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Is open innovation a field of study or a communication barrier to theory development? A commentary
Technovation 31 (2011) 286
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Technovation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/technovation
Is open innovation a field of study or a communication barrier to theory development? A commentary Recently Groen and Linton (2010) initiated a debate on the usefulness of the open innovation concept, querying whether it adds value to theory and research beyond supply chain management as a field of study. Their question is justified. The advancement of a management discipline requires occasional ‘‘theoretical housecleaning,’’ where concepts that fail to guide empirical research or advance theory building and management practice may be abandoned for more fruitful areas of inquiry. But is this the case for open innovation? A good way to think about the contribution a theory or concept makes to the study of management is to ask whether or not it is useful to a practical and/or scientific audience (e.g., Corley and Gioia, 2011). Open innovation is considered useful by practicing managers because it helps them organize innovation activities with different stakeholders throughout their firms’ supply chain. Many managers also consider open innovation useful because it motivates the exploration of entirely new ways of innovating with partner organizations and individual experts. A prominent example is the recent interest among managers in opening up the frontend of innovation, and organizing knowledge-creation contests between external scientists (Jeppesen and Lakhani, 2010). To assess the scientific contribution of open innovation, it may be helpful to distinguish between innovation output and innovation process, both of which can be characterized along a dimension of degree of openness. First, consider innovation output. von Hippel (2010) maintains that the open innovation concept is scientifically useful. In terms of opening up the firm to ideas, knowledge, and technology from outside its boundaries—or for that matter, contributing to innovation by other organizations or individuals—there is an overlap between prior research on the supply chain and the Chesbrough’s work. Here, insofar as the firm owns (partly or fully) the intellectual property rights on the innovation output from the supply chain, innovation may even lean toward the closed end of the spectrum. However, as von Hippel (2010) points out, much academic work on open innovation focuses on information commons, which is an innovation output, such as open source software (OSS), a chemical formula, or a piece of music ‘‘free from intellectual property constraints’’ (von Hippel, 2010; von Hippel and von Krogh, 2003). Second, consider the innovation process where open innovation turns out to be useful when distinguishing process characteristics. Toward the closed end of the openness spectrum, the
DOI of original article: 10.1016/j.technovation.2010.09.002 0166-4972/$ - see front matter & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.technovation.2011.03.001
innovation process can be restricted to a small group of external participants. The firm governs innovation by formulating project objectives, selecting relevant participants from the supply chain, incenting them, managing communication between them, evaluating and including their contributions, and so on. At the other end of the spectrum, innovation unfolds in a self-organized environment, where the firm contributes on par with individual users, other firms, universities, government agencies, etc. Open source software development is a case in point: many OSS projects receive support from IT hardware and software firms, but a majority of contributions may come from individual users. The open innovation concept also helps explain this new phenomenon. Over the past decade, academic work has examined the characteristics of open and collaborative innovation processes, including the factors shaping participants’ motivations, unfolding communication patterns, the impact of technologies on collaboration, changes in decision-making authority, the antecedents and consequences of firm participation in innovation, and so on. At the extreme open end of the spectrum, such innovation processes would not typically be considered integral to a firm’s supply chain: they are difficult to plan in advance; they do not tend to entail much contract R&D; they are exposed to unusually high turnover of project participants; and their governance faces a large group of stakeholders with very heterogeneous motivations. Thus, in my view, open innovation is a useful concept that helps scholars study an emerging and extremely interesting phenomenon. References Corley, K.G., Gioia, D.A., 2011. Building theory about theory building: what constitutes a theoretical contribution? Academy of Management Review 36 (1), 12–32. Groen, A.J., Linton, J.D., 2010. Is open innovation a field of study or a communication barrier to theory development? Technovation 30, 554. Jeppesen, L.B., Lakhani, K.R., 2010. Marginality and problem-solving effectiveness in broadcast search. Organization Science 21, 1016–1033. von Hippel, E., 2010. Comment on ‘Is open innovation a field of study or a communication barrier to theory development?’. Technovation 30, 555. von Hippel, E., von Krogh, G., 2003. Open source software and the privatecollective innovation model: issues for organization science. Organization Science 14, 209–223.
Georg von Krogh n Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland E-mail address: [email protected]
n
Tel.: þ41 44 632 88 50.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Technovation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/technovation
Is open innovation a field of study or a communication barrier to theory development? A commentary Recently Groen and Linton (2010) initiated a debate on the usefulness of the open innovation concept, querying whether it adds value to theory and research beyond supply chain management as a field of study. Their question is justified. The advancement of a management discipline requires occasional ‘‘theoretical housecleaning,’’ where concepts that fail to guide empirical research or advance theory building and management practice may be abandoned for more fruitful areas of inquiry. But is this the case for open innovation? A good way to think about the contribution a theory or concept makes to the study of management is to ask whether or not it is useful to a practical and/or scientific audience (e.g., Corley and Gioia, 2011). Open innovation is considered useful by practicing managers because it helps them organize innovation activities with different stakeholders throughout their firms’ supply chain. Many managers also consider open innovation useful because it motivates the exploration of entirely new ways of innovating with partner organizations and individual experts. A prominent example is the recent interest among managers in opening up the frontend of innovation, and organizing knowledge-creation contests between external scientists (Jeppesen and Lakhani, 2010). To assess the scientific contribution of open innovation, it may be helpful to distinguish between innovation output and innovation process, both of which can be characterized along a dimension of degree of openness. First, consider innovation output. von Hippel (2010) maintains that the open innovation concept is scientifically useful. In terms of opening up the firm to ideas, knowledge, and technology from outside its boundaries—or for that matter, contributing to innovation by other organizations or individuals—there is an overlap between prior research on the supply chain and the Chesbrough’s work. Here, insofar as the firm owns (partly or fully) the intellectual property rights on the innovation output from the supply chain, innovation may even lean toward the closed end of the spectrum. However, as von Hippel (2010) points out, much academic work on open innovation focuses on information commons, which is an innovation output, such as open source software (OSS), a chemical formula, or a piece of music ‘‘free from intellectual property constraints’’ (von Hippel, 2010; von Hippel and von Krogh, 2003). Second, consider the innovation process where open innovation turns out to be useful when distinguishing process characteristics. Toward the closed end of the openness spectrum, the
DOI of original article: 10.1016/j.technovation.2010.09.002 0166-4972/$ - see front matter & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.technovation.2011.03.001
innovation process can be restricted to a small group of external participants. The firm governs innovation by formulating project objectives, selecting relevant participants from the supply chain, incenting them, managing communication between them, evaluating and including their contributions, and so on. At the other end of the spectrum, innovation unfolds in a self-organized environment, where the firm contributes on par with individual users, other firms, universities, government agencies, etc. Open source software development is a case in point: many OSS projects receive support from IT hardware and software firms, but a majority of contributions may come from individual users. The open innovation concept also helps explain this new phenomenon. Over the past decade, academic work has examined the characteristics of open and collaborative innovation processes, including the factors shaping participants’ motivations, unfolding communication patterns, the impact of technologies on collaboration, changes in decision-making authority, the antecedents and consequences of firm participation in innovation, and so on. At the extreme open end of the spectrum, such innovation processes would not typically be considered integral to a firm’s supply chain: they are difficult to plan in advance; they do not tend to entail much contract R&D; they are exposed to unusually high turnover of project participants; and their governance faces a large group of stakeholders with very heterogeneous motivations. Thus, in my view, open innovation is a useful concept that helps scholars study an emerging and extremely interesting phenomenon. References Corley, K.G., Gioia, D.A., 2011. Building theory about theory building: what constitutes a theoretical contribution? Academy of Management Review 36 (1), 12–32. Groen, A.J., Linton, J.D., 2010. Is open innovation a field of study or a communication barrier to theory development? Technovation 30, 554. Jeppesen, L.B., Lakhani, K.R., 2010. Marginality and problem-solving effectiveness in broadcast search. Organization Science 21, 1016–1033. von Hippel, E., 2010. Comment on ‘Is open innovation a field of study or a communication barrier to theory development?’. Technovation 30, 555. von Hippel, E., von Krogh, G., 2003. Open source software and the privatecollective innovation model: issues for organization science. Organization Science 14, 209–223.
Georg von Krogh n Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland E-mail address: [email protected]
n
Tel.: þ41 44 632 88 50.