Open Innovation and Organizational Capacities: Case Study of an SME

Abstract

Open innovation has gained popularity in recent years. But is the concept new or does it express old realities? The literature review of this case study found that the term “open innovation” is recent and that its development has been facilitated by technological innovations. The case study collected data over a period of eight months from an agrifood SME in Quebec, Canada. The aim was to go beyond the basic model of open innovation and integrate dynamic, absorptive and appropriative capacities into a new working open innovation model. Initial results show that components associated with the basic open innovation model such as intellectual property, joint R&D and co-product development are present as well as certain organizational capacities. The difficulty of applying the concept is due to its interactions rather than its components taken individually. The study concludes that further work is needed to extend the applicability and the foundations of open innovation.