Interest in open innovation (OI) as a field of research has grown exponentially since the phrase was coined by Chesbrough (2003), with numerous articles, special issues, books and conference sessions. Various reviews of the literature have summarized prior work, offered new frameworks and...

Open innovation is about firms harnessing knowledge flows across firm boundaries, but limited research has examined the nature and antecedents of these flows for startup firms. From a new sample of startup firms making 3D printers, we show how their degree of openness for inbound and outbound...

This article reviews research on open innovation that considers how and why firms commercialize external sources of innovations. It examines both the “outside-in” and “coupled” modes of Enkel et al. (2009). From an analysis of prior research on how firms leverage external sources of...

Recent research on the commercialization of scientific discoveries has emphasized the use of formal intellectual property rights (notably patents) as a mechanism for aligning the academic and entrepreneurial incentives for commercialization. Without such explicit intellectual property rights and...

Firms that practice open innovation strategies rely on the cooperation of external firms to provide components, complements and customers for the innovations of the focal firm (Chesbrough, 2003). Such strategies can be quite complex in systems-based industries, which inherently require...

Building on earlier research published by CIGI on the space-cyber nexus, the authors find that there is not one "grey zone" in space governance, but a cluster of nebulous governance challenges that are set to grow as our use of outer space not only expands but evolves in unexpected ways. The...

Open innovation is a powerful framework encompassing the generation, capture, and employment of intellectual property at the firm level. We identify three fundamental challenges for firms in applying the concept of open innovation: finding creative ways to exploit internal innovation,...

While industrial innovation was once assumed to be a vertically integrated process, three recent streams of research — open innovation, user innovation and cumulative innovation — have examined how innovation is created outside the boundaries of the firm. However, within these streams are...

We review the contribution and evolution of open innovation since the publication of Chesbrough’s 2003 Open Innovation book, and suggest likely directions going forward. We link the articles of this special issue to three key trends in open innovation research: better measurement, resolving...