Emilia Lamberti

Exploring the impact of open innovation on firm performances

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between the openness of firms and their innovation and financial performances. Design/methodology/approach – In order to investigate such relationships, data on inbound and outbound open innovation (OI) processes and performances of 110 worldwide top research and development (R & D) spending bio-pharmaceutical companies are collected via the consolidated annual reports and the PATSTAT database. The time period of the analysis is 2008-2012. Findings – Regarding innovation performances, R & D productivity and revenues to patents ratio decrease with openness, whilst patents growth is not influenced by OI adoption. As to financial performances, sales growth exhibits a positive trend with openness, while operating profit and turnover decrease with OI adoption. Particularly, an inverted U-relationship with inbound and a U-shape one with outbound are observed as of operating profit. Research limitations/implications – The study adds to the knowl...

Inbound and Outbound Open Innovation: Organization and Performances

The aim of the paper is to analyse the relationships between the openness degree of companies and their 1) context features, 2) R&D organization and 3) financial performances. The openness degree is defined after a pecuniary approach, involving all the transactions in the innovation market. Hypotheses are formulated and, then, tested on a sample of 126 world top R&D spending bio-pharmaceutical companies for the period 2008-2012. Open innovation is more pervasive among small and young companies, for most of which it represents the very core business. Inbound and outbound practices have a similar diffusion in terms of number of companies adopting them, but the cumulative values of inbound flows are higher, whereas outbound flows are more relevant when compared to the total business of the firms. Inbound practices are substitutive to internal R&D activities, while outbound ones are complementary to internal development. The performances of companies have an inverted-U shape trend versus inbound practices and a fundamentally decreasing trend versus outbound ones.

Knowledge Domains, Technological Strategies and Open Innovation

This study provides a patent-based framework, investigating the relationship among the relevance of the technological domains, the exploitation vs. exploration strategies and the choice of open innovation practices. Specifically, this work presents five levels of open innovation adoption and analyses the reason why firms open up their innovation boundaries. The methodology is tested on a sample of 240 companies belonging to the bio-pharmaceutical and the technology hardware & equipment industries, by examining their patents filed in 2011. Results show that the relevance of the knowledge domain affects the choice of the innovation strategy; also, non-equity alliances are preferred in explorative activities and equity alliances in exploitative ones.

Open models for innovation: an accounting-based perspective

The paper suggests an accounting–based framework for defining open innovation adoption modalities through the analysis of annual reports. Five models are described, depending on the costs, revenues, new investments and divestments in intangibles and knowledge assets related to open innovation. The framework is applied to a sample of 271 world top research and development (RD the former mainly adopt a collaborative model for open innovation, by jointly developing research programmes with external parties, the latter prefer to incorporate other companies through the use of spin–ins. The paper contributes to the existing research by suggesting a pecuniary approach to evaluate open innovation adoption modalities. The framework can be used by companies for both monitoring their own open innovation positioning and benchmarking it with those of competitors.

Measurement of open innovation through intellectual capital flows: framework and application

The paper suggests a methodology for measuring companies’ openness degree through accounting data and providing a relation between open innovation activities and intellectual capital components. Four openness dimensions are defined and a synthetic measure of openness is suggested. The model is applied to a sample of 126 world top R&D spending companies in the bio-pharmaceutical industry for the period 2008–2012. Results show a negative correlation of openness with firm age, dimension and efficiency and a positive correlation with R&D intensity, with biotech companies being more open than pharmaceutical ones. Further, the most relevant component of openness is represented by the revenues deriving from joint development projects, out-licensing and R&D outsourcing. The paper contributes to the existing research by suggesting inbound and outbound metrics for open innovation and by underlining the role of intellectual capital. The framework can be used for monitoring and benchmarking the openness degree of companies with competitors.

Open innovation and intellectual property: a knowledge-based approach

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a patent-based framework for investigating the effect of previous and current open innovation (OI) adoption on firms’ knowledge management strategies and type of innovation output. Design/methodology/approach Patent data are employed for gauging innovation practices, exploitation vs exploration strategies, specialization vs diversification choices and type of innovation. The study is performed on a sample of 1,280 patents granted to 66 top R&D spending bio-pharmaceutical companies. The year of analysis is 2010. Findings The previous recourse to specific innovation practices influences the current practice selection. R&D collaboration, outsourcing and mergers and acquisitions are employed to pursue exploration. Past purchase of patents increases the likelihood to achieve architectural and radical innovation in current activities. Research limitations/implications The work recommends the use of patent data to gauge many key elements for knowledge and innovation management. Results exhort scholars to investigate innovation practices at the knowledge domain level in order to detect specific behaviors. Practical implications The study provides a methodology for supporting decision-makers in assessing firms’ OI adoption, also performing the benchmark with competitors and R&D partners. Given the high computational effort required for applying the methodology, the authors are planning to give access to the software specifically developed for this study. Originality/value The work contributes to the current debate considering the effect of a combination of innovation practices on knowledge management strategies and type of innovation output, with a particular focus on OI activities. Moreover, the separation between the impact of previous and current innovation practices provides useful insights.

R&D Collaboration Strategies for Innovation: An Empirical Study Through Social Network Analysis

The paper investigates the impact of network strategies on innovation strategies carried out in 2011 by 44 top R&D spending bio-pharmaceutical companies. Gathering patent and accounting data, we built the business network of joint development activities making use of social network analysis (SNA). Our findings show that each network strategy is related to different innovation strategies, confirming that social network analysis is an effective instrument for explaining why firms enter into R&D agreements with partners and the linkage of such collaborations with the overall innovation strategy.

Open Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry: An Empirical Analysis on Context Features, Internal R&D, and Financial Performances

This paper aims at investigating the relationships between the adoption of open innovation by companies and their context features, internal R&D, and financial performances. Two proxies for openness-variety and intensity-are defined, and six hypotheses are formulated and tested on a sample of 68 worldwide top R&D spending pharmaceutical companies. The period of 2008-2012 was analyzed for a total of 340 statistical units. Our results suggest that open innovation is a very pervasive behavior among smaller and younger companies, for which internal R&D is complementary to openness; still being in the development phase, they derive most of their revenues from open innovation itself and show negative financial performances. Yet, a wider range of open transactions are performed by larger and longer established firms, exhibiting good financial performances and adopting open innovation as a substitution to internal R&D efforts. Through an in-depth review of the literature, this paper contributes to the research on open innovation by providing an accounting measurement system, testing six hypotheses among open innovation and some firm-level variables, and positioning the obtained results within the current debate.

Open innovation scorecard: a managerial tool

The purpose of this paper is to devise a scorecard providing a suite of indicators that give innovation managers a value-oriented, fast but holistic view of open innovation (OI) adoption in their organisations.,The theoretical framework is built after a thorough review of OI literature. The managerial tool is developed from the theoretical framework, constructing indicators that can be easily generated by processing data within information systems of companies.,The scorecard provides a multi-dimensional conceptualisation of OI adoption in organisations, investigating environment, collaboration and importing/exporting mechanisms. Six indicators are defined: innovation funds, OI employees, collaboration costs, collaboration revenues, importing costs and exporting revenues.,The devised tool enables the assessment of openness through objective and available data, systematically updated within the information systems of companies and, hence, easily exploitable by innovation managers. In order to meet such conditions, several aspects emerged from the literature review, although relevant, were left out.,Three dashboards can be derived by exploiting the information available in the scorecard. With the use of such tools innovation managers can both assess the open behaviours of their companies – identifying the trajectories to follow in order to improve performance – and benchmark different OI practices either inside or outside the organisation.,The scorecard allows innovation managers both to carry out a cost-benefit analysis, evaluating if their organisations are effectively and efficiently generating outputs from OI with the committed resources, and to identify a virtuous circle between the company’s commitment and reputation, joint development, and innovation market opportunities.

Open innovation strategies in top R&D spending companies

The paper suggests an accounting-based methodology for defining open innovation adoption modalities, based on economic and financial transactions in inbound and outbound processes. The framework is applied to a sample of 274 top research and development spending companies operating in bio-pharmaceutical and technology hardware and equipment industries. For biotechnological companies open innovation represents a core activity, with most of them having high values of revenues deriving from joint development projects and licensing. On the other side, for pharmaceutical companies open innovation is somehow ancillary: even if most open innovation activities are widespread, their values are not really significant if compared to the total business volume. For companies in the technology hardware and equipment industry the use of spin-ins as a mean for incorporating external knowledge is a characteristic activity and also the acquisition and selling of innovation-related intangibles is quite pervasive. Further, a limited number of semiconductors companies have remarkable values of licensing revenues.