Abstract:
Open innovation is a popular strategy among business firms to accelerate
innovations. However, open innovation does not always increase innovation
performance. Extant literature provides inconsistent and inconclusive arguments in
respect of the relationship between open innovation practices and innovation
performance. Existing theories mostly have an internal focus and fall short of
explaining why some firms succeed in open innovation initiatives and why others fail.
Open innovation is about knowledge flows. To understand how boundary conditions
influence knowledge flows we made a qualitative inquiry by studying open innovation
initiatives of five Sri Lankan firms. Under open coding, we reviewed data collected
from lengthy discussions with key people in those firms to identify few general
categories of information. Further analysis on this using axial coding revealed three
factors that influence knowledge flows. We bundle those factors and describe as
sequential coherence which can explain why some succeed while others fail in open
innovation. Sequential coherence is measured through the push and the pull effects
by willingness and ability of the participants of teacher firm and the preparedness
and ability of the participants from the student firm respectively. We trust that our
findings bridge a gap in open innovation literature. These initial findings could be
generalized through a quantitative study with larger samples. Managerial
implications of the finding is that ability to scan the entire chain of knowledge flow
across boundaries and taking corrective measures for any bottlenecks or hindrances
observed can bring better results from open innovation initiatives. Further, sequential
coherence leads to multiple research opportunities in furthering our knowledge in
open innovation.
