Open Innovation

AbstractIn the past 10 years, numerous interesting articles, book chapters, and books have been written on open innovation strategies in mainly large companies. While closed innovation models have resulted in important breakthrough innovations, many large companies have abandoned vertical integration strategies in recent years and have moved toward a combination of both closed and open innovation models that are used for reaching different sets of innovative goals. The definition of open innovation as proposed by Chesbrough is still the most commonly used notion of the concept. However, several respectable open innovation researchers have added to the theory and have offered valuable extensions to Chesbrough's widely used definition. While the open innovation literature strongly builds on important existing theories of innovation, there are several new contributions of the open innovation literature to the established body of literature: a strong focus on external technology commercialization; the positioning of the business model as the connection between a firm's innovation efforts and strategy; and the appreciation of the value associated with recognizing false negatives. Open innovation strategies are potentially useful in several different settings: in product innovation and in commodities; in high‐tech industries as well as in low‐tech sectors; and in small and large companies. However, research also shows that in all of these settings companies that have the necessary internal conditions in place find open innovation models to be the most useful. For the next 10 years, there are several interesting research themes in open innovation for researchers, both established scholars and young researchers, to explore.