Rethinking Open Innovation Beyond the Innovation Funnel

In his article, I first argue that open innovation can be applied in situations where companies do not themselves develop new products or services. As a consequence, open innovation becomes relevant for a much larger group of organizations than previously considered. Second, I argue that open-innovation scholars have insufficiently differentiated open-innovation initiatives in terms of their impact on companies’ growth: some open-innovation initiatives lead to incremental innovations in an existing business while, in other cases, open-innovation initiatives are used to establish completely new businesses. Both arguments illustrate the need to integrate open-innovation initiatives into the strategy of the firm.