Open Innovation Practices in Firms
Summary
Open innovation refers to the intentional use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and expand markets for external use of innovation. Firms adopting this paradigm engage with external actors—such as customers, suppliers, universities, start-ups and even competitors—to source ideas, share risks and co-develop solutions. Such boundary-spanning collaboration can take multiple forms, including joint research and development alliances, crowdsourcing platforms, corporate incubators, licensing agreements and open data initiatives. In practice, open innovation can enhance speed to market, reduce development costs and improve product diversity by tapping into global pools of expertise. At the same time, firms must balance openness with intellectual property protection to ensure adequate returns on innovative activities. Recent shifts towards digital ecosystems, sustainability imperatives and geopolitical fragmentation have further shaped open innovation practices, prompting firms to refine their governance mechanisms, create hybrid organisational structures and deploy digital tools for knowledge management. Across sectors and geographies, open innovation has become a strategic lever for resilience and competitive advantage, underpinning new business models and fostering inclusive value creation.
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Open Innovation Practices in Firms publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in open innovation practices in firms across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Open innovation: A framework for innovation management where firms integrate external ideas and pathways alongside internal efforts to develop and commercialise new products or services.
Ambidextrous innovation: The capability of an organisation to pursue both explorative (radical) and exploitative (incremental) innovation activities in parallel, balancing creativity with efficiency.
Appropriability: The extent to which a firm can capture the economic benefits from its innovations, often managed through intellectual property rights and strategic partnerships.
External search: The systematic effort by firms to scan, identify and acquire knowledge, technologies or competencies from outside their organisational boundaries to support their innovation processes.
References
- Assessing the effectiveness of open innovation implementation strategies in the promotion of ambidextrous innovation in Thai small and medium-sized enterprises. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge (2023).
- Creating shared value through open innovation approaches: Opportunities and challenges for corporate sustainability. Business Strategy and the Environment (2023).
- Exploring the boundaries of open innovation: Evidence from social media mining. Technovation (2023).
- The paradox of openness: Appropriability, external search and collaboration. Research Policy (2014).
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