Knowledge Sharing in Open Innovation: An Overview of Theoretical Perspectives on Collaborative Innovation

Open innovation has received an increasing amount of attention from innovation scholars and practitioners alike. As a specific type of open innovation, collaborative innovation combines knowledge inflows and outflows and is thus at the core of open innovation. To better understand this coupled process of open innovation, this chapter provides an overview of the theoretical perspectives on open collaborative innovation. In particular, knowledge sharing is considered as a main driver of successful collaborative innovation. Accordingly, the chapter reviews some of the main trends in practices and theories related to open collaborative innovation. The main purpose is to provide an overview of the main perspectives on collaborative knowledge sharing within established economic organization and strategic management theories. Thus, by providing a more solid theoretical basis for future work in open innovation, this chapter contributed to the theory behind open innovation, which in turn can be used to inform open innovation practices.