Opening the innovation process: a multilevel approach based on absorptive capacity

We are interested in the open innovation process (OI), a broad research area that is focused on the why and how a firm opens its innovation process. Within this stream, drivers of OI are a key issue. They range from the macro-level -such as macro-environmental changes, to the meso-level- such as community’s and ecosystem’s conditions, to the micro-level- such as absorptive capacity and other firms’ characteristic. Addressing a recent demand for multilevel research on OI, we explore why and how firms open the innovation process by analyzing and connecting different drivers active at different levels. Taking a knowledge-based and organizational learning perspective, we base our analysis on a key driver of firms’ OI, i.e. absorptive capacity, and appreciate how it interacts with drivers at the macro- and meso- level and how they jointly contribute to open the firm’s innovation process. We empirically investigate firms located in a leading Brazilian wine cluster. These firms were able to overcome major environmental jolts (as a macro-level driver) that threated their sustainability and survival, by redefining their business model and opening the innovation process. At the meso-level, the impact of the professional community of enologists’s condition was appreciated. We found that macro-environment changes impact with different effects across levels (meso, organizational and individual) and, compared to other investigated drivers, can be considered a necessary condition anytime incumbent firms only adopt closed innovation. Professional communities, compared to macro-environment changes, tend to provide a more directed support to the open innovation process, favoring the nature of individuals’ practices and the width and diversity of their enacted networks. Macro-environment changes as triggers and professional community conditions and firm’s absorptive capacity as feeders play a complementary role in opening the innovation process.