Firms' open innovation policies, laboratories' external collaborations, and laboratories' R&D performance

The value of the open innovation approach is now widely recognized, and the practice has been extensively researched, but still very little is known about the relative impact of firm-level and laboratory-level open innovation policies and practices on R&D performance. This study attempts to measure that impact by analyzing a sample of 203 laboratories of Japanese firms located in Japan. It examines simultaneously the effects of firm-level open innovation policy and laboratory-level external collaborations on laboratory R&D performance. The study aims to go beyond a general understanding of the importance of open innovation; it shows how an open innovation policy can have a positive and significant effect on collaborations between a laboratory and local universities or business organizations. The results also show how an open innovation policy can contribute to the laboratory's R&D performance by facilitating external collaborations by the laboratories. It demonstrates how these factors affect R&D performance in different ways, depending on the type of R&D tasks. Our findings suggest several theoretical and practical implications in the field of R&D management.