LIMITS OF OPEN INNOVATION: BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN TECHNOLOGICAL AND NON-TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION

FERNANDO GABRIEL SANCHEZ HENRIQUEZ; SEVIL, A.; VASSOLO, R. S.

International Journal of Business Environment

Interscience Publishers

Año: 2023

1740-0589

Research on open innovation has mainly focused on managing knowledge flow across organizational boundaries for technological (product and process) innovations. However, the effect of external knowledge sources on non-technological innovation (process, marketing, managerial) has not been assessed yet. Thus, this paper extends the study of open innovation to non-technological (organizational and marketing) innovations, arguing that the effect of external knowledge sources on innovation is contingent on the type of innovation an organization pursues. Using a panel data from 3,977 firms-year observations obtained from three consecutive panels of the Chilean Innovation Survey (2009-2014), we show that external knowledge sources have a u-shape relationship with technological innovations but a positive relationship with non-technological innovations. We contribute to innovation literature by proposing a conceptual model of innovation openness and creating a theoretical bridge between the emerging open innovation literature and the growing literature on organizational innovation.