Open Innovation: Unveiling the Power of the Human Element

The following sections are included:

• About the Editors
• List of Contributors
• Contents
• Introduction Unbundling the Human Element in Open Innovation: Views, Arguments and Perspectives

How do human resource practices strengthen open innovation (OI) activities? This inductive study of six cases leads to propositions exploring this question, which has not been empirically investigated yet. We investigate the relation between human resource practices and an employee’s willingness to embrace OI in six cases that include the perspectives of chief executive officers (CEOs), human resource managers, and experts from Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom regarding human resource practices in both small and large companies actively pursuing OI. The findings reveal that when implementing OI, it is people’s thinking and attitudes towards this approach to innovation that can strengthen OI activities. Human resource practices can influence peoples’ behaviours and attitudes towards OI by strategically selecting candidates, by rewarding employees, and by establishing a strategically focused climate in which employees are stimulated and feel comfortable being open, talking to others about their ideas, etc. Training practices were found to be negligible. The findings further reveal a number of human resource challenges that need to be overcome when organizing for OI.

Many researchers are striving to find the answer on the impact of open innovation (OI) on company’s performance and the external and internal barriers associated with a company’s shift from a closed towards an OI approach. Unfortunately, the literature pays very little attention to the impact of national culture on a company’s innovation process and attitudes associated with the Not-Invented-Here (NIH) and Not-Sold-Here (NSH) syndromes. This chapter focuses on analyzing cultural influences on OI process. It introduces the system dynamics simulation model in order to analyze how national culture dimensions have an influence on the innovative output of a company under stable environmental conditions. More precisely, it analyzes the impact of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions on company’s attitudes towards inbound and outbound OI processes.

This chapter describes cultural and structural barriers influencing the capacity to integrate external knowledge. Tools and strategies available to overcome those barriers are examined and reviewed with the support of industry experts. This chapter contributes to the existing literature by providing insights on how information and communication technologies (ICT) can support a company into becoming an open innovator. The research outcomes show that cultural and structural barriers hinder the journey from a closed to an open innovation (OI) paradigm. This respective research argues that structural barriers can be overcome with the use of certain ICTs, as well as seven predefined strategies influencing the absorptive capabilities of an organization. Cultural problems, on the other hand, can be remedied when both a strong managerial commitment and a behavioural change in the minds of the employees co-exist. Last but not least, this chapter discusses practical implications based on different perceptions by OI experts in terms of adopting new ways to support organizations on embracing OI practices, establishing a truly open corporate environment.

Many success stories can be found related to open innovation (OI). Therefore, many companies introduce this new concept with high expectations. Out of the authors’ practical experiences reality looks different. Many companies struggle to really profit from OI. Some even turn away from OI after an initial disappointment. The reason is that traditional ways of handling innovation are applied, which do not work properly for OI. This contribution presents a different, human-centred overall OI approach. It summarizes the authors’ experiences on how to successfully implement OI into a company. A three-step approach is presented that addresses and resolves typical shortcomings of current development processes while introducing OI into a company.

The chapter deals with the relationships between the concepts of open innovation (OI), human capital and positive psychological capital in order to explore the importance of the so-called human side of OI and the way to train and develop it. Research has identified some psychological and relational characteristics, such as trust and collaboration, on which it is important to train and develop people involved in OI teams, but it does not arrive to a clear training and development model to be delivered to people involved in such processes. The chapter discusses these characteristics in the light of the concepts of human capital and positive psychological capital, and proposes that a developing approach to training is more useful than a filling-gaps approach, since the first one is connected to a more creative productive thinking (which combines knowledge with creative/critical thinking), while the second one is connected to a less original reproductive thinking (which is simply a way to refine what is already known).

In small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), where typically the decision-making process is highly centralized, important decisions, such as innovation adoption and implementation, will be strongly influenced by Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). Based on Upper Echelon Theory (UET), which emphasizes CEOs’ limited awareness, this chapter shows that a firm’s open innovation (OI) journey is closely linked with the CEOs’ cognitive characteristics, their past experience and personal network of relationships. The case analysis results suggest that the micro-foundation of OI is deeply rooted in a key individual’s characteristics in innovative SMEs.

A decade of corporate and start-ups field experience has taught us that more than 40% of the medium and large enterprises that started to enable innovation as a strategic competitiveness differentiator just lamentably fail in this process!

This chapter studies the effect of international knowledge and skills and firm internationalization on inbound, coupled and outbound open innovation. Individual international knowledge and skills and firm internationalization are used as proxies for openness, which supports and enlarges the existing knowledge capabilities. Individuals and organizations are more capable to find and adopt solutions for innovation obstacles from the external sources when international knowledge and skills are present. The empirical analysis supported the influence of (1) individual international knowledge and skills on firm internationalization, (2) individual international knowledge and skills on inbound, coupled and outbound open innovation, (3) firm internationalization on inbound and outbound open innovation and (4) the mediating effect of firm internationalization on the relationship between individual international knowledge and skills and open innovation was not confirmed. Although individual and firm internationalization implies openness, firm internationalization does not mediate the relationship between the individual openness to open innovation. Knowledge is acquired and implemented directly on the individual level and projected onto project team level. Teams do not need to go through organizational routines to implement open innovation.

In this chapter, we examine how entrepreneurs behave in open innovation (OI) projects. To this end, we investigate why entrepreneurs develop open innovation projects, which appear to be driven primarily by the benefits gained from joining such schemes. Open innovation projects also involve many difficulties and challenges that business owners need to deal with. To cope with all the challenges arising from such projects, entrepreneurs require open innovation competences. We conducted a study of 73 entrepreneurs from 16 Romanian incubators to gain insights into the behaviour adopted by the latter in open innovation projects. Our findings indicate that the sample population mainly uses open innovation competences with regard to self-management, interpersonal management and content management. The most important benefits include a better network of contacts, improved market reputation and a change in attitude. Additionally, our findings demonstrate a link between open innovation competences and the benefits resulting from open innovation projects. In addition, such competences can help entrepreneurs to address the major difficulties that crop up in an open innovation project, frequently arising from the absence of a shared learning history. Our findings have implications for both entrepreneurs, who can develop their open innovation competences in order to improve their innovation output and for incubator management teams that can use them as recruitment criteria and training tools.

The convergence of technologies, often from different industries, brings new collaboration partners to the table. Unfortunately, our understanding of how these boundary-spanning collaboration projects work and what needs to be done so as to increase the odds for success is relatively poor. This chapter describes the case of the project IQBID, which brought together professionals from universities and different industrial environments to develop a novel system that significantly increases the comfort and energy efficiency of buildings. Within an action research framework, several challenges that were endangering the advancement of the project were uncovered, such as inexistence of a common business vision. However, the underlying problem was issues of human-related nature in the form of communication incongruities, different expectations, individual interests and lack of trust. The research team developed an intervention that could successfully deal with unspoken issues and lead to a shared business strategy. Thus, by analysing a specific case of convergence, this chapter seeks to contribute to open innovation research by linking the relatively unexplored context of technology convergence with the human aspect of collaboration.

Nowadays the idea of internally oriented and centralized research and development (R&D) practices has become obsolete. More and more companies are opting for an open innovation strategy, where they look outside their own organization and cooperate with other partners including research centres, companies or even directly the crowd. Besides crowdsourcing, a new way of integrating the crowd in a company’s innovation processes has emerged, namely crowdfunding. Crowdfunding allows creative individuals to receive funding for their ideas and start-ups from a large number of investors. Thus, crowdfunding contributes greatly to innovation by opening the funding and entrepreneurial process and enabling innovative ideas to be realized. In this chapter, the author contributes to the motivation literature and provides conceptual insights into the precise factors that drive the crowd to invest in a start-up and thus to become an integral part of its innovation process. Knowing the motivation of the crowd is of significant importance, considering that while open innovation has been well studied from a strategic point of view, the human aspect has been so far overlooked.

During past decades, bullying has been increasingly recognized as a prevalent problem in contemporary working life. Workplace bullying is seen as a persistent, long-lasting, escalated aggression, systematically targeted towards one or more individuals by one individual or a group. Several studies point out the serious negative effects bullying may have on individuals, organizations, families of the victims and society, as a whole. Bullying has the potential to damage the targets’ physical and emotional health and undermine their professional interests. In addition, it has been shown to be associated with higher absenteeism and intent to leave the organization, decreased commitment, productivity and efficiency. Various researches support the view that bullying is the result of a dynamic interaction of various factors, ranging from personality traits to organizational and psychosocial work environment aspects. In order to protect employees from bullying, management must reconsider those practices, which may foster directly or indirectly its occurrence, recognize the need to change the culture of the workplace and develop clear company policies against it. By investigating and confronting the phenomenon of bullying at the workplace, an organization can build a framework in which practices of open innovation may develop and flourish.

The following section is included:

• Index