Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This project examined the organisational mechanisms and capabilities as well as institutional arrangements that are required to foster effective open innovation (OI). In particular, it addressed three questions:How do patterns of usage of OI practices vary across firms, sectors and sizes?What are the factors driving the firms' usage of OI practices?How does the firms' usage of OI practices affect their innovativeness and performance?The study identified three types of OI firms; traditional, hunting-cultivating and ambidextrous. It also looked at how and why firms carry out inbound OI activities and their impact on business. The report also looks at variations of these practices across different size, sector and OI types of firm. Outbound activities and Innovation protection are also covered. The survey was carried out as a postal or web survey, respondents were given the choice of how to complete the questionnaire. Further information about the project may be found on the UK-IRC Open Innovation website and the UK-IRC ESRC award webpage.

Main Topics:

Patterns of usage of open innovation practices by firm size and sector; and factors driving use of open innovation practices and how they affect innovativeness and performance. Keywords: Open innovation, Inbound/Outbound activities, Networks, UK, SMEs.

For manufacturing and business services a sample stratified by size and sector was used. For the pharmaceutical and clean energy samples, firms were drawn from a company database and supplemented with additional firms from organisation listings on the web.

Postal survey

Web-based survey