Vareska van de Vrande

Broadening the scope of open innovation: past research, current state and future directions

In this first paper of the special issue, we identify some trends in open innovation research by analysing how the literature on this topics has evolved since the introduction of the concept in 2003. Research on open innovation has been mushrooming ever since and the scope has been broadened in different directions. Researchers also started to analyse open innovation at different level of analysis from the individual actors in organisations to ecosystems and national innovation systems. Despite the vast growth in research on open innovation, we identified several directions for further research: open innovation research should be linked to other management areas such as marketing, HRM, change management, etc. In addition, our understanding of open innovation could be improved if the recently developed insights could be related to the existing management theories.

How Prior Corporate Venture Capital Investments Shape Technological Alliances: A Real Options Approach

This article investigates how prior corporate venture capital (CVC) relationships between two firms affect the likelihood of their subsequently entering a strategic alliance. Creating a portfolio of CVC investments provides the investing firm with a set of opportunities that can be pursued once the technological and market uncertainty have been reduced. If the technology appears to be promising, a follow–on investment, such as a strategic alliance, is made to ensure the transfer of the technological knowledge. This article shows that prior CVC investments can play a role in the formation of strategic alliances and investigates the conditions under which they are most likely to do so.

Who is the corporate entrepreneur? Insights from opportunity discovery and creation theory

Recent research has begun to address and even compare nascent entrepreneurship and nascent corporate entrepreneurship. An opportunity based view holds great potential to integrate both streams of research, but also presents challenges in how we define corporate entrepreneurship. We extend (corporate) entrepreneurship literature to the opportunity identification phase by providing a framework to classify different types of corporate entrepreneurship. Through analysis of a large dataset on nascent (corporate) entrepreneurship (PSEDII) we show that these corporate entrepreneurs differ largely from each other in terms of human capital. Prior studies have indicated that independent and corporate entrepreneurs pursue different types of opportunities and utilize different strategies. Our findings from the opportunity identification phase challenge those differences and seem to indicate a difference between the opportunities corporate entrepreneurs identify versus the opportunities they exploit.

Understanding the advantages of open innovation practices in corporate venturing in terms of real options

Part of the advantages of using an open innovation (compared to closed innovation) in corporate venturing can be explained by applying the real options approach. Open innovation in risk-laden activities such as corporate venturing has the following advantages: i. benefits from early involvement in new technologies or business opportunities, ii. delayed financial commitment, iii. early exits reducing the downward losses, and iv. delayed exit in case it spins off a venture. We furthermore argue that these benefits do not automatically materialize. Innovation firms have to learn new skills and routines to develop the full `real option¿-potential of open innovation practices.