"Open innovation" and "external search" for new ideas are central topics in the recent discourse in innovation research. External search helps firms to identify new opportunities for innovation and alleviates the risks of local search. It is widely acknowledged that novel ideas regularly emerge...

The existing literature on open innovation mostly concentrates on large firms. Little is known about the role of open innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In this paper we explore how SMEs engage in open innovation search. We draw upon a new survey of 1,489 SMEs. Results...

The concept of open innovation lies at the heart of the current research debate on innovation and strategy. Existing literature indicates that firms vitalize their interest in opening their innovation processes and business models to commercialize not only their own ideas but also external ones....

In our recent open innovation executive studies, we learned that open innovation is of strategic value for large firms and an important topic for C-level executives (Chesbrough and Brunswicker 2014, Bagherzadeh and Brunswicker 2015). Large firms increasingly invest in open innovation, and there...