finally to report accounts of Korean SMEs’ success in working with an intermediary. The research results support the potential of open innovation for SMEs, and indicate networking as one effective way to facilitate open innovation among SMEs.
The capability maturity model (CMM), developed to present sets of recommended practices in a number of key process areas that have been shown to enhance software-development and maintenance capability, is discussed. The CMM was designed to help developers select process-improvement strategies by determining their current process maturity and identifying the issues most critical to improving their software quality and process. The initial release of the CMM, version 1.0, was reviewed and used by the software community during 1991 and 1992. A workshop on CMM 1.0, held in April 1992, was attended by about 200 software professionals. The current version of the CMM is the result of the feedback from that workshop and ongoing feedback from the software community. The technical report that describes version 1.1. is summarised
Open innovation has become well established as a new imperative for organizing innovation. In line with the increased use in industry, it has also attracted a lot of attention in academia. However, understanding the full benefits and possible limits of open innovation still remains a challenge. We draw on strategic management theory to describe some of these benefits and limits. More specifically, we develop a dynamic capabilities framework as a way to better understand the strategic management of open innovation, which can then help to better explain both success and failure in open innovation. With this background, as guest editors we introduce select papers published in this Special Section of California Management Review that were originally presented at the fifth annual World Open Innovation Conference, held in San Francisco, California, in December of 2018.
The aim of this article is to assess the current state of research on open innovation in SMEs to understand why and how SMEs do open innovation. Stemming from a systematic literature review of 73 articles published in peer-reviewed journals, from 1983 to 2017, we identify five main research focuses on open innovation in SMEs. Directions for future studies on open innovation in SMEs are provided in this article.
Purpose
Life science innovation is a complex domain of professional work including scientific know-how, regulatory expertise, and commercialization and marketing skills. While the investment in basic life science research has soared over the last decades, resulting in a substantial growth in scientific know-how, the life science industry (and most notably pharmaceutical companies) unfortunately reports a meagre innovative output. In order to counteract waning innovation productivity, new organizational initiatives seek to better bridge and bond existing life science resources. The purpose of this paper is to report a case study of bio venture hub initiative located in a major multinational pharmaceutical company.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on institutional work literature, an empirical study based on case study methodology demonstrates that new life science collaborations demand both external and internal institutional work to challenge conventional wisdom, making the legal protection of intellectual properties a key factor in the field and that in turn complicates much firm collaborations. Such institutional work questions existing practices and opens up new pathways in life science innovation work.
Findings
The bio hub initiative, which in considerable ways breaks with the traditional in-house and new drug development activities located in enclosed R&D departments and in collaboration with clinical research organizations, demands extensive institutional work and political savoir-faire to create legitimacy and operational stability. Not only are there practical, legal, and regulatory issues to handle, but the long-term legitimacy and financial stability of the bio hub initiative demands support from both internal and external significant actors and stakeholders. The external institutional work in turn demands a set of skills in the bio venture hub’s management team, including detailed scientific and regulatory expertise, communicative skills, and the charisma and story-telling capacities to convince and win over sceptics. The internal institutional work, in turn, demands an understanding of extant legal frameworks and fiscal policies, the ability to handle a series of practical and administrative routines (i.e. how to procure the chemicals used in the laboratory work or how to make substance libraries available), and to serve as a “match-maker” between the bio venture hub companies and the experts located at the hosting company.
Originality/value
The case study provides first-hand empirical data from an unique initiative in the pharmaceutical industry to create novel collaborative spaces where small-sized life science companies can take advantage of the mature firm’s expertise and stock of know-how, also benefitting the hosting company as new collaborations unfold and providing a detailed understanding of ongoing life science innovation projects. In this view, all agencies embedded in institutional field (i.e. what has been addressed as “institutional work” – the active work to create, maintain, or disrupt institutions) both to some extent destabilize existing practise and create new practices better aligned with new conditions and relations between relevant and mutually dependent organizations. The empirical study supports the need for incorporating the concept of agency in institutional theory and thus contributes to the literature on institutional work by showing how one of the industries, the pharmaceutical industry, being strongly fortified by intellectual property rights (i.e. a variety of patents), inhibiting the free sharing of scientific and regulatory know-how and expertise, is in fact now being in the process of rethinking the “closed-doors” tradition of the industry. That is, the institutional work conducted in the bio venture hub is indicative of new ideas entering Big Pharma.
Age diversity research calls for new approaches in explaining the persistence of age inequalities, which integrate different levels of analysis and display greater context sensitivity. Concurrently, neoinstitutionalist research interested in social inequalities calls for merging institutional theory with critical perspectives and to account for issues of power. In this study, we address the calls of both research streams through developing the concept of ‘age work’: the institutional work actors undertake on age as a social institution. Applying our novel concept to a multi-actor study of four German organizations known for their age management, we come across a counterintuitive insight regarding actors’ age work: maintaining stereotypical age images can serve to counter age inequalities, whereas deconstructing age images can reinforce age inequalities. The multi-actor perspective of our study allows us to categorize different forms of power-laden and interest-driven age work and to portray the reproduction of age inequalities as a result of actors’ age work, embedded in different contexts and complex power relations. Comparing employees’ forms of age work across sectors and organizations, we detail how notions of masculinity as well as income and job security shaped the categorized forms of age work.
This study aims to provide a deeper understanding of how information technology (IT) functions transform over time in order to align themselves with organizational visions and motivations. We conducted a longitudinal case study in a large mental health institute where an attempt was made to transform the mission and profile of the IT function. To orient our case analysis, we combined a typology of IT function archetypes with key concepts from institutional theory. By focusing on key actors’ motives, actions, and decisions, our theoretical propositions suggest, among others, that institutional work that reflects all the three pillars of rules, norms, and meaning is necessary in order to successfully create and maintain an envisioned IT function archetype. Implications of our findings for both theory and practice are discussed.
Independent oversight bodies such as the PCAOB in the U.S. and the POB in the U.K. pervade the international accounting regulatory environment. Their existence has been hailed as marking an end to self-regulation of the accounting profession. This paper examines how, and with what effect, individuals within one such oversight body attempted to reconfigure the regulatory field of accounting in Ireland. We mobilise the concept of institutional work to theorise the interrelated nature of the forms of institutional work these individuals engaged in as they sought to realise regulatory change. The paper advances prior theorisations of the recursive relationship between different forms of institutional work and patterns of institutional change and stability. We unveil a more refined, nuanced categorisation of institutional work within efforts to instigate regulatory change. We show how specific forms of institutional work interact and mutually reinforce or displace one another as regulators seek to establish power and legitimacy in a regulatory field. The role and nature of work rejection – whereby regulators initially reject certain forms of work but later embrace them – is unveiled within a change process where shifting regulatory logics both shape and are shaped by the forms of institutional work undertaken. The paper provides a counterpoint to prior research by illustrating how socio-political factors enabled more than constrained the impact of the institutional work undertaken by individuals within an independent oversight body. It concludes with a call for research focusing on how targets of regulation in accounting engage in institutional work as they respond to efforts to restrict their autonomy.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the extant literature on open innovation (OI) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Design/methodology/approach
– An examination of the literature was undertaken to review the studies on open innovation in SMEs. The selected articles were classified in different themes and analyzed accordingly.
Findings
– The study finds that adopting OI by SMEs improves their overall innovation performance. The authors found that a larger number of studies are based on a quantitative approach. Surprisingly, unlike in many other disciplines, scholars of North America have had a limited contribution. European scholars, along with some scholars from Korea and China, have been active in developing this field of OI in SMEs.
Research limitations/implications
– This study provides theoretical and managerial implications. With thematic analysis, along with identifying gaps, conflations, and contradictions in the literature, this study proposes an agenda for future exploration.
Originality/value
– The value of this study lies in the integration of the limited but scattered studies on OI in SMEs.
In recent years the open innovation paradigm has gained great attention in research on innovation and strategic management. Current research indicates that firms are opening up their innovation processes and adapt their business models to benefit not only from internal but also from external ideas and knowledge. So far, most of the research on open innovation has been focused on open innovation practices in large firms and has not considered open innovation in SMEs adequately. For this reason, our paper investigates organizational capabilities for managing open innovation in SMEs. Based on a case study analysis of the company CAS Software AG the researchers argue that SMEs have to build up new managerial capabilities within six dimensions of an integrated managerial system for open innovation. In addition the paper reveals the prosperous transformation process of the CAS Software AG towards an open innovator highlighting its characteristic of a guided evolution by means of a maturity model.
The creation of new roles commonly threatens the power and status of elite professionals through the substitution of their labour. In this paper we examine the institutional work carried out by elite professionals to maintain their professional dominance when threatened. Drawing on 11 case sites from the English National Health Service (NHS) where new nursing or medical roles have been introduced, threatening the power and status of specialist doctors, we observed the following. First, the professional elite respond through institutional work to supplant threat of substitution with the opportunity for them to delegate routine tasks to other actors and maintain existing resource and control arrangements over the delivery of services in a way that enhances elite professionals' status. Second, other professionals outside the professional elite, but relatively powerful within their own professional group, are co-opted by the professional elite to engage in institutional work to maintain existing arrangements. Our work extends Lawrence and Suddaby's typology of institutional work in three ways. First, we reveal how different types of institutional work interact, and how different types of institutional work cross categories of creating or maintaining institutions. Second, we show how an actor's social position or status, both intra-professionally as well as inter-professionally, in the institutional field frame the institutional work they engage in. Third, the institutional work of 'theorizing' by professional elites appears particularly significant, specifically the focus of the institutional work to invoke the concept of 'risk' associated with any change in service delivery, which maintains the model of medical professionalism.
This paper contributes to the analysis of institutional work by looking at situations of perceived injustice that institutional change can create. To this end, the paper mobilizes the work of Boltanski and Thévenot on orders of worth to analyse the consequences for a professional body of a shift in institutional logics towards more accountability. The feeling of injustice experienced – and voiced – by some members of the largest British institute of auditors, the ICAEW, after it set up and operated a quality monitoring unit, serves to illustrate how change can turn awry when equity in a community of peers is threatened, and how institutional work can remedy such a situation by restoring a sense of worth in the community.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of open innovation practices on the innovation capability and export performance of UK small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical (quantitative) investigation is based on a sample of 64 SMEs in the UK – 33 “open” innovation firms and 31 “closed” innovation firms.
Findings
The overall results demonstrate that the international competitiveness of SMEs is highly dependent on the cumulative effects and interrelationship between two key internal components, i.e. R&D capacity and managerial structure and competencies, coupled with two external factors, i.e. open innovation practices and the ability of the firm to attract government grants for R&D and technological development.
Research limitations/implications
Owing to the size of the sample, it has not been possible to undertake research within the context of specific regional disparities and/or sectoral characteristics.
Practical implications
In order to achieve and sustain competitive advantage in today's global market, SMEs need to collaborate with universities and other firms to advance and commercialise their technologies through “open innovation”.
Originality/value
Results show that open innovation activities and their impact on the international competitiveness of SMEs are complex and multi‐faceted. Essentially, they are highly related to and dependent upon the cumulative effects of, and interrelationship between, several key internal and external factors. Such factors cannot be fully explored through qualitative approaches as they require more complex and rigorous statistical analyses.
The biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields are rife with a wide range of collaborative relationships intended to access knowledge, skills, and resources that cannot be produced by organizations internally in a timely fashion. As more firms rely on external relationships for knowledge, the ability to process, transfer, and transmit knowledge gained in one context to other activities becomes critical. This article examines the capability for learning both how and what to learn in the context of these inter-organizational relations, and it surveys various practices developed by companies for accessing and distributing knowledge. The key challenge in innovation-intensive fields is to develop organizational routines for learning that are robust, flexible, and durable.
More so than other types of social actors, the professions in modem society have assumed leading roles in the creation and tending of institutions. They are the preeminent institutional agents of our time. Different professions work in various ways: some attempt to create general cultural-cognitive frameworks; others to devise normative prescriptions to guide behavior; and still others to exercise coercive authority. Also, individual professionals assume varying roles within their professional community: some concentrate on devising and testing general principles, others transport these ideas to varying communities; and still others work to apply the principles to individual cases. Professions themselves adhere to an institutional model, but this model has undergone important changes over time.
This essay offers a critical summation of the use of neo-institutionalism to study organizations. While institutionalism has succeeded in becoming the dominant theory to study macro-organizational phenomena, there is a danger that the theory has been stretched far beyond its core purpose—to understand how organizational structures and processes acquire meaning and continuity beyond their technical goals. I discuss some possible reasons for this displacement and identify four nascent threads of research that hold strong potential for bringing institutional theory back to its core assumptions and objectives; categories, language, work, and aesthetics.
To assess the effects of a firm's network of relations on innovation, this paper elaborates a theoretical framework that relates three aspects of a firm's ego network—direct ties, indirect ties, and structural holes (disconnections between a firm's partners)—to the firm's subsequent innovation output. It posits that direct and indirect ties both have a positive impact on innovation but that the impact of indirect ties is moderated by the number of a firm's direct ties. Structural holes are proposed to have both positive and negative influences on subsequent innovation. Results from a longitudinal study of firms in the international chemicals industry indicate support for the predictions on direct and indirect ties, but in the interfirm collaboration network, increasing structural holes has a negative effect on innovation. Among the implications for interorganizational network theory is that the optimal structure of interfirm networks depends on the objectives of the network members.
Institutional openness is becoming increasingly popular in practice and academia: open innovation, open R&D and open business models. Our special issue builds on the concepts, underlying assumptions and implications discussed in two previous R&D Management special issues (2006, 2009). This overview indicates nine perspectives needed to develop an open innovation theory more fully. It also assesses some of the recent evidence that has come to light about open innovation, in theory and in practice.
In this paper, we investigate the transactions-costs assumptions which are embedded in different understandings of industrial clustering. By carefully examining these assumptions we then proceed to investigate the extent to which industrial structure is related to questions of innovation. In order to do this we examine the case of the global semiconductor industry. After describing in detail the structure of the industry, we then employ a Geographical Information System in order to map the locations of the various plants and establishments which are part of three major multinational semiconductor producers. These unique mappings allow us to challenge some widely held views concerning the nature of the relationship between industrial structures, firm types and regional development.
Institutional theory and structuration theory both contend that institutions and actions are inextricably linked and that institutionalization is best understood as a dynamic, ongoing process. Institutionalists, however, have pursued an empirical agenda that has largely ignored how institutions are created, altered, and reproduced, in part, because their models of institutionalization as a process are underdeveloped. Structuration theory, on the other hand, largely remains a process theory of such abstraction that it has generated few empirical studies. This paper discusses the similarities between the two theories, develops an argument for why a fusion of the two would enable institutional theory to significantly advance, develops a model of institutionalization as a structuration process, and proposes methodological guidelines for investigating the process empirically.
A framework for open innovation
- Flynn
Flynn, M., Wang, C., 2012. A framework for open innovation. SAP Community Network.
Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations
- T B Lawrence
- R Suddaby
- B Leca
Lawrence, T.B.Suddaby, R., Leca, B., (Eds.), (2009). Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations, Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511596605.