Descripció del projecte
Innovation and new technologies play important roles in the growth and competitiveness of the firms. Open innovation, a relatively recent concept introduced by Henry Chesbrough in 2003, can be used as a tool by the firms to strengthen innovation ecosystems. From the very beginning open innovation was understood as a concept with economy-wide potential, as a company innovation strategy and business model, not only related to large firms and high-tech industries (Frans, Dieter, and Christine 2015), but also SMEs, and non-tech startups.
Open innovation is among the emerging topics that have attracted the attention of many scholars and practitioners in the recent years. A search in Google Scholar of “open innovation” provides over 2 million hits, Henry Chesbrough’s 2003 book has gathered more than 1,800 citations in just seven years (Google Scholar, July 2010), and surprisingly a wide range of disciplines, including economics, psychology, sociology, and even cultural anthropology have shown interest in it (Huizingh 2011). But, much is still unclear about the adoption of open innovation by entrepreneurs, SEMS, and services sector (Spender et al. 2017); (Hossain and Kauranen 2016);(Galeano and Gaviria 2016); (Bogers et al. 2016).
Although several studies have analysed the impact of networks and partnership of startups on their decision to start a new venture, including the study done by (Gruber, M., & Henkel, J. 2006), a research gap still exists regarding the mutual influence between the startups management decisions and open innovation process (Spender et al. 2017). KIMbc as a bridge between the innovators, researchers, academia, and the market will try to find out more about the adoption of open innovation by startups and nascent entrepreneurs, specifically on how entrepreneurs and startup managers’ decision can influence the company’s’ open innovation process? Why some companies are more innovative while others are not?
Moreover, (Hossain and Kauranen 2016) have found out that most of the studies related to the open innovations by SMEs have used panel data, simple research methodologies, most of the studies are quantitative and they have not been published in highest quality journals. Thus, some comparative, longitudinal, qualitative studies should target geographical areas such South America, South Asia, and Africa and explore behind the high tech SMEs. Business literature lacks a proper model to describe the adoption of open innovation by SMEs and more specifically on the role of state, public organizations, and intermediaries for transforming SMEs toward open innovation. KIM along with UAB will try to analyze in deept the enactment of open innovation and technology transfer in SMEs, especifically the services sector and answering some questions as “How can firms leverage customer resources to co-create value across various stages of open service innovation? How can service value networks be structured to enable open service innovation? What kind of collaborative processes are involved between the firm and customers in open service innovation?”
