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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.

This work deals with the effect of transformational leadership (TL) on organisational performance (OP) through the mediating roles of organisational learning (OL) and open innovation (OI). Data was collected from 202 respondents in Tunisian enterprises using non-probabilistic convenience sampling. Based on structural equation modelling, the findings demonstrate a positive effect of TL on OP through an OI mediation. The study highlighted the direct and indirect effects of TL on OP through a double partial mediation of OI and OL. The document sheds new light on the gaps between TL and entrepreneurial leadership, not as a continuum, but as coexisting entrepreneurial leadership styles.

The motivation of this paper is to name the central lines of development in the research field of innovation-related knowledge engineering. This helps to define the starting point for an urgently required interdisciplinary academic discussion about the design of a core ontology for innovations. A review about the currently known ontologies for innovation emphasizes the need for engineering a core ontology for innovations based on a valid consensual understanding of the term innovation. In a universally applicable conception, innovation is characterized as a (re-) combination of purposes and means. A transmission of this conceptualization is presented, visualized and its usage shown through the ontology InnOnto. The paper concludes with implications for future research tasks in the field of innovation-related knowledge engineering.

Transfer of research results in production systems requires, among others, that knowledge be explicit and understandable by stakeholders. Such transfer is demanding, as so many researchers have been studying alternative ways to classic approaches such as books and papers that favour knowledge acquisition on behalf of users. In this context, we propose the concept of Knowledge Experience Package (KEP) with a specific structure as an alternative. The KEP contains both the conceptual model(s) of the research results which make up the innovation, including all the necessary documentation ranging from papers or book chapters; and the experience collected in acquiring it in business processes, appropriately structured. The structure allows the identification of the knowledge chunk(s) that the developer, who is acquiring the knowledge, needs in order to simplify the acquisition process. The experience is needed to point out the scenarios that the user will most likely face and therefore refer to. Both structure and experience are important factors for the innovation transferability and efficacy. Furthermore, we have carried out an experiment which compared the efficacy of this instrument with the classic ones, along with the comprehensibility of the information enclosed in a KEP rather than in a set of Papers. The experiment has pointed out that knowledge packages are more effective than traditional ones for knowledge transfer.

This paper discusses the use of a university spin-out firm to bring a potentially disruptive technology to market. The focus for discussion is how a spin-out can build a technology ecosystem of providers of complementary resources to enable partner organizations to build competence in a novel and potentially disruptive technology. The paper uses the illustrative case of Cambridge Display Technology Ltd (CDT) to consider these issues from the perspective of the literature on open innovation (with particular emphasis on the role of partnerships between start-ups and established firms), the commercialization of university IP, and the commercialization of disruptive technologies.

The objective of the research presented in this paper is to study the relationship between practices for managing external sources of information and the innovative performance of the enterprise. The research can be characterized as mostly quantitative. The data had been collected from a sample of Brazilian enterprises recognized as being very commited with technological innovation activities. The findings of the study suggest many significant relationships between the innovation performance of the enterprise and kind of sources of technological information used as well as with the access modalities to this external sources. The results suggest, also, a trend towards an increasing of the use of external sources of technological information and the existence, regarding this matter, of a large space for improvements of the actual managerial practices adopted by the enterprises.

The article is focused on the explanation of the benefits of an open innovation approach in order to drive small and medium enterprises within the actual dynamic environment. In particular, the article gives evidence of the capability of the new paradigm in enabling innovative patterns of growth and development, especially for the small segment, not able to overpass a lot of constraints for achieving high performance by itself.

We argue that firms' innovation can be carried out through open innovation platforms, in which they will grasp the most important benefits and opportunities in order to catch the value creation.

Open source (OS) has raised significant attention in industrial practice and in scholarly research as a new and successful mode of product development. This paper is among the first to study open source development processes outside their original context, the software industry. In particular, we investigate the development of tangible products in so-called open design projects. We study how open design projects address the challenges usually put forward in the literature as barriers to the open development of tangible products. The analysis rests on the comparative qualitative investigation of four cases from different industries. We find that, subject to certain contingencies, open design processes can be organized to resemble OSS development processes to a considerable degree. Some practices are established specifically to uphold OS principles in the open design context, while others starkly differ from those found in OSS development. Our discussion focusses on different aspects of modularity as well as the availability of low-cost tools.

This paper develops an indicator framework for examining open innovation practices and their impact on performance. The analysis, which is based on Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data for Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Norway, yields a number of interesting results. First, we find that open innovation practices have a strong impact on innovation performance. Second, results suggest that broad-based approaches yield the strongest impacts, and that the collective of open innovation strategies appear more important than individual practices. Third, intramural investments are still important for innovative performance, stressing that open innovation is not a substitute for internal knowledge building.

It can be challenging for people in an innovation project to develop a shared understanding of the project's overall vision and of what they need to do practically—especially if the project is organized as networked innovation and follows a designerly approach. Yet shared understanding is critical for success. Based on an explorative study of one innovation project, in which ICT applications are developed, we discuss the ways in which the development and evaluation of scenarios and demonstrators can help the people involved to develop a shared understanding. Furthermore, we propose several recommendations for managers of innovation projects for effectively organizing the development and evaluation of scenarios and demonstrators.

Networked innovation is a specific form of open innovation, i.e. the collaboration of two or more companies as partners. A longitudinal research project was set up to explore this innovation form on different organizational levels. In an exploratory study, nine companies were interviewed about the way they carried out networked innovation projects. This paper focuses on the following results: their motivation to partake in networked innovation, the way they find partners, the start of an innovation project and the used processes.

This paper investigates the role that publicly funded infrastructure can play in supporting the implementation of open innovation at particular locations. Three case studies of open innovation infrastructure projects in the East of England illustrate contrasting approaches to delivering an infrastructure to support open innovation. The paper analyzes the cases using concepts from the literature on open innovation, regional innovation systems and business incubation. The cases reveal insights on how emerging management theories can have direct influence on regional innovation policies, and reveal the complexities of managing changing multi-stakeholder interests in relation to an approach to supporting innovation whose success is inherently hard to measure.

Open innovation model is the best choice for the firms that cannot afford R&D costs but intent to continue playing the innovation game. This model offers to any firm the possibility to have companies spread worldwide and in all research fields as partners in R&D. However, the possible partnership can be restricted to the manager's know-who. Patent documents can be the source of rich information about technical development and innovation from a huge amount of firms. Search through all these daily created documents is a cumbersome task that technology managers cannot afford. This paper aims to introduce an automated model to seek matching firms' R&D using data mining techniques applied into patent documents database. The methodology considers the search for patent documents from possible partners and these data treatment through the association technique among IPC fields. An evaluation system was implemented and a sample experiment was made. The results reached are patterns of technological knowledge interdependence that can be used to evaluate four possible types of partnership.

Using a case study of Acclarent, a medical device company, this paper attempts to propose a framework to further illustrate the process of open innovation in the medical device industry. We examined five elements in the mechanism of the open innovation process. Our paper shows how the success of Acclarent — a medical device start-up — depends on effective management of the flow of knowledge to satisfy unmet needs, while integrating in-depth knowledge of FDA regulations and third-party payers' reimbursement policies into the product innovation process.

When using the open source software (OSS), development model firms face the challenge to balance the tension between the integration of knowledge from external individuals and the desire for control. In our investigation, we draw upon a data set consisting of 109 projects with 912 individual programmers and 110 involved firms and show how those different projects are governed in terms of project leadership. Our four hypotheses show that despite the wish for external knowledge from voluntary programmers firms are relying on own resources or those from other firms to control a project, that projects with low firm participation are mainly led by voluntary committers, and that projects with high firm participation are mainly led by paid leaders. This research extends the dominating literature by providing empirical evidence in that area and helps to deepen our understanding of firm participation in OSS projects as a form of open innovation activity.

This paper concentrates on the possibilities offered by gamification in practice-based innovation activities. It addresses the following research questions: How does gamification enhance creativity in practice-based innovation? How can gamification be modified into a method that facilitates experiences of gamefulness? A case study presented in the paper examines the impact of gamification in co-creating a value-adding network for open innovation processes between organizations. The results indicate that gamification can be developed into a successful method that enhances creativity and interaction among collaborators.

Extant research has highlighted the critical role of unabsorbed slack resources in internal innovation processes. In recent years, many firms have continued to open up their innovation processes to actively collaborate with external partners. In light of a limited understanding of the determinants of collaborative innovation, we provide new theoretical arguments about the relationship of unabsorbed slack resources with internal and collaborative innovation processes. Specifically, we draw on resource-based and competence-based logic and develop a conceptual framework for intraorganizational and interorganizational innovation with propositions for the impact of unabsorbed slack resources on internal and external knowledge acquisition and commercialization processes. The arguments underscore the critical role of excess resources in collaborative innovation, and they highlight the need for a fine-grained examination of the impact of unabsorbed slack resources in innovation processes. The arguments are particularly important in light of a renewed interest in essential enablers and barriers to collaborative innovation processes.

An important and frequently researched concept in the field of open innovation is the integration of lead users into the process for developing innovative product concepts. Social media has offered promising new possibilities for companies in terms of supporting lead user integration. This paper provides an overview of relevant aspects of lead user research, as well as the identification of lead users. Furthermore, we connect lead user theory with social media and discuss possible ways to identify lead users. Based on the conclusion that existing research does not yet sufficiently provide a detailed understanding on identifying lead users in social media, we conducted an empirical study to gain deeper insights in the social media habits of lead users; this involved a case study comprising 20 interviews.

This study’s findings present a rather ambivalent picture, concluding that identifying lead users via social media may work with some limitations. Social media can contribute complementary with established approaches like pyramiding to the identification of lead users, but it is not a standalone solution. It strongly depends on the content of the project and on the group of individuals where lead users should be originated. Based on these findings, we derive theoretical and managerial implications and show how companies can utilize social media in addition to established methods for identifying lead users. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of study limitations and recommendations for areas of further research.

This paper aims to discuss the importance of Living Labs as an effective mechanism that can support the creation of dynamic innovation ecosystems and networks. The analysis of literature related to regional innovation and based on the Quadruple Helix framework, is integrated with exploratory research analysis of 20 cases of Italian Living Labs. The field study is realized through a web-based content analysis and questionnaires. The paper contributes to study how the Living Lab can constitute an effective mechanism supporting the creation of dynamic innovation ecosystems and networks, in the final aim to explore its relevance for setting regional strategies for smart growth, which valorize the internal and external knowledge assets. The paper provides important implications, both at research and policy levels, related with the knowledge-based innovation processes that could be activated at territorial level.

Literature on the champion theory proposes the informal character of the champion’s role and also notes difficulties in institutionalizing it. Nevertheless, formally institutionalized roles that seem to fit the description of a champion can be recognized in organizations, especially as enablers of open innovation activities. However, research cannot answer how this institutionalization occurs and which factors influence it. To answer these questions, we investigate a unique single case in which a champion role was institutionalized in the purchasing department of a multinational company. The new role’s task is to identify, select, and integrate supplier innovations. Our results indicate that the informal role of the champion can be successfully institutionalized when certain success factors are considered, which are management commitment, use of success stories, and matching of champions with research and development teams. We contribute to innovation management literature by using the well-established champion theory to explain how and why large multinational companies formally establish the role of the innovation champion. Our research offers pathways for further research about both, the antecedents and the consequences of role formalization. Practitioners can build on the success factors derived in this study when formally implementing innovation champions as enablers of open innovation activities.