Institutionalising information asymmetry: governance structures for open innovation

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the ways in which firms utilise hierarchical relationships and the market system to supply and acquire intellectual property (IP) and/or innovation capabilities from sources external to the firm.Design/methodology/approach – The authors conduct a field study to explore emerging governance structures for open innovation, using multiple data sources including documents (e.g. white papers) and interviews published by the firms studied, analysis of the firms' web‐based systems (where applicable), secondary content (e.g. news articles) and elite interviews with key personnel.Findings – The analysis of seven exemplars of open innovation reveals that inter‐organisational relationships that facilitate open innovation can be categorised based on whether they are mediated or direct, and seek to exchange intellectual property or innovation capability. Using this categorisation, the authors present an analysis that reveals four governance structures along ten dimensions, and discu...

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