IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/eurasi/v8y2018i3d10.1007_s40821-017-0101-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The journey towards open innovation: why do firms choose different routes?

Author

Listed:
  • Levan Bzhalava

    (Caucasus University
    Graduate College “The Economics of Innovative Change” (DFG-GK-1411) and Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena)

  • Uwe Cantner

    (Graduate College “The Economics of Innovative Change” (DFG-GK-1411) and Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena
    University of Southern Denmark)

Abstract

Prior research on open innovation provides no systematic insight whether firms with internal innovation constraints increase the scale of R&D outsourcing or the number of innovation cooperation partnerships. Motivated by this research gap in the literature, we study the effect of economic- and knowledge-related innovation impediments on a degree of formal openness in innovation. Analyzing a 3 years panel dataset of German manufacturing firms obtained from Mannheim Innovation Panel (MIP) database, we find that knowledge-related obstacles induce firms to increase the scale of R&D outsourcing as well as to engage in innovation cooperation partnerships. Contrariwise, a non-significant relationship is detected between economic related innovation impediments and R&D openness. Hence, the study suggests that a high degree of openness in innovation is driven by knowledge shortages rather than cost-risk minimization objectives.

Suggested Citation

  • Levan Bzhalava & Uwe Cantner, 2018. "The journey towards open innovation: why do firms choose different routes?," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 8(3), pages 245-265, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:eurasi:v:8:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s40821-017-0101-9
    DOI: 10.1007/s40821-017-0101-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40821-017-0101-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s40821-017-0101-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Belderbos, Rene & Carree, Martin & Lokshin, Boris, 2004. "Cooperative R&D and firm performance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1477-1492, December.
    2. Malerba, Franco, 1992. "Learning by Firms and Incremental Technical Change," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 102(413), pages 845-859, July.
    3. Pellegrino, Gabriele & Savona, Maria, 2013. "Is money all? Financing versus knowledge and demand constraints to innovation," MERIT Working Papers 029, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    4. Lori Rosenkopf & Atul Nerkar, 2001. "Beyond local search: boundary‐spanning, exploration, and impact in the optical disk industry," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(4), pages 287-306, April.
    5. Frederique Savignac, 2008. "Impact Of Financial Constraints On Innovation: What Can Be Learned From A Direct Measure?," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(6), pages 553-569.
    6. Dahlander, Linus & Gann, David M., 2010. "How open is innovation?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 699-709, July.
    7. Christoph Grimpe & Ulrich Kaiser, 2010. "Balancing Internal and External Knowledge Acquisition: The Gains and Pains from R&D Outsourcing," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(8), pages 1483-1509, December.
    8. Pierre Blanchard & Jean-Pierre Huiban & Antonio Musolesi & Patrick Sevestre, 2013. "Where there is a will, there is a way? Assessing the impact of obstacles to innovation," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 22(3), pages 679-710, June.
    9. Pellegrino, Gabriele & Savona, Maria, 2013. "Is money all? Financing versus knowledge and demand constraints to innovation," MERIT Working Papers 2013-029, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    10. P. Mohnen & F. Palm & S. Loeff & A. Tiwari, 2008. "Financial Constraints and Other Obstacles: are they a Threat to Innovation Activity?," De Economist, Springer, vol. 156(2), pages 201-214, June.
    11. Pablo D'Este & Francesco Rentocchini & Jaider Vega-Jurado, 2014. "The Role of Human Capital in Lowering the Barriers to Engaging in Innovation: Evidence from the Spanish Innovation Survey," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 1-19, January.
    12. Kenta Nakamura & Hiroyuki Odagiri, 2005. "R&D boundaries of the firm: An estimation of the double-hurdle model on commissioned R&D, joint R&D, and licensing in Japan," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(7), pages 583-615.
    13. repec:bla:jomstd:v:47:y:2010:i:s2:p:1483-1509 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Cohen, Wesley M & Levinthal, Daniel A, 1989. "Innovation and Learning: The Two Faces of R&D," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(397), pages 569-596, September.
    15. repec:bla:jomstd:v:47:y:2010:i:s2:p:1434-1456 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. John Hagedoorn, 1993. "Understanding the rationale of strategic technology partnering: Interorganizational modes of cooperation and sectoral differences," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(5), pages 371-385, July.
    17. Kenneth Arrow, 1962. "Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention," NBER Chapters, in: The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors, pages 609-626, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Mariko Sakakibara, 1997. "Heterogeneity Of Firm Capabilities And Cooperative Research And Development: An Empirical Examination Of Motives," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(S1), pages 143-164, July.
    19. Carmen Weigelt, 2009. "The impact of outsourcing new technologies on integrative capabilities and performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(6), pages 595-616, June.
    20. Papke, Leslie E & Wooldridge, Jeffrey M, 1996. "Econometric Methods for Fractional Response Variables with an Application to 401(K) Plan Participation Rates," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(6), pages 619-632, Nov.-Dec..
    21. Mol, Michael J., 2005. "Does being R&D intensive still discourage outsourcing?: Evidence from Dutch manufacturing," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 571-582, May.
    22. Galia, Fabrice & Legros, Diego, 2004. "Complementarities between obstacles to innovation: evidence from France," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(8), pages 1185-1199, October.
    23. Uwe Cantner & Tatiana Plotnikova, 2009. "Technological Diversity and Future Product Diversity in the Drug Industry," Jena Economics Research Papers 2009-031, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    24. Alessandra Canepa & Paul Stoneman, 2008. "Financial constraints to innovation in the UK: evidence from CIS2 and CIS3," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 60(4), pages 711-730, October.
    25. Tether, Bruce S., 2002. "Who co-operates for innovation, and why: An empirical analysis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 947-967, August.
    26. Bruno Cassiman & Reinhilde Veugelers, 2006. "In Search of Complementarity in Innovation Strategy: Internal R& D and External Knowledge Acquisition," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(1), pages 68-82, January.
    27. Heli C. Wang & Jinyu He & Joseph T. Mahoney, 2009. "Firm‐specific knowledge resources and competitive advantage: the roles of economic‐ and relationship‐based employee governance mechanisms," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(12), pages 1265-1285, December.
    28. Christopher F Baum, 2008. "Stata tip 63: Modeling proportions," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 8(2), pages 299-303, June.
    29. D’Este, Pablo & Iammarino, Simona & Savona, Maria & von Tunzelmann, Nick, 2012. "What hampers innovation? Revealed barriers versus deterring barriers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 482-488.
    30. Susan M. Mudambi & Stephen Tallman, 2010. "Make, Buy or Ally? Theoretical Perspectives on Knowledge Process Outsourcing through Alliances," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(8), pages 1434-1456, December.
    31. Hätönen, Jussi & Eriksson, Taina, 2009. "30+Â years of research and practice of outsourcing - Exploring the past and anticipating the future," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 142-155, June.
    32. Belderbos, Rene & Carree, Martin & Lokshin, Boris, 2004. "Cooperative R&D and firm performance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1477-1492, December.
    33. Simona Iammarino & Mariacristina Piva & Marco Vivarelli & Nick Von Tunzelmann, 2012. "Technological Capabilities and Patterns of Innovative Cooperation of Firms in the UK Regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(10), pages 1283-1301, November.
    34. Nola Hewitt-Dundas, 2006. "Resource and Capability Constraints to Innovation in Small and Large Plants," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 257-277, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Quan Cai & Ying Ying & Yang Liu & Wei Wu, 2019. "Innovating with Limited Resources: The Antecedents and Consequences of Frugal Innovation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-23, October.
    2. Gabriele Pellegrino & Mariacristina Piva, 2020. "Innovation, industry and firm age: are there new knowledge production functions?," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 10(1), pages 65-95, March.
    3. Zeynep Karaca, 2018. "The Cluster Analysis In The Manufacturing Industry With K-Means Method: An Application For Turkey," Eurasian Journal of Economics and Finance, Eurasian Publications, vol. 6(3), pages 1-12.
    4. Tran Thi Hue, 2019. "The determinants of innovation in Vietnamese manufacturing firms: an empirical analysis using a technology–organization–environment framework," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 9(3), pages 247-267, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Davide Antonioli & Alberto Marzucchi & Maria Savona, 2017. "Pain shared, pain halved? Cooperation as a coping strategy for innovation barriers," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 42(4), pages 841-864, August.
    2. Gkypali, Areti & Arvanitis, Spyros & Tsekouras, Kostas, 2018. "Absorptive capacity, exporting activities, innovation openness and innovation performance: A SEM approach towards a unifying framework," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 143-155.
    3. Pinget, Amandine, 2016. "Spécificités des déterminants des innovations environnementales : une approche appliquée aux PME [Specificities of determinants for environmental innovation : an approach applied to SMEs]," MPRA Paper 80108, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Gabriele Pellegrino, 2015. "Barriers to innovation: can firm age help lower them?," Working Papers 2015/3, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    5. José García-Quevedo & Gabriele Pellegrino & Maria Savona, 2017. "Reviving demand-pull perspectives: The effect of demand uncertainty and stagnancy on R&D strategy," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 41(4), pages 1087-1122.
    6. Garcia Martinez, Marian & Zouaghi, Ferdaous & Sanchez Garcia, Mercedes, 2017. "Capturing value from alliance portfolio diversity: The mediating role of R&D human capital in high and low tech industries," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 55-67.
    7. Gabriele Pellegrino, 2018. "Barriers to innovation in young and mature firms," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 181-206, January.
    8. Martinez-Noya, Andrea & Narula, Rajneesh, 2018. "What more can we learn from R&D alliances? : A review and research agenda," MERIT Working Papers 2018-022, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    9. Spyros Arvanitis & Areti Gkypali & Kostas Tsekouras, 2014. "Knowledge Base, Exporting Activities, Innovation Openness and Innovation Performance," KOF Working papers 14-361, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    10. Hölzl, Werner & Janger, Jürgen, 2014. "Distance to the frontier and the perception of innovation barriers across European countries," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 707-725.
    11. Adrián Kovács & Bart Looy & Bruno Cassiman, 2015. "Exploring the scope of open innovation: a bibliometric review of a decade of research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(3), pages 951-983, September.
    12. José García-Quevedo & Gabriele Pellegrino & Maria Savona, 2017. "Reviving demand-pull perspectives: The effect of demand uncertainty and stagnancy on R&D strategy," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 41(4), pages 1087-1122.
    13. Sánchez-González, Gloria & González-Álvarez, Nuria & Nieto, Mariano, 2009. "Sticky information and heterogeneous needs as determining factors of R&D cooperation with customers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 1590-1603, December.
    14. Simeth, Markus & Mohammadi, Ali, 2017. "The impact of open innovation on employee mobility and entrepreneurship," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 449, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    15. Giovanni Marin & Alberto Marzucchi & Roberto Zoboli, 2014. "SMEs and Barriers to Eco-Innovation in EU: A Diverse Palette of Greens," SEEDS Working Papers 0614, SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies, revised Apr 2014.
    16. Gkypali, Areti & Filiou, Despoina & Tsekouras, Kostas, 2017. "R&D collaborations: Is diversity enhancing innovation performance?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 143-152.
    17. Leoncini, Riccardo, 2016. "Learning-by-failing. An empirical exercise on CIS data," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 376-386.
    18. García-Quevedo, José & Segarra-Blasco, Agustí & Teruel, Mercedes, 2018. "Financial constraints and the failure of innovation projects," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 127-140.
    19. Bernal, Pilar & Carree, Martin & Lokshin, Boris, 2022. "Knowledge spillovers, R&D partnerships and innovation performance," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    20. Isabel Freitas & Tommy Clausen & Roberto Fontana & Bart Verspagen, 2011. "Formal and informal external linkages and firms’ innovative strategies. A cross-country comparison," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 91-119, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:eurasi:v:8:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s40821-017-0101-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.