The Adoption of Open Innovation in Large Firms Practices, Measures, and Risks

We present a large-sample survey of open innovation adoption and management in large firms, a follow-up to a previous study. We repeat some of the survey measures from the first survey, finding that open innovation continues to be widely practiced in about 80 percent of responding firms. Outside-in open innovation is more often practiced than inside-out. In other words, large firms are net takers of free knowledge flows, in part because they are concerned about IP protection for outbound knowledge. When we added new measures to examine open innovation at the project level, we found that firms selectively manage knowledge flows into and out of projects and are formalizing processes as they move from problem definition to execution. We conclude with observations about the organizational challenges and risks of shifting to an open innovation approach.