Profiting from External Knowledge: How Firms Use Different Knowledge Acquisition Strategies to Improve Their Innovation Performance (Innovation and Sustainability)

Innovation managers and innovation scholars increasingly emphasize the open innovation model, introduced by Henry Chesbrough in 2003. This model postulates that the innovation process should be flexible and cross organizational boundaries, which enables the transfer of knowledge and capabilities between organizations. However, until now, it remained unclear which types of firms apply open innovation, whether it realy raises their performance, and how this can be managed in the best way. This book addresses the important issue how innovative firms profit from external knowledge to improve their innovation performance.Using large scale empirical evidence from the Dutch industry, this book shows that especially Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) and firms from low-tech sectors have increasingly adopted open innovation strategies over the period 1994-2004, and are clearly catching up large and high-tech firms. The results indicate that firms pursuing an open innovation strategy perform better with regard to innovation than firms that innovate exclusively in-house. In contrast to the common opinion that large Mergers & Acquisitions (M&As) are bad for innovation, it turns out that M&As have a positive impact on long-term innovation performance. In times of economic cricis this can be an extra argument for governments to back large scale M&As. Large (medium) high-tech M&As in the life sciences industry were analysed in-depth, to investigate the dynamics of post M&A integration. This book shows the different types of innovation synergies that can be expected from M&As and how they can be realized by systematic post M&A integration. Finally, this book studies how innovation brokers fulfill essential roles in innovation networks of SMEs in the agri-food sector. It provides guidelines for managers in innovation networks to improve the performance of these networks Profiting from external knowledge How firms use different knowledge acquisition strategies to improve their innovation performance Maarten Harmen Batterink Table of contents 8 Preface and acknowledgements 12 1. Introduction 14 1.1 Part I: quantitative analyses 17 1.2 Part II: qualitative analyses 19 1.3 Outline of the book 22 Part I Quantitative analyses 24 2. The adoption of open innovation. A longitudinal study of large firms and SMEs, in high-, medium-, and low-tech industries in the Netherlands 26 2.1 Introduction 26 2.2 Theoretical background 27 2.3 Data and methods 30 2.4 Results 34 2.5 Discussion and conclusions 43 3. The impact of different knowledge acquisition strategies on innovation performance. An empirical assessment of the Netherlands 48 3.1 Introduction 48 3.2 Theoretical background 49 3.3 Data and methods 56 3.4 Results 59 3.5 Discussion and conclusions 70 Part II Qualitative analyses 74 4. Orchestrating open innovation. The case of innovation brokers in agri-food SME Innovation Networks 76 4.1 Introduction 76 4.2 Theoretical background 78 4.3 Data and methods 83 4.4 Results 85 4.5 Discussion and conclusions 101 5. The impact of technological relatedness on innovation synergy realization. An in-depth study of 10 large high- and medium-tech M&As in the life sciences 106 5.1 Introduction 106 5.2 Theoretical background 108 5.3 Data and methods 118 5.4 Results 122 5.5 Discussion and conclusions 139 6. Discussion and conclusions 144 6.1 Main findings and conclusions 144 6.2 Contributions to literature 149 6.3 Managerial implications 151 References 154 Appendices 168 Appendix 1 168 Appendix 2 177 Appendix 3 178 Appendix 4 181 Summary 182 About the author 188 Profiting from external knowledge,How firms use different knowledge acquisition strategies to improve their innovation performance,Maarten Harmen Batterink Innovation managers and innovation scholars increasingly emphasize the open innovation model, introduced by Henry Chesbrough in 2003. This model postulates that the innovation process should be flexible and cross organizational boundaries, which enables the transfer of knowledge and capabilities between organizations. However, until now, it remained unclear which types of firms apply open innovation, whether it realy raises their performance, and how this can be managed in the best way. This book addresses the important issue how innovative firms profit from external knowledge to improve their innovation performance. Using large scale empirical evidence from the Dutch industry, this book shows that especially Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) and firms from low-tech sectors have increasingly adopted open innovation strategies over the period 1994-2004, and are clearly catching up large and high-tech firms. The res