Contextual factors and open innovation: are there contradictory or yet little investigated propositions?

Abstract

Open Innovation (OI) is emerging as a new alternative in opposition to the closed approach: its key tenet is that not all good ideas emerge within organisations and not all good internal ideas can be successfully commercialised by the same firm. In the last years, even with an attention to OI, most researches have focused on theoretical considerations and case studies, while large-scale studies are still limited. Despite the depth of analysis of case studies is undisputed, surveys have greater hope of extending results. Moreover, although some relationships between contextual factors, OI and performance have been analysed through surveys, they remain quite contradictory. Therefore, the aim of this article is to point out these relationships, whether they are contradictory or little investigated by surveys, in order to encourage future empirical research. Consistently, the design of authors’ survey project is presented.