Outbound open innovation and its effect on firm performance:examining environmental influences

摘要

Firms may open up their innovation processes on two dimensions. While inbound openinnovation refers to the acquisition of external technology in open exploration processes,outbound open innovation describes the outward transfer of technology in open exploitationprocesses. Prior open innovation research has focused on the inbound dimension, whereas theoutbound dimension has been relatively neglected. Therefore, this article addresses therelationship between outbound open R&D strategies and firm performance. We use datafrom 136 industrial firms to test four hypotheses on the moderating effects of environmentalfactors in the relationship between open innovation strategies and firm performance. Theresults show that the degree of technological turbulence, the transaction rate in technologymarkets, and the competitive intensity in technology markets strengthen the positive effects ofoutbound open innovation on firm performance. By contrast, the degree of patent protectiondoes not facilitate successful open innovation. The results are crucially important to managersbecause they show under what environmental conditions open innovation strategies enhanceperformance