Vareska van de Vrande

TL;DR: This first paper of the special issue identifies some trends in open innovation research by analysing how the literature on this topics has evolved since the introduction of the concept in 2003 by identifying several directions for further research.

TL;DR: The results show that the variance in relative technological proximity between the focal firm and its partners exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovative performance and that this relationship is affected by the diversity of the external sourcing modes used in the portfolio.

Abstract: Open innovation provides a general view how firms can benefit from external sources of knowledge. Absorptive capacity is crucial in explaining why some companies are much better than others in creating and capturing value from in-sourcing externally developed technology and from collaboration with innovation partners. Absorptive capacity and the outside - in dimension of open innovation are inevitably linked to each other. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how absorptive capacity and the outside-in dimension of open innovation can be linked to each other. We claim that recent insights from open innovation practices in companies entail several clues to enrich the concept of absorptive capacity and to improve our understanding how management decisions can strengthen a firm's ability to learn from its external environment.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that these benefits do not automatically materialize and that firms have to learn new skills and routines to develop the full ''real option?-potential of open innovation practices''.

TL;DR: Lee et al. as discussed by the authors investigated the relevance and the speci c nature of open innovation in SMEs and showed that SMEs can benefit from opening their business models and using in-ows and out-ows of knowledge.