Leadership in Open Innovation: Examining the Influences of Open Innovation on Competencies, Control, and Behavior in R&D Environments

Throughout the literature, Open Innovation is lauded for yielding reduced time-to-market, higher R&D efficiencies and additional revenue throughout-licensing or spin-offs. Nevertheless, the Open Innovation model bears challenges: Managing an increasing number of partnerships and capturing the full potential from external technology providers (Fetterhoff & Voelkel, 2006). How can managers and team members of Open Innovation projects effectively respond to these challenges beyond the widely cited “Not-Invented-Here” syndrome? The topic of leadership is an area unexplored in the context of Open Innovation (Chesbrough, 2010a). This study provides such an exploration and presents a flexible leadership model that demands a joint application of goal-oriented, involving and engaging elements: establishing clear contractual agreements through tight partnership involvement and inspiring the prospects of a joint ecosystem. Throughout the partnership interaction, leadership in Open Innovation becomes mainstream, so that everyone involved in the value creation process needs to exhibit skills along the proposed flexible leadership framework.

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