Opening the innovation process: a multilevel approach

Addressing a recent demand for multilevel research on Open Innovation (OI), this paper explores why and how firms open their innovation process by analyzing different drivers who are active at different levels and their interactions. We adopt a mechanisms-based approach for explaining how different factors at the micro, meso and macro levels interact to transform a closed innovation process in an open one. We ground our analysis on a mechanism-based model of absorptive capacity that recognizes the individual and the organizational nature of absorptive capacity identifying key mechanisms that determine the firms’ capacity to the recognition, to the assimilation and to the application of external knowledge. We appreciate how absorptive capacity interacts with drivers at the macrolevel and mesolevel and how these interactions jointly contribute to enabling firms’ opening to the use of external knowledge. We empirically investigate firms located in a leading Brazilian wine cluster where a professional community (as a mesolevel driver) was operating. These firms were able to overcome major environmental jolts (as a macrolevel driver) that threatened their sustainability and survival by redefining their business model and opening the innovation process. We build a dynamic model that can explain how firms access, assimilate and combine external knowledge when multiple drivers are in action. Our model suggests that macroenvironment changes and professional communities might play a complementary role in opening the innovation process, with different impacts on the direction or the OI process. The model shows the necessary and not sufficient role of macroenvironment changes for opening the innovation process and the transformational effect of individual actions on higher-level drivers.