Open Innovation, Value Creation and Value Capture Call for paper a Special Section of the Journal of Industrial and Business Economics

Open Innovation, Value Creation and Value Capture

A Special Section for the 50th Anniversary of the Journal of Industrial and Business Economics

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This special section welcomes both regular research papers of about 8,000-10,000 words and shorter 4,000-word papers that offer original perspectives on key conceptual and empirical research questions related to how open innovation can help organizations create and capture value, and the extent to which there might be a tension between value creation and value capture in open innovation strategies. Contributions are called for to advance our understanding of the nature, evolution, and impact of open innovation at the country, regional, sector, organizational, functional, team, and individual levels, especially by resorting to innovative data sets or suggesting novel use of existing data sources. We are interested in how large incumbents, small firms, startups, and non-profit organizations (universities, public research organizations, hospitals, NGOs, user communities, etc.) are engaging in and benefiting from open innovation. This Special Section will be part of the 2023 events sponsored by Intesa San Paolo to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Journal of Industrial and Business Economics (formerly published as Economia e Politica Industriale).

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Timeline

Papers can be submitted at the authors’ earliest convenience, but no later than October 30th, 2022. After submission, the papers will go directly through the usual review process. Successful papers will be immediately available online and will be included in a Special Section to be published in the fourth quarter of 2023. Manuscripts must be submitted via the journal’s website. Please indicate the special category “Anniversary special sections 4 – Open Innovation”.

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Guest Editors: Massimo G. Colombo (Politecnico di Milano), Karin Hoisl (University of Mannheim and Copenhagen Business School), Toke Reichstein (Copenhagen Business School) and Salvatore Torrisi (University of Milano-Bicocca)

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Backgound

Much has been written about open innovation since the seminal work of Chesbrough (2003) and Laursen and Salter (2006) (see, e.g., West, Salter, Vanhaverbeke, and Chesbrough, 2014). However, previous work has focused mainly on value creation and has largely neglected value capture. Innovation, defined as “invention + commercialization”, however, requires both. Moreover, the ability to capture value clearly influences the incentives and effectiveness of value creation. Indeed, it is essential to understand both value-in-exchange and value-in-use in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the value generated by open innovation (Chesbrough, Lettl and Ritter, 2018).

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To date, open innovation has been implicitly viewed as positive for organizations. However, although Chesbrough’s work openly discusses the costs of open innovation, they have also largely escaped systematic analysis to date, with a few exceptions (Laursen and Salter, 2014; Zobel et al., 2016; 2017; Veer et al., 2017). Examples of relevant topics could be dealing with knowledge leakage (Alvarez and Barney, 2001) through formal and informal mechanisms (Reuer and Arino, 2006; Colombo and Piva, 2019); value capture without patents (Holgersson and Granstrand, 2021); or co-opetition (Brandenburger and Nalebuff, 2021). These aspects are particularly important for small firms and start-ups for which it is generally more difficult to protect their proprietary knowledge, as highlighted in the literature on “swimming with sharks” (e.g., Diestre and Rajagopalan, 2012). Indeed, the importance of the issue is perhaps best captured by the “no patent, no talk” policy that flourishes in organizations, as emphasized by Alexy, Criscuolo and Salter (2009). And the importance of the cost of open innovation becomes even more important when the decision to adopt an open innovation strategy is difficult to reverse.

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Moreover, we still know too little about the mechanisms that determine the relationship between open innovation and value creation and value capture, as well as about the causality of these relationships. In other words, are more open organizations more successful, or is the causality reversed, i.e., more successful organizations can afford to be more open? Analysing the mechanisms requires data on goals, motives, or innovation strategies, and can be supported by the use of innovative data collection and data analysis techniques (web scraping, text/video analysis techniques). Investigating causal relationships requires well-designed identification strategies.

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Another important and timely question is how digitization affects value creation and value capture through open innovation. There is evidence on online crowdsourcing contests (Boudreau and Lakhani, 2009, 2013; Jeppesen and Lakhani, 2010; Boudreau et al., 2011). These papers mainly address issues related to value creation, but there is little research on value capture from crowdsourcing efforts. Exceptions include the work of Afuah and Tucci (2013) and Franke et al. (2014). This question may also be fundamentally related to the firm’s ability to effectively manage crowdsourcing campaigns and recruit suitable individuals for interaction, and how the selection of partners in such a setting may affect the tension between value creation and value capture. ?Another aspect is how data analytics can drive or impede innovation. Data from inside and outside an organization can be an invaluable source of innovation. However, organizations need to know how to leverage these resources. Wu et al. (2019), for instance, show that data analytics technology accelerates innovation, but that organizations with decentralized, open organizational structures and decentralized, open innovation processes are better able to profit from data analytics capabilities. Organizations still know far too little about how digitization and open innovation are related to each other and may be giving away innovation potential as a result. In addition, to profit from digitization organizations have to invest in co-inventions such as new management practices and human capital, which entail more information sharing within and between organizations (Brynjolfsson and McElheran, 2016). Despite first evidence, the relations among digitization, data-driven decision making, and open innovation are still not well understood.

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Finally, the existing literature has focussed primarily on large for-profit companies. Open innovation can be of great benefit to other types of organizations, such as small firms and start-ups, universities, hospitals, government research institutions, non-profit organizations, etc., as well. Even individuals, such as scientists, may profit from open innovation (Beck et al., 2022). Unfortunately, so far, we have very limited understanding on how these organizations and individuals cope with value capture challenges in open innovation processes.

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A non-exhaustive list of thematic areas to be covered by this Special Section includes the following.

The two sides of Open Innovation

To be successful in open innovation, firms need to craft an effective strategy for both value creations and value capture. However, these two aspects are difficult to combine, and there are important tensions that deserve closer examination.

Contributions are called for on the following issues:

-?????????To what extent do value creation and value capture influence the selection of open innovation strategies or partners in different ways?

-?????????How can the tension between value creation and value capture be alleviated?

-?????????How are these tensions influenced by the institutional and regulatory environments (e.g., IP regimes) in which collaborations are embedded? Does the geography of collaborations play any role in this context?

Digital technologies and Open Innovation

Digital technologies can support value creation and value capture in open innovation. However, they bring their own challenges. Therefore, companies must not only master digitization or open innovation, but also bring them together.

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Contributions are called for on the following issues:

-?????????How can digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, or blockchain technology, foster or impede value creation and value capture in open innovation?

-?????????What resources and capabilities are needed to profit from digital technologies in open innovation?

-?????????How can non-IT-related industries, such as the pharmaceutical industry profit from combining digitization with open innovation?

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Open Innovation beyond large for-profit firms (start-ups, universities, hospitals, non-profit organizations, user communities, etc.)

Small firms and start-ups, universities, hospitals, government research institutions, user communities, non-profit organizations, and individuals are increasingly engaged in open innovation. However, it is still unclear how they deal with the value capture aspect of open innovation, and to what extent they ultimately benefit from an open innovation strategy.

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Contributions are called for on the following issues:

-?????????How do small firms and start-ups, universities, hospitals, government research institutions, non-profit organizations, and individuals select partners for open innovation?

-?????????How do they protect knowledge and avoid technology leakages when engaging in open innovation, and how do they capture value from open innovation collaborations?

-?????????How important are patents, trademarks and non-patent appropriability mechanisms in these collaborations?

-?????????How do different sources of financial capital (e.g., VCs and crowdfunding) correlate with the degree to which start-ups engage in open innovation?

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Methodology: Mechanisms and causality

Extending our understanding of the interdependence between value creation and value capture in open innovation requires the collection of data using innovative techniques to tease out agents’ attitudes, motivations, and behaviours. It also requires sophisticated methods to identify causal relations (e.g., between value creation and value capture strategies).?

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Contribution are called for on the following issues:

-?????????How can the motivations, attitudes, and behaviours of the different agents involved in open innovation be classified based on data collected through innovative techniques?

-?????????What are the causal links between value creation, value capture, and firms success in open innovation, and how can they be identified?

Submissions

Submission instructions are available at https://www.springer.com/journal/40812/submission-guidelines

Papers can be submitted online https://www.editorialmanager.com/jibe/default1.aspx

Papers should be submitted no later than December 15, 2022. If you need an extension of the deadline, please contact Massimo G. Colombo.

Questions about the process can be directed to

Massimo G. Colombo, [email protected],

Karin Hoisl, [email protected],

Toke Reichstein, [email protected]

Salvatore Torrisi, [email protected].

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Reference

Afuah, A., Tucci, C. L., 2013. Value capture and crowdsourcing. Academy of Management Review, 38(3), pp. 457-460.

Alexy, O., Criscuolo, P. and Salter, A., 2009. Does IP strategy have to cripple open innovation?.?MIT Sloan management review,?51(1), p.71.

Alvarez, S. A., Barney, J. B., 2001. How entrepreneurial firms can benefit from alliances with large partners. Academy of Management Executive, 15, 139–148.

Beck, S., Grimpe, C., Poetz, M., Sauermann, H., 2022. Introduction to the Special Issue on Open Innovation in Science. Industry and Innovation, pp. 1-5.

Boudreau, K. J., Lacetera, N., Lakhani, K. R., 2011. Incentives and problem uncertainty in innovation contests: An empirical analysis. Management Science, 57(5), pp. 843-863.

Boudreau, K. J., Lakhani, K. R., 2009. How to manage outside innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review, 50(4), pp. 69-76.

Boudreau, K. J., Lakhani, K. R., 2013. Using the crowd as an innovation partner. Harvard Business Review, 91(4), pp. 60-9.

Brandenburger, A., Nalebuff, B., 2021. The Rules of Co-opetition. Harvard Business Review, January-February.

Brynjolfsson, E., McElheran, K. (2016). The Rapid Adoption of Data-Driven Decision Making. American Economic Review, 106(5), pp. 133-139.

Chesbrough, H., 2003. Open Innovation. Harvard Business School Press.

Chesbrough, H., Lettl, C. and Ritter, T., 2018. Value creation and value capture in open innovation.?Journal of Product Innovation Management,?35(6), pp.930-938.

Colombo, M.G., Piva, E. Knowledge misappropriation risks and contractual complexity in entrepreneurial ventures’ non-equity alliances. Small Business Economics, 2019, 53(1), pp. 107-127.

Diestre, L., Rajagopalan, N., 2012. Aare all “sharks” dangerous? New biotechnology ventures and partners election in R&D alliances. Strategic Management Journal, 33, pp. 1115–1134.

Franke, N., Poetz, M. K., Schreier, M., 2014. Integrating problem solvers from analogous markets in new product ideation. Management Science, 60(4), pp. 1063-1081.

Holgersson, M., Granstrand, O., 2021. Value capture in open innovation markets: the role of patent rights for innovation appropriation. European Journal of Innovation Management, forthcoming, see: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/EJIM-02-2021-0114/full/pdf.

Jeppesen, L. B., Lakhani, K. R., 2010. Marginality and problem-solving effectiveness in broadcast search. Organization Science, 21(5), pp.1016-1033.

Laursen, K., Salter, A., 2006. Open for innovation: the role of openness in explaining innovation performance among U.K. manufacturing firms. Strategic Management Journal, 27, pp. 131-150.

Laursen, K., Salter, A., 2014. The paradox of openness: appropriability, external search and collaboration. Research Policy, 43 (5), pp. 867-878.

Reuer, J. J., Ari?o, A., 2007. Strategic alliance contracts: Dimensions and determinants of contractual complexity. Strategic Management Journal, 28(3), pp. 313–330.

Veer, T., Lorenz, A., Blind, K., 2016. How open is too open? The mitigating role of appropriation mechanisms in R&D cooperation settings. R&D Management, 46 (S3), pp. 1113-1128

West, J., Salter, A., Vanhaverbeke, W., Chesbrough, H. 2014. Open innovation: The next decade. Research Policy 43 (5), pp. 805-811.

Wu, L., Lou, B., Hitt, L., 2019. Data analytics supports decentralized innovation. Management Science, 65(10), pp. 4863-4877.

Zobel, A.K., Balsmeier, B., Chesbrough, H., 2016. Does patenting help or hinder open innovation? Evidence from new entrants in the solar industry. Industrial & Corporate Chang, 25 (2), pp. 307-331.

Zobel, A.K., Lokshin, B., Hagedoorn, J., 2017. Formal and informal appropriation mechanisms: the role of openness and innovativeness. Technovation, 59, pp. 44-54.