Open innovation key issues in the digital age: a field-driven research agenda

Nowadays, many companies have digitalized their innovation processes to be more competitive in the market in which they operate. In parallel, open innovation has become a key component of companies’ digital strategies as the companies’ innovation processes require greater resources in the different implementation phases to capture and transfer knowledge within and outside the firm’s boundaries. Despite the proliferation of studies analyzing open innovation and digital technologies, some scholars advocate that research could benefit from developing a better understanding of what features of open innovation may be critical for the design and implementation of digital strategies. In this chapter, we review recent studies on open innovation to shed more light on this unexplored issue. In particular, we submit three constructs of open innovation that companies should consider when they design, develop and implement digital strategies: (1) purposeful knowledge exchange, (2) business model alignment, and (3) strategic management of intellectual property. After, we validate the relevance of these constructs through three representative case studies of European companies that have opened up their innovation processes and benefited from the development of digital technologies (i.e., King of App, GoOpti, and Cynny). Drawing on a rich and detailed discussion of the selected cases, this chapter offers some theoretical contributions to open innovation and digital strategies literature, including future research questions, and also provides some managerial implications.