Firms’ Connections and Open Innovation: The Case of Innovative Spanish Firms

Abstract

The main aim of this chapter is to determine whether or not and to what extent innovative Spanish firms apply open innovation practices. Accordingly, the authors analyze microdata from the Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC) database. This study develops a methodology that focuses on the description of the existing connections between the elements that constitute a socio-economic system: they extract data belonging to firms that have declared that they apply innovation activities and then the authors analyze the links between innovative firms based on the concept of systemic innovations (vs autonomous innovations) as a means to explaining open innovation. Systemic innovations require interaction between complementary innovators through different collaboration mechanisms that reveal links between parts of the system. From this perspective, the authors depict a profile of the innovation links in innovative Spanish firms involved in open innovation practices, together with a characterization of what they call an ‘open innovator firm’.