Abstract
Literature on open innovation has thus far predominantly focused on high technology contexts. Once an industry reaches the limits of a closed innovation model, open innovation may, however, also promise opportunities for sustainable development in a low-tech environment. Because in low-tech environments open innovation is unlikely to emerge spontaneously from the spillovers of R&D, it requires institutions that actively initiate and coordinate open innovation processes. This has subsequently important consequences for marketing, because buyers and sellers may jointly embark on innovation processes that are guided by a third-party organization. Based on a case study on an organization for open innovation in the agro-food industry, this chapter identifies potential contributions and pitfalls of these organizations. Results imply an optimal level between market—and organization-based forms of governing open innovation that depends on industry characteristics such as the stage of industry lifecycle. Implications for policy, business and future research of these findings are discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
The existence of synergies doesn’t imply that companies will not engage simultaneously in open and closed innovation. In reality, many companies are likely to apply both innovation models simultaneously.
- 2.
It has to be recognized that succeeding in match making finally results in the organization becoming redundant.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Woody Maijers and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article, the KB5 Program of Wageningen University and Research Centre for supporting this research, and Arianne van Dijk and Linda Puister for research assistance.
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Ingenbleek, P.T.M., Backus, G.B.C. (2015). Organizing Open Innovation for Sustainability. In: Brem, A., Viardot, É. (eds) Adoption of Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14523-5_8
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