Section 1.b Introduction

Open innovation has been described as a means of assisting firms utilising ideas and knowledge from inside and outside the firm. It has been defined as “a distributed innovation process based on purposively managed knowledge flows across organisational boundaries, using pecuniary and non-pecuniary mechanisms in line with the organisations business model” (Chesbrough et al, 2014, p vi). Open innovation strategies may lead to better financial performance by reducing costs related to innovation, increasing commercialisation and financial gain. Understanding open innovation in some way explains how sharing knowledge with internal and external stakeholders can promote innovation. Understanding processes can reinforce the importance of engaging with customers early in concept development and design stages of new products and services. Also openness can promote co-creation between firms, customers, suppliers, academia and government. The essence of such cooperation by internal and external stakeholders creates relationships to explore common interests and goals. From an open innovation perspective, value creation and capture is accomplished by (i) outside-in open innovation, i.e. ideas drawn into the organisation from the external environment. This involves opening up organisation’s innovation processes to external inputs and contributions, (ii) Inside-out open innovation utilises unused or underused ideas and assets gathered from outside the organisation and (iii) Coupled open innovation links outside-in and inside-out open innovation processes combining knowledge inflows and outflows to collaboratively develop and commercialise an innovation. Traditionally, knowledge is considered as being held by the firm as core competences and it is assumed that this is a source of sustainable competitive advantage. Accordingly knowledge used in, and resulting from, innovation and the knowledge resulting from the innovation remains within boundaries of the firm. Open innovation opposes this view as it integrates diverse knowledge from the wider environment into the business ecosystem and creates new knowledge for multiple stakeholders. Due to the inter-disciplinary nature of open innovation it can be discussed and theorised from many viewpoints, such as strategy, value chain, business models, core competencies, knowledge creation and more recently in design management. Levels of analysis vary with considerable research frequently conducted at organisational level, while more is needed in areas such as inter-organisational value networks. To date, large organisation have been at the focus of open innovation research, primarily because they are able implement open innovation to some degree without strategic change. More recently, open innovation practices in SMEs have become important, as these small firms have insufficient resources to cover all innovation activities and must look beyond firm boundaries for growth opportunities. Thus, inter-organisational networks are important drivers of innovation in SMEs as they often struggle to make the best use of strong network ties. Exploring open innovation in SMEs can provide insight into how best to utilise their networks.