How To Be Open? Contextual Factors Affecting the Dilemma. A Literature Review and a Research Agenda

Companies have historically relied on large investments in internal research and development to drive innovation and provide sustainable growth. However this model, defined as ‘closed’, is eroding because of the labour mobility, the presence of abundant venture capital, and the wide dispersion of knowledge across organizations. A more open approach, named ‘Open Innovation’ (OI), is emerging as an effective alternative to the closed model: its key tenet is that not all good ideas emerge inside the organization and not all good ideas generated within the organization can be successfully developed and commercialized by the same firm. In the last years, OI literature grew exponentially highlighting different OI approaches that firms follow, different contextual variables influencing such approaches and different effects that such approaches produce in terms of performance. However the part of the OI literature that has been investigated more thoroughly and more extensively is the one which investigates the impact of external and internal contextual variables on the approaches toward OI. Hence, in our opinion, this part of the literature is more ready (because of the thoroughness of the literature) and more in need (because of the extensiveness of the literature) of systematisation. Therefore, the objective of this article is to review current trends in the state-of-the-art literature regarding the impact exerted by the external and internal contextual variables on the approaches that firms have toward OI. Our efforts aim at developing research hypotheses that can nurture future empirical research: that of the scientific community and certainly that of ours!