Abstract
This research-in-progress paper presents a preliminary framework of four open innovation governance structures. The study seeks to describe four distinct ways in which firms utilize hierarchical relationships, organizational intermediaries, and the market system to supply and acquire intellectual property and/or innovation capabilities from sources external to the firm. This paper reports on phase one of the study, which involved an analysis of six open innovation exemplars based on public data. This phase of the study reveals that governance structures for open innovation can be categorized based on whether they (1) are mediated or direct or (2) seek to acquire intellectual property or innovation capability. We analyze the differences in four governance structures along seven dimensions, and reveal the importance of knowledge dispersion and uncertainty to the use of open innovation hierarchies, brokerages, and markets. The paper concludes by examining the implications of the findings and outlining the next phase of the study.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
ArthurD. Little. 2005. Global Innovation Excellence Study 2005, April (http://www.vno-ncw.nl/web/servlet/nl.gx.vno.client.http.StreamDbContent?code=1244).
Bensaou, M., and Venkatraman, N. 1995. “Configurations of Interorganizational Relationships: A Comparison Between U.S. and Japanese Automakers,” Management Science (41:9), pp. 1471–1492.
Benson, J. K. 1975. “The Interorganizational Network as a Political Economy,” Administrative Science Quarterly (20), pp. 229–249.
Bodie, Z., Kane, A., and Marcus, A. 2004. Essentials of Investment (5th ed.), New York: McGraw-Hill.
Charmaz, K. 2000. “Grounded Theory: Objectivist and Constructivist Methods,” in Handbook of Qualitative Research, N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Chesbrough, H. 2003. Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology, Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Chesbrough, H. 2005. “Open Innovation: A New Paradigm for Understanding Industrial Innovation,” in Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, H. Chesbrough, W. Vanhaverbeke, and J. West (eds.),Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–14.
Chesbrough, H. 2006. Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape, Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Clemons, E. K., and Row, M. C. 1992. “Information Technology and Industrial Cooperation: The Role of Changing Transaction Costs,” Journal of Management Information Systems (9:2), pp. 9–28.
Clemons, E. K., and Weber, B. W. 1990. “London’s Big Bang: A Case Study of Information Technology, Competitive Impact and Organizational Change,” Journal of Management Information Systems (6:4), pp. 41–60.
Coase, R. 1937. “The Nature of the Firm,” Economica (4:16), pp. 386–405.
Corbin, J., and Strauss, A. 1990. “Grounded Theory Research: Procedures, Canons, and Evaluative Criteria,” Qualitative Sociology ( 13:1 ), pp. 3–21.
Eisendardt, K. M. 1989. “Building Theories from Case Study Research,” Academy of Management Review (14:4), pp. 532–550.
Emerson, R. 1962. “Power-Dependence Relations,” American Sociological Review (27), pp. 31–41.
Emerson, R 1972. “Exchange Theory, Part II: Exchange Relations and Networks,” in Sociological Theories in Progress, J. Berger, M. Zelditch Jr., and B. Anderson (eds.), Boston: Houghton Mifflin, pp. 58–87.
Glaser, B., and Strauss, A. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.
Hayek, F. A. 1945. “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review (35), pp. 519–530.
Hess, C. M., and Kemerer, C. F. 1994. “Computerized Loan Origination Systems: An Industry Case Study of the Electronic Market Hypothesis,” MIS Quarterly (18:3), pp. 251–275.
Huston, L., and Sakkab, N. 2006. “Connect and Develop—Inside Procter & Gamble’s New Model for Innovation,” Harvard Business Review, March, pp. 63–64.
Kumar, K., and van Dissel, H. G 1996. “Sustainable Collaboration: Managing Conflict and Cooperation in Interorganizational Systems,” MIS Quarterly (20:3), pp. 279–300.
Lee, A. S., and Baskerville, R. L. 2003. “Generalizing Generalizability in Information Systems Research,” Information Systems Research (14:3), pp. 221–243.
Lee, H. G., and Clark, T. H. 1996. “Impacts of Electronic Marketplace on Transaction Cost and Market Structure, International Journal of Electronic Commerce (1:1), pp. 127–149.
Madill, A., Jordan, A., and Shirley, C. 2000. “Objectivity and Reliability in Qualitative Analysis: Realist, Contextualist and Radical Constructionist Epistemologies,” British Journal of Psychology (91:1), pp. 1–20.
Malone, T., Yates, J., and Benjamin, R. 1987. “Electronic Markets and Electronic Hierarchies,” Communications of the ACM (30:6), pp. 484–497.
Malik, O. 2000. “Technology’s Clearinghouse: Yet2.com,” Forbes.com, February 7 (http://www.forbes.com/2000/02/07/mu3.html).
Motzek, R 2007. Motivation in Open Innovation, Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller e.K.
Nonaka, I., Keigo, S., and Ahmed, M. 2003. “Continuous Innovation: The Power of Tacit Knowledge,” in International Handbook of Innovation, K. Shavinina (ed.), New York: Elsevier.
Orlikowski, W. J. 1993. “CASE Tools as Organizational Change: Investigating Incremental and Radical Changes in Systems Development,” MIS Quarterly (17:3), pp. 309–340.
Oxley, J. E. 1999. “Institutional Environment and the Mechanisms of Governance: The Impact of Intellectual Property Protection on the Structure of Interfirm Alliances,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (38:3), pp. 283–309.
Palmer, J., and Lindemann, M. 2003. “Business Models and Market Mechanisms: Evaluating Efficiencies in Consumer Electronic Markets,” ACM SIGMIS Database (34:2), pp. 23–38.
Pfeffer, J., and Salancik, G. R. 1978. The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective, New York: Harper and Row.
Robey, D., and Sales, C. 1994. Designing Organizations, Burr Ridge, IL: Richard D. Irwin.
Sarker, S., Lau, F., and Sahay, S. 2000. “Building an Inductive Theory of Collaboration in Virtual Teams: An Adapted Grounded Theory Approach,” in Proceedings of the 33 rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press.
Schmid, B. 1993. “Electronic Markets,” International Journal of Electronic Markets (3:9/10), pp. 3–4.
Strauss, A., and Corbin, J. 1990. Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Tidd, J. 2000. From Knowledge Management to Strategic Competence: Measuring Technological, Market and Organizational Innovation, London: Imperial College Press.
Tidd, J., Bessant, J., and Pavitt, K. 2005. Managing Innovation: Integrating Technological, Market and Organizational Change, Chichester, UK: Wiley & Sons.
Tilquist, J., King, J., and Woo, C. 2002. “A Representational Scheme for Analyzing Information Technology and Organization Dependency,” MIS Quarterly (26:2), pp. 91–118.
Urquhart, C. 1997. “Exploring Analyst-Client Communication: Using Grounded Theory Techniques to Investigate Interaction in Informal Requirements Gathering,” in Information Systems and Qualitative Research, A. S. Lee, J. Liebenau, and J. I. DeGross (eds.), London: Chapman and Hall.
Vanhaverbeke, W. 2006. “The Interorganizational Context of Open Innovation,” in Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, H. Chesbrough, W. Vanhaverbeke, and J. West (eds.), Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 205–219.
Vanhaverbeke, W., and Cloodt, M. 2006. “Open Innovation in Value Networks,” in Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, H. Chesbrough, W. Vanhaverbeke, and J. West (eds.), Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 258–281.
Weingarten, M. 2007. “‘Project Runway’ for the T-Shirt Crowd,” Business 2.0 Magazine, June 18(retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050978/index.htm).
West, J., Vanhaverbeke, W., and Chesbrough, H. 2006. “Open Innovation: A Research Agenda,” Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, H. Chesbrough, W. Vanhaverbeke, and J. West (eds.), Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 285–307
Williamson, O. E 1981. “The Modern Corporation: Origins, Evolution, Attributes,” Journal of Economic Literature (19:4), pp. 1537–1568.
Williamson, O. E. 1991. “Comparative Economic Organization: The Analysis of Discrete Structural Alternatives,” Administrative Science Quarterly (36:2), pp. 269–296.
Williamson, O. E. 1999. “Strategy Research: Governance and Competence Perspectives,” Strategic Management Journal (20), pp. 1087–1108.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Feller, J., Finnegan, P., Hayes, J., O’Reilly, P. (2008). Governance Structures for Open Innovation: A Preliminary Framework. In: León, G., Bernardos, A.M., Casar, J.R., Kautz, K., De Gross, J.I. (eds) Open IT-Based Innovation: Moving Towards Cooperative IT Transfer and Knowledge Diffusion. TDIT 2008. IFIP – The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 287. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-87503-3_29
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-87503-3_29
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-87502-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-87503-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)