Behavioral foundations of collaborative innovation: Success and failure in open innovation project implementation

Despite wide interest in collaborative approaches to innovation, many open innovation projects fail. According to existing literature, one reason for this failure is that firms do not tackle " the mindset challenge " of transitioning from a closed to an open innovation model. This chapter provides insight into the individual decision-making process that determines whether people engage in or resist open innovation behavior and how this impacts the open innovation process on the project level. In the described study, the theory of planned behavior was applied to investigate how R&D professionals contributed to an open innovation project process in a multinational firm in the Dutch technology sector. The findings indicated, first, that the open innovation project process is contingent upon the behavior of open innovation champions who have positive attitudes towards open innovation, disregard social norms to oppose open innovation within their firms, and believe in their personal control over conducting open innovation. Second, the open innovation project process depends on factors outside the control of the open innovation champions, such as organizational support, having the right team composition and professional competencies, and environmental munificence. The chapter discusses the implications of these findings for future research on the micro foundations of open innovation and offers recommendations for practice to integrate the beliefs of R&D professionals into the management of open innovation. 108 4.1 Introduction The concept of open innovation has received substantial interest from the academic and practical community (e. The literature on open innovation culture has stressed the importance of individual beliefs and shared values, but this research has looked at isolated beliefs, such as individuals' readiness to accept ideas from outside the firm, rather than applying comprehensive theory to examine individual beliefs and their effect on open innovation (Herzog & Leker, 2010). This study contributes to the existing literature in two ways. First, the study analyzed the underlying belief systems of those who do and do not support open innovation to determine the individual decision-making process of R&D professionals to participate in open innovation or not. Second, this study examined how the individual decision-making process affects the open innovation process of a project. A better understanding of the individual's influence on open innovation processes can be helpful to train and manage R&D professionals to conduct successful open innovation. This study used the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985; 1991) as a theoretical framework. Based on analytical reasons, the …