The digital sector is often described as rapidly evolving, hence organisations within it need to remain innovative in order to cope with the changes. However, the traditionally closed approach towards innovation has been increasingly criticized. Inbound innovation is an alternative approach described as the purposive pursuit of gaining external knowledge for product enhancement and new product development. This knowledge can be gained by using tools such as innovation contests and creating innovation communities. Through a multiple case study focusing on three companies within the digital sector, this thesis explores a potential connection between how these companies use inbound innovation in regard to the different phases in the organizational life cycle. The data was collected using both qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques, and analysed using a cross-case analysis method. This thesis found that the examined organisations, each specified in different phases of the organisational life cycle, uses inbound innovation differently. Furthermore, as the examined organizations progress through the organisational life cycle a shift, from using inbound innovation to optimize execution towards using it to find new growth options, was found. / Den digitala sektorn beskrivs ofta som snabbt föränderlig och organisationer i den behöver förbli innovativa för att klara av förändringarna. Samtidigt har traditionella innovationsstrategier, som beskrivits som slutna, blivit allt mer kritiserade. ”Inbound” innovation är ett alternativ till tidigare innovationsstrategier. Strategin beskrivs som ändamålsenlig strävan efter att ta in extern kunskap för produktförbättring och gynna utvecklingen av nya produkter. Denna kunskap kan fångas upp genom användandet av verktyg som innovationstävlingar och innovationssamhällen. Genom en multipel fallstudie med fokus på tre organisationer inom den digitala sektorn utforskar denna avhandling det möjliga sambandet mellan hur dessa företag använder sig av ”inbound” innovation genom organisationens utveckling i organisations-livscykeln. Information kring ämnet har samlats in med hjälp av kvalitativa och kvantitativa datainsamlingstekniker och analyserats med hjälp av en tväranalys. Avhandling fann att de studerade företagen befinner sig i olika faser inom organisationslivscykeln och använder ”inbound” innovation på olika sätt. Dessutom påträffades ett samband, nämligen, när de studerade organisationerna fortskrider genom organisationslivscykeln ändrar de sitt användande av ”inbound” innovation från att optimera organisationens genomförande till att använda strategin för att hitta nya tillväxtmöjligheter.

The importance of search partnerships has grown as a mode to search for innovations. However, in spite of this development, notions of open innovation combined with new propositions to change the search process in favour of sustainability have unravelled a need to take stock of the existing literature of search partnerships and the aims that these partnerships follow. This review addresses this shortcoming and synthesises the literature on search partnerships to analyse the current state of knowledge to deliver future research opportunities. A systematic review process was adopted by means of a set a set of pre-defined stages. These stages included the formulation and positioning of the review question within the larger literature domains, a systematic research process which included the adoption of search strings, relevance and quality appraisal criteria, as well as a stock-taking process of descriptive and thematic features, which followed the logic of prescriptive synthesis. This process led to a representative sample of 73 articles which were analysed subsequently. The tentative findings reveal that the literature is underpinned by a combination of theories linking to evolutionary or transaction-based understandings of search partnerships. Also, six conditions were found to drive search partnerships and when they are likely to form. Moreover five interventions were identified that relate to the use of search methods, boundary spanning activities, and the number, type and involvement levels with the partner. Finally search partnerships have been found to yield five outcomes: partnerships, and various types of innovations, higher social goals, as well as market knowledge. By combining contexts, interventions, and outcomes, research opportunities are identified that should inform future reviews, including the need for more research in sustainability-led search partnership contexts and a better understanding of search strategy configurations in relation interventions used and anticipated search partnership outcomes obtained.

Start-ups face several issues and challenges in the course of their development as a compa-ny. Open innovation has been discussed in research for more than a decade as a concept, which can bring benefits to a company. Even though most of the research has been focus-ing on large enterprises, some researchers discuss also benefits for small companies like start-ups. Nevertheless, it can be observed that some start-ups decide to adopt the opposite of open innovation, namely closed innovation, through not sharing internal knowledge to the outside world. Hence, start-ups perceive the benefits of open innovation differently and decide accordingly whether to adopt open innovation or not. The purpose of this study is to explore if start-ups decide to actually do the former and what reasons they have to do so. Therefore, this study will further discover at what point in the development of their start-up and with whom they adopt open innovation. As an attractive industry for start-ups, the mobile services industry is selected as a scope for this study. Furthermore, Sweden is selected as the country of study, due to its reputation as one of the most innova-tive countries in the world. A qualitative study has been conducted using in-depth interviews with founders and co-founders of start-ups to retrieve narrative stories about their start-up’s development from the first day of an idea to a scalable business, and their experiences and motivations in re-gards to the application of open innovation practices. The analysis of this study detects pat-terns among the interviewed start-ups and concludes that start-ups in the mobile services industry in Sweden adopt open innovation in each phase of their development process. Furthermore, these patterns include several reasons why the start-ups applied open innova-tion practices and with whom, which are changing over the course of their development.

It is these days very consistent for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to participate in open innovation activities to battle the internal and external difficulties they are confronting, for example, less resources for R&D, constrained financial resources and specialized abilities, fewer production facilities and distribution channels and so on. Studies demonstrate that open innovation encountered a quick increase in recent years. As of late researchers have additionally indicated distinct interest in research on SMEs whereas in past research large companies were the focus. The focus of the thesis is to highlight how SMEs solve their shortage of scare resources by engaging into open innovation activities.  Two SMEs from various regions, to be specific Pakistan and the United Kingdom, were chosen as research cases for the thesis. Interviews have been utilized as a primary method for data collection. Despite of certain limitations, the research was successfully concluded with imperative findings with the suggestions and practices of open innovation utilized by SMEs. Finding from the thesis demonstrate that entrepreneurs in view of their individual attributes perceived the value of the opportunity and well-spoken the thought into a successful product. Their most vital entrepreneurial qualities are quick basic leadership, risk taking capacity and innovativeness in discovering answers for issues. Both entrepreneurs were effective in sorting out and managing the open innovation process and overwhelm the liabilities of being small. In both cases, entrepreneurs must have utilized external resources to satisfy the absence of their internal resources such as technology exploration innovation strategy and through building and dealing with their innovation network. The result of the research demonstrates that the achievement of the entrepreneurs of how an entrepreneur deals with the business is not simply based on his aptitudes and abilities, however it additionally relies upon the type of innovation procedure which entrepreneurs incorporates within the organization. While organizing and managing the open innovation process there were many difficulties that both entrepreneurs needed to face to make their SMEs successful. Although few differences emerge when the both CEO’s adopted open innovation activities.

Background: Today’s business environment is characterized by high competitiveness and fast-changing markets. Moreover, useful knowledge and expertise cannot only be found within a company but also outside the organizational boundaries. Therefore, a shift from closed and internal R&D processes to open and collaborative innovations with external sources can be noted in order to stay competitive.   Purpose: The concept of open innovation is well researched by various scholars in the context of large organizations and SMEs. However, the link to family firms is often missing and under researched. Resulting of the importance of the “how” component in family firm research, it is interesting to see how family firms actually implement the concept of open innovation and how it is influenced by unique family firm characteristics. Therefore, this study sheds light on how the family involvement affects the implementation of open innovation.   Method: We want to contribute to the theory with an exploratory research design and a multiple case-study method of eight selected family firms. Through semi-structured interviews with four family managers and four non-family managers, we gained insights from the organizational level concerning their open innovation strategy and implementation process. We used a cross-case analysis to compare the cases and indicate similarities and differences in order to draw our conclusions.   Conclusion: In general, the owning family is significantly important and influential for the open innovation strategy. First, family firms with family CEOs used open innovation as a response to internal drivers, however with non-family CEOs in charge internal and external forces are the drivers for an open innovation strategy. Second, families that are engaged in daily operations, execute an informal implementation process with loose communication practices, whereas family firms with an external CEO apply a formal implementation process. Additionally to this, we point out two managerial implications: open innovation needs to be embedded in the organizational culture and managers need to lead by example when implementing the concept.

Background: Open innovation is a recently discussed concept, which contrasts the traditional way of innovating. After several large companies have already adopted this approach successfully, the academic debate continues about possible application of this concept for SMEs. Moreover, current literature highlights the importance of intermediated networks to support open innovation among these SMEs. Purpose: This study determines in what way intermediaries act as facilitators for open innovation in SME networks. The literature suggests several different functions that intermediaries execute, without being clear about the connection to open innovation. Therefore, we critically examined Science Park Jönköping as a potential facilitator for open innovation. Method: We conducted a single-case study on Science Park Jönköping’s SME network and collected qualitative data through in-depth interviews. The analysis of the data includes interpretations of the codes of the interviews as well as aggregations of these codes in an inductive way. Conclusion: Our study differentiates between two service levels Science Park Jönköping provides. Regarding the in-house environment, we conclude that intermediaries facilitate open innovation among SMEs through providing a supportive environment based on geographical proximity. As far as the networking projects are concerned, we conclude that regional intermediaries might be hindered to facilitate open innovation among SMEs due to the characteristic of their networks.

Background: To stay competitive and efficient on a global market, firms have to generate new products and service ideas using closed or open innovation processes. Open innovation activities emerge from both internal and external innovative resources and while SMEs could and do adopt a variation of innovation models, they tend to adopt open innovation activities. Collaboration is one of the most important factors of open innovation and SMEs collaborate to enhance their internal innovation activities and outcomes, as it provides them access to complementary assets and technologically knowledge. However, the literature is not clear as to how SME decide on prospect partners." Purpose:The overall purpose of this thesis is to map the structure of the decision-making process of SMEs regarding partner selection at the early stage of technology exploration (R&D stage) within open innovation and new product development. Method:The approach of this study is a qualitative research method with an abductive inspired research approach. The data are collected through interview study. A Theory Driven Thematic Analysis technique is used to analyse the data. The respondents are found by nonprobability sampling in form of purposive sampling. Findings:Our findings show that SMEs managers, R&D managers, and CEOs who participated within this research consider many practical factors that drive their decision making process regarding partner selection. The main goal they try to achieve when choosing partners is to build collaborations with: the highest quality of outcomes, most cost-effective activities, and most time-effective processes. Conclusion:SMEs, within our sample, do not follow a specific or pre-written strategies when choosing partners. Moreover, SMEs managers prefer to innovate internally without collaborations if they had the needed resources. If SMEs manager had to collaborate, they search for existing partners. However, if they had no existing partners to fulfil the needed resources, they search for new partners

The purpose of this study is to explore if monetary reward negatively affects people’s willingness to participate in crowdsourcing projects and to see how the relationship between monetary rewards and the framing of the crowdsourcing problem affects participation in crowdsourcing contests. A two-phase data collection method is used to answer these questions; a survey to identify the people who had participated in crowdsourcing projects and a focus group with the suitable candidates to discuss the research questions further. According to our findings, framing a crowdsourcing project as a good cause is not a strong enough motivation to convince people to participate in a challenge. People usually look for a benefit (financial or personal) in a challenge when deciding to participate. On the other hand, offering a reward for a crowdsourcing contest that is held for a good cause increases people’s willingness to participate. Potential participants react differently to a reward that is larger than usual. While more experienced participants feel extra motivated by large rewards, those who have less experience in crowdsourcing projects are more likely to see the large reward as a threat, decreasing their chances of winning, thus, reducing their willingness to participate in those challenges.

As the closed innovation model requires firms to be strongly reliant on their own R&D- capabilities in order to generate new innovations (van de Vrande et al., 2009, p. 425), a new approach has emerged over the last decade: The open innovation model. Open innovation is a model where organizations commercialize both their own and external ideas through purposive out and inflows of information (Chesbrough, 2006, p. 1). As a result, enterprises can benefit from the reduction of costs it infers, and simultaneously gain a larger amount of competence (Ghezzi et al., 2018; Rehman et al., 2018; Dodgson et al., 2006).  The open innovation model favors smaller firms and gives them an increasingly prominent position in the innovation landscape (Chesbrough, 2003, cited in van de Vrande et al., 2009, p. 427), and since SMEs are limited by a lack of financial resources, manpower, and substitutes for lack of sales, they especially benefit from collaboration with external parts to increase innovation performance (Hanna & Walsh, 2002; Kaufmann & Tödtling, 2002). However, successfully implementing an open innovation model as an SME comes with its unique challenges. In this study we will aim to investigate how SMEs in Sweden addresses these barriers through the following research question:  How do Swedish SMEs overcome the challenges of open innovation in practice?  The purpose of our study was to explore how SMEs overcome the barriers of working with open innovation in order to provide guidance for organizations who struggle to do so. To answer our research question and fulfill our purpose, we have conducted semi- structured interviews with eight different decision-makers from eight different SMEs. We performed a thematic analysis with an inductive approach. Our study found many ways that SMEs overcome barriers related to open innovation and resulted in several actions for decision-makers to overcome different categories of barriers. For example, our research showed how an equal exchange of value between partners could be an efficient way of maintaining a partnership, how shaping the team to be open for and involved in the organization's innovation work was a way of overcoming the barrier of company culture, and that educating the employees on open innovation was a way of tackling the barrier of lack of resources.  From a theoretical standpoint, our study contributes with a new perspective on the existing literature. It complements what is claimed to be an under-researched area, not only for open innovation in SMEs in general (Lee et al., 2010, p. 299), but also with a focus on overcoming innovation barriers (Hölzl & Janger, 2012, p. 25). It also brings a new geographical perspective of the concept, providing insights from the Swedish innovation climate.

米国のICT業界において、コーポレートベンチャーキャピタル(CVC)を活用したベンチャー企業との資本提携や、ベンチャー企業の買収によるR&Dの外部化は、事業開発上の標準的な手法として定着している。日本に於いても、近年大手企業によるCVCの設立が続くが、未だ米国程の成功を収めることのできた事例は少ない。本稿では、米国の先行研究を基にCVCの成功要因を抽出すると共に、日本のCVCの組織とパフォーマンスに関する実態調査を行い、米国CVCの成功要因が日本でも有効であるかどうかについて、分析を行った。 / In the US, IT companies used Open Innovation through Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) and M&A as a standard practice of corporate development to remain at the forefront of innovation. However in Japan, the number of successful CVC practices continues to be limited despite growing number of Japanese corporations launching a CVC practice. To explain this difference, this thesis first performed comprehensive review of US past researches regarding US CVC and sort out key success factors. Then, conducted a survey of Japanese CVC's organization profile and investment performance and undertook a statistical analysis to investigate whether US CVC's key success factors works in Japan. / 博士(技術・革新的経営) / Doctor of Philosophy in Technology and Innovative Management / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University