Three essays on open innovation and determinants of innovation performance

Abstract

As the sources of technology become more diversified, the importance of innovation activities based on external technology or knowledge is being increasingly emphasized. Chesbrough (2003) advocates ‘Open innovation’ which is defined as ‘… the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively’ It encompasses such broad categories as industry-academia-research cooperation, inter-firm collaboration, technology licensing-in, technology licensing-out, technology startup, and IP licensing. The reason why open innovation has come into the limelight of late is because environmental changes such as an increase in personnel mobility, the development of venture capital, the rising cost of technological development, and the shortening of product life cycles have made the exclusive use of internal resources inefficient. As open innovation is being magnified as a important strategic tool which enables a firm to conduct innovation activities and to survive ultimately, studies is being carried out in the firm’s strategy and government policy field as well as the academic field. Therefore, this thesis explores the influence of open innovation on innovation performance, the relationship between open innovation and absorptive capacity, and the relationship between open innovation and government R&D supports. Consequently, this thesis suggests a direction of a firm’s innovation strategy and policy solutions for improving firms’ performance through open innovation activities. First study addresses the two main questions. First, what is the best measurement of nnovation performance? Second, is there a significant difference in the performance between open and closed innovation firms? We discuss new measures (‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’) that can reflect the sustainability of companies, and investigate any differences between open innovation and closed innovation firms b...