Influential Article Review - Is Open Innovation the Key to Improving Products?

Abstract

This paper examines innovation. We present insights from a highly influential paper. Here are the highlights from this paper: In late years, the concept of open innovation received attention from industry and academia. This concept means that firms utilize resources outside for their R&D beyond their boundaries. Behind this background is the fact that firms have more opportunities to utilize resources outside. Previous studies indicate that by utilizing resources outside, firms could make the R & D process more efficient or create new products. On the other side of the coin, we have to solve some aspects in an open innovation context. First, product quality on the basis of activities of open innovation has to be defined. The definition of product quality is still unclear; thus, it is necessary to identify product quality in open innovation context. In addition, comparison between open innovation and in-company cooperation is not done so much. In the examination of effectiveness of open innovation, we should compare utilization of resources outside with that of in-company ideas. In this paper, we quantitatively analyze relations among product quality, utilization of resources outside, and utilization of internal resources on the basis of Covariance Structure Analysis. This analysis is based on a questionnaire survey at Japanese electronics firms in July 2015.For our overseas readers, we then present the insights from this paper in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German.