Advancing The Microfoundations of Open Innovation

This chapter discusses the microfoundations of open innovation (OI). It points out that microfoundational factors, such as personnel mobility, boundary spanners, the incentives of R&D personnel, and technology entrepreneurs, have been present in the OI literature from the beginning, and have been further revealed in subsequent work. However, the OI literature also often adopts macroconstructs (e.g., “communities,” “innovation networks”) that call for clear(er) microfoundations. Providing such microfoundations represents one avenue of research. Another one is extending the already existing microfoundational focus of the OI literature. This chapter outlines a number of suggestions for microfoundational research themes in OI research, focused on, for example, the influence of demographic characteristics of members of the upper echelons and OI employees, as well as the interaction of such characteristics and organization-level factors in driving OI outcomes.