Marcel Bogers

Users as Innovators: A Review, Critique, and Future Research Directions:

What role do users play during innovation? Ever since it was argued that users can also be the sources of innovation, the literature on the role of users during innovation has grown tremendously. In this article, the authors review this growing literature, critique it, and develop some of the research questions that could be explored to contribute to this literature and to the theoretical perspectives that underpin the literature.

The open innovation paradox: knowledge sharing and protection in R&D collaborations

Purpose of this paper: This paper investigates the paradox that arises when firms simultaneously share and protect their knowledge in an alliance with other organizations. The goal of this paper therefore is to explore this tension field in such a coupled open innovation process and to identify which strategies can be developed to cope with this tension. Design/methodology/approach: The study was initially guided by a literature review and exploratory interviews, and it ultimately develops an inductive framework based on a multiple case study approach. The paper presents eight cases of a focal firm involved in a particular R&D collaboration. The case studies are based on a variety of data sources, including a number of semi-structured interviews. Findings: This paper unravels the tension field of knowledge sharing and protection in R&D collaborations, with the knowledge characteristics at the core and with the knowledge embodiment and relational dimension as mediating factors. These forces are in turn influenced by the collaboration characteristics and environment. Moreover, the case studies show different ways to cope with the tension between knowledge sharing and protection, such as an open knowledge exchange strategy and a layered collaboration scheme with inner and outer members. Licensing is moreover presented as a concrete way to implement such coping strategies. Originality/value: This paper provides a holistic perspective on the knowledge paradox in R&D collaborations as a coupled process of open innovation. It moreover describes two concrete strategies to cope with the tension field as well as the role and implications of licensing as a particular mechanism to overcome the open innovation paradox.

Managing Distributed Innovation: Strategic Utilization of Open and User Innovation

Research from a variety of perspectives has argued that innovation no longer takes place within a single organization, but rather is distributed across multiple stakeholders in a value network. Here we contrast the vertically integrated innovation model to open innovation, user innovation, as well as other distributed processes (cumulative innovation, communities or social production, and co-creation), while we also discuss open source software and crowdsourcing as applications of the perspectives. We consider differences in the nature of distributed innovation, as well as its origins and its effects. From this, we contrast the predictions of the perspectives on the sources, motivation and value appropriation of external innovation, and thereby provide a framework for the strategic management of distributed innovation.

The open innovation research landscape: Established perspectives and emerging themes across different levels of analysis

Abstract This paper provides an overview of the main perspectives and themes emerging in research on open innovation (OI). The paper is the result of a collaborative process among several OI scholars – having a common basis in the recurrent Professional Development Workshop on ‘Researching Open Innovation’ at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. In this paper, we present opportunities for future research on OI, organised at different levels of analysis. We discuss some of the contingencies at these different levels, and argue that future research needs to study OI – originally an organisational-level phenomenon – across multiple levels of analysis. While our integrative framework allows comparing, contrasting and integrating various perspectives at different levels of analysis, further theorising will be needed to advance OI research. On this basis, we propose some new research categories as well as questions for future research – particularly those that span across research domains that have so far developed in isolation.

A Functional Perspective on Learning and Innovation: Investigating the Organization of Absorptive Capacity

We investigate the intra-organizational antecedents of firm-level absorptive capacity (AC). Specifically, we examine how the functional areas of R&D, manufacturing and marketing contribute to the absorption of knowledge coming from different external knowledge sources. The econometric results on a representative sample of Swiss firms show that non-R&D-based AC plays a significantly different role compared to the standard R&D-based one that is typically considered in studies on AC. We also reveal that AC is organized through a specialization of external knowledge absorption across functional areas. In particular, we find: (1) R&D is particularly important as an absorber of knowledge from public research organizations for product innovation; (2) manufacturing is important as an absorber of supplier knowledge for product innovation and of competitor knowledge for process innovation; and (3) marketing helps to absorb customer knowledge for product and process innovation as well as competitor knowledge for product innovation. We further investigate the differences between product and process innovation and find that marketing-based AC is more important for the former, although the overall analysis of these differences is less conclusive. In short, we show how functional areas play a role in the organization of AC and that firms may need an ambidextrous strategy to innovate effectively based on both upstream- and downstream-based AC.

Open innovation: current status and research opportunities

Interest in open innovation (OI) as a field of research has grown exponentially since the phrase was coined by Chesbrough in his 2003 book, with numerous articles, special issues, books, and conference sessions. Various reviews of the literature have summarized prior work, offered new frameworks, and identified opportunities for future research. Here we summarize these opportunities, which include more research on outbound OI, the role of open innovation in services, and network forms of collaboration such as consortia, communities, ecosystems, and platforms. Research should also examine the use of OI by small, new, and not-for-profit organizations, as well as the linkage of individual actions and motivations to open innovation. Other opportunities include better measuring the costs, benefits, antecedents, mediators and moderators of the effects of OI on performance, and understanding why and how OI is rejected, abandoned, or fails. Finally, we consider how OI can be better linked to prior theoretical research, including topics such as absorptive capacity, user innovation, resources, dynamic capabilities, business models, and the definition of the firm.

Contrasting Innovation Creation and Commercialization within Open, User and Cumulative Innovation

While industrial innovation was once assumed to be a vertically integrated process, three recent streams of research — open innovation, user innovation and cumulative innovation — have examined how innovation is created outside the boundaries of the firm. However, within these streams are multiple paths by which innovations are created and commercialized. We identify nine distinct innovation modes, which we systematically classify according to the locus of innovation creation and commercialization, and according to their enabling conditions. Finally, we discuss the contribution of our taxonomy and suggest future opportunities for research on the micro-foundations of each of these streams.

Profiting from External Innovation: A Review of Research on Open Innovation

In 2003, Chesbrough coined the term “open innovation” as a new paradigm for industrial innovation. In this paper, we review and synthesize the growing literature that follows Chesbrough by studying the commercialization of external innovations — one of the key open innovation practices.This paper provides a comprehensive overview and process model of open innovation. We classify prior studies in open innovation according to a four-phase process model for inbound open innovation that includes obtaining, integrating and commercializing external innovation, as well as work on nonreciprocal innovation flows. Finally we identify three opportunities for future research, including greater focus on business models, examination of the later and reciprocal phases of the commercialization process, and research into the limits and moderators of open innovation.

Open for Entrepreneurship: How Open Innovation Can Foster New Venture Creation

This paper explores how an open approach to new venture creation — purposefully managing knowledge flows across the venture’s organizational boundary — can be beneficial for start-up entrepreneurs. Our inductive case study, of both failure and success, identifies the key attributes of this open approach and how they affect the start-ups’ short-term survival. We find that ecosystem collaboration, user involvement, and an open environment directly influence new venture survival, and that their effects were moderated by the entrepreneurs’ open mindset. These findings carry a number of implications for entrepreneurship and innovation research and practice, providing some attention points for researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers interested in developing successful new ventures.

Innovation as improvisation 'in the shadow'

In this article, we explore processes of innovation – which are inherently uncertain – from a complexity perspective, in which they are understood as new patterns of experiences as they emerge in human conversational interaction. We reflect on local interactions between people involved in emerging processes of innovation, with a particular emphasis on the improvisational nature of interaction. Through an abductive approach, by iterating actual experiences and our understanding of them, we show that such processes are collective efforts that take place as informal, highly improvised conversations — happening ‘below the radar’ — which may unpredictably offer windows of opportunity to enable change. We show that innovation often emerges as ‘shadow themes’, experienced as subversive by those involved in the moments of interaction. While these themes are embedded in informal conversations and processes, they can be induced by invitations – conscious or unconscious moves that encourage those involved to make spontaneous moves together in a mutually improvised context. Our experience shows that the emergence of shadow themes can have a long‐term impact on the organization and the people involved, and that managers may be ‘in charge but not in control’ of such innovation processes.