Factors That Motivate or Prevent Adoption of Open Innovation by ...

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 235 (2016) 756 – 763

12th International Strategic Management Conference, ISMC 2016, 28-30 October 2016, Antalya, Turkey

Factors That Motivate or Prevent Adoption of Open Innovation by SMEs in Developing Countries and Policy Suggestions Serhat Sağa*, Bülent Sezena, Mevlüdiye Güzela a

Gebze Technical University, Kocaeli, 41400, Turkey

Abstract

Today’s highly competitive and rapidly changing environment makes innovation more challenging, costly and risky for companies. To overcome these challenges and to decrease the cost and the risk of innovation, companies, including SMEs, have adopted a new approach called Open Innovation, which was proven by academic studies to be useful for SMEs to improve their innovativeness. However, studies about the openness of SMEs or the adoption level of open innovation approach by SMEs give conflicting results. We argue that these conflicting results stem from the different conditions in developing countries and developed countries. Main aim of this paper is to define factors that motivate or prevent the adoption of open innovation approach by SMEs operating in developing countries, and to suggest policy requirements and actions need to be taken to ease the creation of an open innovation ecosystems that support SMEs. Incentive to leverage SME-university and SME-LE collaboration, creating innovation hubs to improve networking ability of SMEs, free IP consulting, conducting external search on behalf of SMEs are some of the actions suggested in this paper. © by by Elsevier Ltd.Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license © 2016 2016The TheAuthors. Authors.Published Published Elsevier (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of ISMC 2016. Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of ISMC 2016. Keywords: Innovation, Open Innovation, Innovation in SMEs, Open Innovation in Developing Countries

1. Introduction According to Oslo Manual, innovation is “the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good and/or service), or process (manufacturing and supply methods), a new marketing method (packing, sales or distribution

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +90-530-642-4231; fax: N/A. E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-0428 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of ISMC 2016. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.11.077

Serhat Sağ et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 235 (2016) 756 – 763

methods), or a new organisational method in business practice, workplace organisation or external relations” (OECD, 2005, p. 46). Innovation is important not only at micro level for companies as a key element in achieving sustainable competitive advantage (Maier et al., 2014), but also at macro level by bringing great benefits for society, and is a key driver of economic growth and increased life standards. According to US department of commerce, technological innovation has accounted for 75% GDP growth in the United States since the end of 2nd World War. Traditionally most of the innovations came from large enterprises which were acting as knowledge monopolies and keeping control of their overall innovation process, from idea creation to commercialization, even after sale services. Thus, innovation is viewed as taking place mostly within a single company. However in today’s world, it is nearly impossible for a single firm to generate all necessary substances for a successful innovation by only using its internal resources because of the following reasons. Products and services became more complex, thus for successful innovation, companies need to integrate knowledge from multiple disciplines (Howells et al., 2003). The accelerating pace of innovation causes a great pressure on companies to speed up their innovation processes. Thus, companies increasingly rely on knowledge and technology insourcing instead of building on their own. Shorter product life cycles have lowered the profits from innovation and globalization triggered international competition and global rivals have become able to threaten even small regional companies. As a result of these changes in innovation landscape, innovation became more challenging, costly and risky for companies. To overcome these challenges, namely to speed up their innovation process, to satisfy customer needs faster, to gain sustainable competitive advantage and in general to decrease the cost and the risk of innovation, companies have adopted a new approach called open innovation. The term open innovation first coined by Henry Chesbrough in 2003 with his seminal book Open Innovation. Open innovation is defined as “the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively” (Chesbrough and Crowther, 2006). P&G, IBM, Intel and Lucent are known as early adopters of open innovation approach followed by other large enterprises, especially multi nationals, who realized the benefits of openness. This new approach is mostly adopted by large enterprises and the early research mainly focused on open innovation practices in large enterprises. However, there exists a significant academic interest in open innovation in SMEs. Is open innovation approach a logical step for SMEs to take or not, what is the level of their openness are main questions that academicians try to find a reasonable answer. SMEs have some disadvantages over LEs in terms of innovation. While many SMEs have superiorities in technology for invention, most of them lack complementary assets such as manufacturing facilities, marketing ability, distribution channels and global contacts to introduce their innovations effectively to the market (Narula, 2004). Absence of these complementary assets that are needed for successful commercialization of products (Teece, 1992), limited financial and human resources, copying innovators, lack of intellectual property (IP) protection mechanisms, poor design and manufacturing skills and lack of technical and managerial expertise to commercialize products are seen as barriers to innovation on behalf of SMEs. In this respect, SMEs can and should adopt open innovation approach and open up their boundaries, collaborate with other organizations to reach external knowledge, resources and complementary assets that they need to develop and commercialize their inventions. In other words, open innovation is a necessary approach for many SMEs in order to overcome their disadvantages on the way to successful innovation. Academic research about the benefits of open innovation approach for SMEs give considerable results. Spithoven et al. (2013) found that open innovation is as important for SMEs as for large companies to increase their innovative performance, and collaboration with partners increases the likelihood that SMEs launch new products and services. Rothwell (1991) argued that collaborations is a method for SMEs to expand their technological competencies and concluded that these collaborations have a positive impact on their innovativeness. An empirical study in Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Norway, showed that open innovation practices have a positive impact on firm performance (Ebersberger et al., 2010) and more recently, Vahter et al. (2014) found that openness is proportionately more important to innovation in smaller plants. However, studies about the level of openness or the use of open innovation practices by SMEs give conflicting results. van de Vrande et al. (2009) found that innovation in SMEs are becoming more open, but according to OECD report

757

758


only 5-20 % of SMEs are actively using open innovation (OECD, 2008). Theyel (2013), on the other hand, found that more than %50 of US SMEs engage in open innovation to some degree during technology and product development and commercialization. Ebersberger et al. (2010) compared large enterprises and SMEs, and found that the probability of open innovation implementation in SMEs is lower. Finally, Idrissia et al (2012) argue that almost all SMEs are involved with open innovation to some extent. Spithoven et al (2013) introduced open innovation intensity, which is measured as open innovation activities per employee and found that large companies involve in more open innovation practices but SMEs have much higher intensity for all types of open innovation activities than large companies. More recently, Vahter et al (2014) found that small firms are less open in terms of their number of external linkages than their larger counterparts. We argue that these conflicting results stem from the different conditions in developing countries and developed countries. Considering the fact that approximately 99% of all businesses are SMEs in developing countries, policymakers need to find novel methods to increase the awareness of open innovation among SMEs, to facilitate its adoption, implementation and management and most importantly to build regional and/or national open innovation ecosystem(s). Main aim of this paper is to define factors that motivate or prevent the adoption of open innovation approach by SMEs operating in developing countries, and to suggest actions need to be taken by policy makers to ease creation of open innovation ecosystems to support SMEs in developing countries. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. We first present open innovation barriers and motivators faced by SMEs, respectively. We continue with proposing policy implications to leverage the adoption of open innovation by SMEs in developing countries. We conclude by discussing the paper’s contributions to open innovation knowledge, and by identifying the papers’ limitations and opportunities for future research. 2. Barriers Open innovation approach requires continuous search of external environment for new ideas, information and technologies. But search strategies provide less benefit for SMEs than for large firms (Lee et al, 2010) because they require considerable time and effort and SMEs have a limited human resources compared to larger companies to screen the external environment for valuable information (van de Vrande et al. 2009; Chesbrough, 2011). In addition to need for additional resources, open innovation requires significant internal knowledge base and additional capabilities to turn externally acquired knowledge and technologies into commercially viable products by integrating them with internal knowledge and technologies. Thus, after detecting valuable external ideas, information and technology, firms should be able to assimilate and integrate them with their internal knowledge to turn them into commercially viable product. However, SMEs lack required number of skilled workers and internal knowledge base to assimilate and integrate the externally acquired know-how (Vossen, 1998). Spithoven et al. (2013) argued that SMEs, compared to large firms, experience a smaller impact from open innovation approach because they do not have the same in-house capabilities to detect, assimilate and integrate external knowledge. Similarly, Chesbrough (2010) argued that SMEs lack capacity to both seek and absorb external knowledge compared to large enterprises. The quality of knowledge produced by universities and research institutions in developing countries is significantly high. However, SMEs face problems in effectively transforming and exploiting scientific output from universities and research labs (Spithoven et al., 2013) and large incumbents because many SMEs do not have personnel with the required scientific background to understand, absorb and exploit the scientific knowledge developed at universities, research labs or large enterprises. This consequently limits SMEs’ ‘absorptive capacity’, which is defined as a firm's “ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends” (Cohen and Levinthal,1990). After detecting useful external knowledge and technologies and deciding the right partner(s) as a new source of knowledge, firms need to establish and monitor collaborations with these external actors. But SMEs have limited sources and competencies that are needed to establish and maintain networks and collaborations, less structured and professionalized innovation processes (Parida et al., 2012; van de Vrande et al., 2009), limited ability to access external resources and fewer technological assets that they can exchange than larger firms (Narula, 2004). These shortages of SMEs result in weak ties with other organizations (Dodourova and Bevis, 2014) and unwillingness of external actors


for collaboration Finally, established collaborations and/or other practices of open innovation need to be managed for higher returns from the innovation created through partnerships. Brunswicker and Ehrenmann (2013) argue that SMEs require new managerial capabilities as part of an integrated managerial system for open innovation. But they lack both managerial and technical skills for their effectiveness (Rahman and Ramos, 2010). Finally, open innovation approach requires innovation through partnerships, but Theyel (2013) found that open innovation is dependent upon right practices and right partner choice. SMEs also lack managerial capacity and resources to search for and find appropriate partner(s) or to establish and maintain collaborations. To sum up the factors that prevent the adoption of open innovation by SMEs, we refer from Wynarczyk (2013), who argues that SMEs are hindered by internal and external structural impediments such as smallness, managerial capacity, skills, awareness of and access to external knowledge and lack of required internal capacity to overcome these challenges. 3. Motivators According to Abouzeedan et al. (2013), scarcity of resources, complexity of scientific field and access to up-to-date scientific knowledge are the challenges that SMEs face for innovation. Open innovation is a way for SMEs to overcome these challenges, to reach external knowledge and broaden their technical competencies. Thus, even though they face a number of barriers while trying to apply open innovation, SMEs practice open innovation activities extensively (Pullen et al., 2012). Recent academic research give considerable results about the benefits of open innovation for SMEs. For example, Gassmann at al. (2010) argued open innovation is a promising means for SMEs to overcome their challenges and increase their profitability and Colombo et al. (2014) alleged that open innovation enable SMEs to attain strategic moves which are not feasible for the closed innovation ones. According to Petersen et al. (2002) open innovation approach might entail great benefits for SMEs to compensate for their size-related disadvantages. First, complexity of scientific field requires the integration of knowledge from multiple disciplines for a successful innovation. However, building useful knowledge and technologies by solely using internal resources could take years and require significant R&D investment to acquire in-hose (Wynarczyk, 2013). While SMEs lack enough financial resources and have limited internal R&D capability, they can and should adopt open innovation approach to ensure their access to useful information and technologies created by external actors. Most of the SMEs operating in developing countries don’t have the luxury to fail because of limited resources available for innovation. However, recent environmental changes mentioned in the introduction section of this study increased the cost and the risk of innovation. The need to reduce the cost and the risk of innovation have increased the importance of collaborations either during early stages of new product development or during commercialization. Therefore, innovative SMEs are more inclined to network with other SMEs and institutions (Hemert et al., 2013) and adopt open innovation approach. Globalization triggered international competition and far eastern companies that enjoy low labour cost threat even small regional companies. Thus, SMEs operating in developing countries are no longer safe in their market and to ensure their survival in today’s highly competitive and rapid changing environment, they need to innovate continuously and faster than their rivals. However, speeding up innovation process requires significant resources. Thus companies search for, find and acquire external knowledge and technologies created by others instead of building on their own. Open innovation is a way for companies, especially for SMEs that have limited resources, to speed up their innovation processes. Even though they have a commercially viable technology, most of the SMEs suffer from the lack of complementary assets such as manufacturing plants, marketing ability, distribution channels to commercialize a novel product. In other words, SMEs are good at inventions but lack necessary resources for commercialization (Lee et al., 2010). Spithoven et al. (2013) found that SMEs’ collaboration with external agencies increases their chances of launching new products and services. Similarly, other studies confirmed that collaboration for SMEs is more important in the commercialization stage than in the early stages of innovation (van de Vrande et al. 2009; Hemert et al. 2013). In addition to complementary assets, SMEs also lack capability to manage the whole innovation process by themselves, and this encourages them to collaborate with other firms (Edwards et al., 2005).

759

760


In addition to these motivation factors, less bureaucracy, increased willingness to take risks, and ability to react to changing environments are viewed as advantages of SMEs over LEs for achieving benefits from the open innovation (Parida et al., 2012). 4. Policies and actions needed to build up an open innovation ecosystem in developing countries Economic benefits from open innovation could be enhanced by the wider innovation ecosystem and appropriate government policies. Kamp and Bevis (2012) argues that innovation support schemes from the public actors are useful to sensitize SMEs towards open innovation practices. Vega et al. (2012) found that the existing public policy needs to be improved significantly to accelerate open innovation in SMEs. Similarly, we argue that new policies should be taken by policy makers especially in developing countries to ease and motivate adoption of open innovation approach by SMEs and the creation of an open innovation ecosystem. Since SMEs lack human resources to detect necessary external knowledge, a government agency should; a. Conduct general search of external knowledge and technologies, industry trends, latest innovations and prepare periodic reports at different levels such as worldwide, regional and/or sectoral, b. Conduct periodic search of open innovation intermediaries, which recently are widely used by companies to reach and establish collaboration with external actors, and translate the related posts into local language and share with SMEs operating in related areas. Since SMEs lack internal capacity to assimilate external knowledge and integrate it with the in-house knowledge to turn into innovation, public research institutions and/or universities should function as joint R&D partner for SMEs. For example, the poster boy of open innovation, P&G and Leeds University are conducting 20 joint projects at the same time. In developed countries, universities are viewed as the hub of fundamental discoveries, R&D and knowledge for businesses needed to drive innovation (Huggins et al., 2008). Industry-university collaboration is one of the most important features of open innovation and new actions need to be taken to leverage these collaborations in developing countries too. According to Kaufmann and Tödtling (2002, p.151) SMEs have limited number of employees who are able to act as nodes establishing and maintaining links to innovation networks. Vrgovic et al. (2012) suggests that, in developing countries, a government agency using innovation hubs, could help SMEs to connect, communicate, and collaborate with independent inventors and other parties to jumpstart innovation practices. We argue that in developing countries an urgent need exists to establish open innovation centres in universities. Chesbrough et al. (2006) argue that informal ties of employees with employees of other organizations or institutions are crucial to understand how new products are created and commercialized. Thus, firms that adopt open innovation approach need to find ways to stimulate inter-organizational networking between employees of different firms. We argue that allowing employees to attend graduate studies or MBA Programs, in-service trainings outside the firm and national or international conferences will increase inter-organizational networking. Since SMEs lack financial resources to fund such networking activities, government agencies should offer additional funding for SMEs that allow their employees to attend graduate studies. Additionally, to increase the ability of employees to work efficiently in multidisciplinary teams with others having different backgrounds, several courses from multiple disciplines should be offered to undergraduate and graduate students. Open innovation suggests that the management and organization of innovation processes become more complex, and as such, open innovation includes many more activities, managerial levels and competencies than those traditionally attributed to the firms’ internal R&D departments (van de Vrande et al., 2009), but the research on open innovation in SMEs ignores the importance of managerial capacity and human capital as a precondition for exploiting open innovation practices and their successful implementation (Wynarczyk, 2013). Academicians should fill this gap by studying management of open innovation and also develop open innovation management tools especially for SME managers. In addition, open innovation trainings should be offered for SMEs as part of university-industry collaboration programs. These agencies should also guide especially state universities to open up sector specific graduate programs. Reaching external ideas and creative individuals is also important in open innovation. Firms are increasingly relying


on innovation contests to reach creative individuals and groups and gather ideas and/or solutions from external environment. Well-known large companies announce these contests on their websites and attract hundreds or thousands of contributors with ease. But SMEs, that are usually less known and less attractive for potential contributors, have more difficulties to reach enough interested contributors and also lack financial resources to organise and advertise such competitions. In addition to innovation contests, firms stimulate users to co-develop products or technologies, such as in open source software (Henkel, 2004; Hienerth, 2006). Nowadays, this approach become common in industries, like car design (Fiat Mio), toys (Lego) electronic games or sports equipment. It is urgent to develop a national open innovation intermediary for SMEs that they can organize innovation contests and publish their knowledge and technology needs and collaboration proposals. Most of the open innovation practices are based on partnerships, but Narula (2004) points to the danger for SMEs in having not enough technological assets and expertise to be of interest for most technological partners such as universities and public research centres. Chesbrough (2010) similarly pointed out that small firms may often be unattractive collaboration partners for other enterprises, especially large ones. Appropriate number of partnerships with SMEs might be deemed mandatory for universities and public research centres and/or additional funding might be offered to universities, research centres and large enterprises. Finally, large enterprises manage IP professionally and most of them have IP Departments, but SMEs lack human resources to do the same. Free IP management consultancy for SMEs should be offered by government agencies, research institutions or universities. 5. Conclusion In conclusion, despite the abundance of research on open innovation, less is known about SMEs in developing countries. Therefore, this study is the first step to a deeper insight there into. It also highlights factors that motivate or prevent the adoption of open innovation by SMEs operating in developing countries. Among the motivators are less bureaucracy, size-related advantages over large enterprises, limited resources that prevents stucking into closed innovation, and ability to easily adapt to changing environments. On the other hand, this paper lists barriers that prevent the adoption and application of open innovation by SMEs: the search of external environment, the detection of valuable ideas, knowledge and technologies, and then the launching and managing collaborations respectively. SMEs in developing countries face barriers of considerable time and effort as well as limited and under-skilled human resources that tend to fail in detecting, assimilating and managing external know-how. Another distinctive aspect of this study is the strategies to be followed by policy makers in order to create an open innovation ecosystem which will naturally support SMEs in developing countries. This study does not only provide new insights for implementing open innovation efforts more effectively but also suggests important managerial implications. The motivators and barriers proposed here will enable managers to better understand the open innovation approach. Furthermore, we argue that the challenges faced by SMEs may include opportunities for open innovation at the same time as long as awareness is increased in SMEs thereof. We believe that our study on barriers and motivators would help managers better analyse both their internal (dis)capabilities and the external environment in terms of open innovation. This analysis will result in a higher number of collaborative efforts by SMEs. Hereby this paper would add substantially to our knowledge of open innovation in SMEs in developing countries. No study is without limitations. Despite the importance of findings, our study has a few limitations, too, which could be addressed by future research. For instance, although motivators and barriers are theoretically listed, a practical study on those factors are worth studying. It should be noted that possible research may focus on making interviews to detect new motivators and barriers. In order to see the big picture we do not specify any particular sector. It is also possible to focus on specific sectors and their dynamics. Finally, researchers may use longitudinal data to explore the long-term outcomes of the proposed policies.

References Abouzeedan,A., Klofsten, M. And Hedner, T. (2013). Internetization Management as a Facilitator for Managing Innovation in High-Technology Smaller Firms. Global Business Review, 14(1), 121-136.

761

762


Brunswicker, S. And Ehrenmann, F. (2013). Managing open innovation in SMEs: A good practice example of a German software firm. International Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management, 4(1), 33-41. Chesbrough, H. (2003). Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Chesbrough, H., Crowther, A.K. (2006). Beyond high tech: Early Adopters Of Open Innovation In Other Industries. R&D Management, 36 (3), 229–236. Chesbrough, H.W., Vanhaverbeke, W. & West, J. (2006). Open innovation: researching a new paradigm, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chesbrough, H. (2010). Open Services Innovation: Rethinking your business to grow and compete in a new era. San Francisco, CA:Jossey-Bass. Chesbrough, H., & Vanhaverbeke, W. (2011). Open innovation and public policy in Europe. Cohen, W. M., & Levinthal, D. A. (1990). Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on Learning and Innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35(1), 128-152. Colombo,MG, Piva,E, and Rossi-Lamastra,C. (2014). Open innovation and within-industry diversification in small and medium enterprises:The case of open source software firms. Research Policy, 43(5),891-902. Dodourova,M, and Bevis, K. (2014). Networking innovation in the European car industry: Does the Open Innovation model fit? Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 69,252-271. Ebersberger B., Marsili O., Reichstein T. and Salter A. (2010). Into thin air:using a quantile regression approach to explore the relationship between R&D and innovation, International Review of Applied Economics, 24 (1), 95-102. Gassmann,O.,Enkel,E. and Chesbrough, H.(2010).The future of open innovation. R&D Management, 40(3), 213-221. Hemert, P., Nijkamp,P. And Masurel, E. (2013). From innovation to commercialization through networks and agglomerations: analysis of sources of innovation, innovation capabilities and performance of Dutch SMEs. The Annals of Regional Science, 50(2), 425-452. Henkel, J., (2004). Open source software from commercial firms – tools, complements, and collective invention. ZfB-Ergänzungsheft. Hienerth, C., (2006). The commercialization of user innovations: the development of the rodeo kayak industry. R&D Management 36, 273-294. Howells, J., James, A., & Malik, K. (2003). The sourcing of technological knowledge: distributed innovation processes and dynamic change. R&D Management, 33(4), 395-409. Huggins, R., Johnston, A., Steffenson, R. (2008). Universities, knowledge networks and regional policy. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 1 (2), 321-340. Idrissia,M., Amaraa, N., Landrya, R. (2012). SMEs’ degreee of openness: the case of manufacturing industries. Journal of Technology Management & Innovation, 7(1), 186-210. Kamp, B. And Bevis, K. (2012). Knowledge transfer initiatives as a doorstep formula to open innovation. International Journal of Automative Technology Management, 52(3), 236-256. Kaufmann, A. & Tödtling, F. (2002). How effective is innovation support for SMEs? Ananalysis of the region of Upper Austria, Technovation, 22 (3), pp. 147-159. Lee, S., Park,G.,Yoon,B., Park,J. (2010). Open Innovation in SMEs - An intermediated network model. Research Policy,39(2), 290-300 Maier, A., Keppler, T., & Maier, D. (2014). Innovation the new trend in today’s challenging economy. In The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, The13th International Conference on Informatics in Economy, Education, Research & Business Technologies. Bucharest, Romania (pp. 15-18). Narula, R. (2004). R&D collaboration by SMEs: new opportunities and limitations in the face of globalisation. Technovation 25,153-161. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2005). Oslo manual. Guidelines for collecting and interpreting innovation data. Paris: OECD. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2008). Globalisation and open innovation. Paris: OECD. Parida,V., Westerberg, M. And Frishammar, J. (2012). Inbound Open Innovation Activities in High-Tech SMEs: The Impact on Innovation Performance. Journal of Small Business Management, 50(2), 283-309. Petersen, B., Welch, L.S. & Liesch, P.W. (2002). The Internet and foreign market expansion by firms, MIR: Management International Review, 42 (2), pp. 207-221. Pullen, AJ, Weerd-Nederhof,PC, Groen, AJ and Fisscher, OA.(2012). Open innovation in practice: goal complementarity and closed NPD networks to explain differences in innovation performance for SMEs in the medical devices sector. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 29(6),17934. Rahman,H., ve Ramos,I.(2010). Open Innovation in SMEs: From closed boundaries to networked paradigm. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 7, 471-487. Rothwell, R. (1991). External networking and innovation in small and medium-sized manufacturing firms in Europe. Technovation, 11(2), 93-112.


Spithoven, A, Vanhaverbeke, W, & Roijakkers, N. (2013). Open innovation practices in SMEs and large enterprises. Small Business Economics, 41(3), 537–562 Teece, D. J. (1992). Competition, cooperation, and innovation: Organizational arrangements for regimes of rapid technological progress. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 18(1), 1-25. Theyel,N.(2013). Extending open innovation throughout the value chain by small and medium sized manufacturers. International Small Business Journal, 31(3),256-274. Vahter, P., Love, J. H., & Roper, S. (2014). Openness and innovation performance: are small firms different?. Industry and Innovation, 21(7-8), 553-573. Van de Vrande, V., De Jong, J., Vanhaverbeke, W., and De Rochemont, M. (2009). Open Innovation in SMEs: trends, motives and management challenges. Technovation, 29(6-7), 423-437. Vega, A., Brown, D. And Chiasson, M. (2012). Open innovation and SMEs Exploring policy and the scope for improvements in university-based public programmes through a multidisciplinary lens. International Journal of entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, 18(4), 457-476. Vossen,R.W. (1998). Research Note-Relative strengths and weaknesses of small firms in innovation. İnternational Small Business Journal,16(3), 88-94. Vrgovic, P. Vidicki, P., Glassman, B. and Walton, A. (2012). Open innovation for SMEs in developing countries-An intermediated communication network model for collaboration beyond obstacles. Innovation: Management, Policy and Practice, 14(3), 290-302. Wynarczyk,P.(2013). Open innovation in SMEs: A dynamic approach to modern entrepreneurship in the twenty-first characteristics, network openness and network information. International Journal of Technology Management, 62 (2), 223-250.

763