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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a patent-based framework for investigating the effect of previous and current open innovation (OI) adoption on firms’ knowledge management strategies and type of innovation output. Design/methodology/approach Patent data are employed for gauging innovation practices, exploitation vs exploration strategies, specialization vs diversification choices and type of innovation. The study is performed on a sample of 1,280 patents granted to 66 top R&D spending bio-pharmaceutical companies. The year of analysis is 2010. Findings The previous recourse to specific innovation practices influences the current practice selection. R&D collaboration, outsourcing and mergers and acquisitions are employed to pursue exploration. Past purchase of patents increases the likelihood to achieve architectural and radical innovation in current activities. Research limitations/implications The work recommends the use of patent data to gauge many key elements for knowledge and innovation management. Results exhort scholars to investigate innovation practices at the knowledge domain level in order to detect specific behaviors. Practical implications The study provides a methodology for supporting decision-makers in assessing firms’ OI adoption, also performing the benchmark with competitors and R&D partners. Given the high computational effort required for applying the methodology, the authors are planning to give access to the software specifically developed for this study. Originality/value The work contributes to the current debate considering the effect of a combination of innovation practices on knowledge management strategies and type of innovation output, with a particular focus on OI activities. Moreover, the separation between the impact of previous and current innovation practices provides useful insights.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a methodological framework for evaluating the impact of open innovation (OI) adoption on start-up ventures at the knowledge domain level, taking into account the technological specialization and the quality of innovation output. Design/methodology/approach The framework employs patent data for investigating joint development activities between start-ups and partners, thus defining an openness degree of R&D. The partner typology and the levels of specialization on the knowledge fields affected by each invention are investigated. The methodology is tested on a sample of bio-pharmaceutical start-ups. Findings On average, the openness level in the start-up phase is higher than the consolidation one. Furthermore, the higher the level of openness during the start-up phase, the higher the propensity to collaborate with scientific organizations. And yet, the occurrence of R&D collaborations is positively correlated to the level of specialization on the knowledge fields involved in joint development activities. Practical implications OI strategies are valuable for start-ups, particularly in the bio-pharmaceutical industry, since their adoption improves the quality of innovation output. This is particularly true when R&D collaborations are established with scientific entities. Originality/value This work investigates the impact of OI adoption on start-up ventures at the knowledge domain level, by employing objective and standardized data. Hence, the methodology can be considered as a first step in developing a useful tool for managers, researchers and business analysts.

The paper presents an analytical method to define innovation behaviours and technology strategies of companies using patent data.The framework can be used to: 1) analyse single innovation behaviours, 2) map innovation strategies defined as combinations of different innovation behaviours, and 3) describe the patterns of technological evolutions over time. The methodology is tested on a sample of 133 top research and development (R&D) companies belonging to technology hardware & equipment industry, by analysing their patents applied from 2008 to 2012. From the analysis of the behaviours, a preponderance of exploitation strategies that lead to radical outputs is detected. We also uncovered a growing adoption of open innovation and an increasing concentration of R&D efforts on radical outputs.

This study provides a patent-based framework, investigating the relationship among the relevance of the technological domains, the exploitation vs. exploration strategies and the choice of open innovation practices. Specifically, this work presents five levels of open innovation adoption and analyses the reason why firms open up their innovation boundaries. The methodology is tested on a sample of 240 companies belonging to the bio-pharmaceutical and the technology hardware & equipment industries, by examining their patents filed in 2011. Results show that the relevance of the knowledge domain affects the choice of the innovation strategy; also, non-equity alliances are preferred in explorative activities and equity alliances in exploitative ones.

The paper describes five open innovation business models - collaboration, outsourcing, licensing, trading and incorporation - defined on the basis of open revenues and costs, new investments and divestments in intangibles. A sample of 271 companies from biopharmaceutical and technology hardware & equipment industries is investigated, and their annual reports for the three years period 2010-2012 are analysed. Results show that for biotech companies open innovation represents a characteristic activity, with most of them having high values of revenues deriving from joint development projects. On the other side, for pharmaceutical firms open innovation is somehow ancillary: even if most open innovation activities are widespread, their values are not really significant if compared to the total business volume. As to the technology hardware & equipment industry, the use of spin-ins as a mean for incorporating external knowledge is the most frequent open strategy. This work contributes to the research on open innovation by defining the business models that R&D intense companies may adopt to foster open innovation. From a managerial point of view, the framework can be used by companies for assessing the status of their own open strategies, also allowing the benchmarking with competitors.

The paper suggests a multidimensional measurement system assessing collaboration in an open innovation context by the use of: 1) costs and revenues deriving from joint development processes; 2) joint patents as the outcome of such activities. Three metrics are introduced to evaluate the weight of collaborations on both the total business of companies and their patent portfolio: collaboration costs share, collaboration revenues share and joint patents share. A sample of 114 worldwide top R&D spending bio-pharmaceutical firms is analysed and eight clusters are defined, from closed sole-patenting to coupled joint-patenting. The work proposes a novel way to assess collaboration processes, identifying their impact on the business model of companies. Furthermore, it integrates metrics for collaboration process and outputs within a comprehensive measurement system. Drawing on objective and available data from both consolidated annual reports and PATSTAT, the framework allows managers to evaluate the collaborative position of their firms, monitoring its evolution and benchmarking with competitors.

The paper suggests a multidimensional patent-based framework that investigates the relationships among accumulated stock of knowledge, current technological strategies, knowledge search practices and quality of innovation output. More specifically, the work intends to examine how the previous open innovation adoption, the recourse to specific technological strategies, the use of external sources of inspiration and the engagement of external actors for knowledge search affect both the market and the technological value of patented inventions. The methodology is applied to 25,583 patents filed by 68 R&D intense bio-pharmaceutical and technology hardware & equipment companies. Results show that focalization leads to technological acknowledgement and is stimulated by the use of non-patent references as sources of inspiration and the engagement of external scientific actors. In general, the use of patent and non-patent references is positively related to the quality of innovation output. Moreover, when companies have largely employed open innovation to accumulate knowledge, they continue to adopt similar practices in current R&D efforts.

The paper suggests a methodology for measuring the degree of openness in companies' innovation processes through the analysis of annual reports. Four openness dimensions are defined based on costs and revenues deriving from open innovation activities and new investments and divestments of innovation-related intangibles, occurring in either separate acquisitions or business combinations. A synthetic measure of openness is defined, including all the four dimensions. The model is then applied to a sample of 126 global top R&D spending companies in the bio-pharmaceutical industry for the period 2008–2012, for a total of 630 annual reports analysed. Results show a negative correlation of openness degree with firm age, dimension and efficiency, with biotech companies being more open than pharmaceutical ones. The paper contributes to the research on open innovation by suggesting a comprehensive framework for the measure of the pecuniary dimension of the phenomenon in both inbound and outbound processes. From a managerial point of view, the framework can be used by companies to both monitor their own degree of openness and to benchmark it with those of competitors.

The paper suggests a patent-based framework that describes how bio-pharmaceutical and technology hardware and equipment companies manage their collaborative activities at the knowledge domain level, analyzing objective data gathered from PATSTAT database. We define the determinants of partners' selection by studying two characteristics of the knowledge fields involved in the technological alliance: their relevance and the technological strategy adopted. Considering only dyadic collaborations, the methodology is performed for both focal companies and their partners, detecting 16 different collaborative behaviors. If compared to the technology hardware and equipment industry, in the bio-pharmaceutical one a higher share of joint patenting activities involving core technological fields was found, signaling that collaborative processes mostly affect the core business of companies. We also uncovered that, in both industries, companies rely on alliances in order to access to competencies that are more relevant for their partners. Regarding the technological strategy pursued through collaborative activities, exploitation is strongly preferred to exploration.

The paper suggests an accounting–based framework for defining open innovation adoption modalities through the analysis of annual reports. Five models are described, depending on the costs, revenues, new investments and divestments in intangibles and knowledge assets related to open innovation. The framework is applied to a sample of 271 world top research and development (RD the former mainly adopt a collaborative model for open innovation, by jointly developing research programmes with external parties, the latter prefer to incorporate other companies through the use of spin–ins. The paper contributes to the existing research by suggesting a pecuniary approach to evaluate open innovation adoption modalities. The framework can be used by companies for both monitoring their own open innovation positioning and benchmarking it with those of competitors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the new investments and divestments of intangibles companies perform in the context of open innovation. Indeed, the open innovation process exploits knowledge dissemination and considers the external access to intangible resources as a strategic activity. The framework is tested on a sample of 271 firms operating in two R&D intense industries, bio-pharmaceutical and technology hardware & equipment, for the three-year period 2010-2012. The analysis reveals that intangibles transactions are not relevant in the bio-pharmaceutical industry, since open innovation is far more oriented to revenues and costs. Conversely, for technology hardware & equipment companies the acquisition of intangibles is very widespread, particularly within business combinations. The paper contributes to the current debate on open innovation outlining the role of knowledge and intangible assets in the strategies companies pursue for opening up their processes.

This paper aims at investigating the relationships between the adoption of open innovation by companies and their context features, internal RD still being in the development phase, they derive most of their revenues from open innovation itself and show negative financial performances. Yet, a wider range of open transactions are performed by larger and longer established firms, exhibiting good financial performances and adopting open innovation as a substitution to internal R&D efforts. Through an in-depth review of the literature, this paper contributes to the research on open innovation by providing an accounting measurement system, testing six hypotheses among open innovation and some firm-level variables, and positioning the obtained results within the current debate.

The paper investigates the impact of network strategies on innovation strategies carried out in 2011 by 44 top R&D spending bio-pharmaceutical companies. Gathering patent and accounting data, we built the business network of joint development activities making use of social network analysis (SNA). Our findings show that each network strategy is related to different innovation strategies, confirming that social network analysis is an effective instrument for explaining why firms enter into R&D agreements with partners and the linkage of such collaborations with the overall innovation strategy.

The paper suggests an accounting-based methodology for defining open innovation adoption modalities, based on economic and financial transactions in inbound and outbound processes. The framework is applied to a sample of 274 top research and development spending companies operating in bio-pharmaceutical and technology hardware and equipment industries. For biotechnological companies open innovation represents a core activity, with most of them having high values of revenues deriving from joint development projects and licensing. On the other side, for pharmaceutical companies open innovation is somehow ancillary: even if most open innovation activities are widespread, their values are not really significant if compared to the total business volume. For companies in the technology hardware and equipment industry the use of spin-ins as a mean for incorporating external knowledge is a characteristic activity and also the acquisition and selling of innovation-related intangibles is quite pervasive. Further, a limited number of semiconductors companies have remarkable values of licensing revenues.

The aim of the paper is to analyse the relationships between the openness degree of companies and their I) context features, 2) R & D organization and 3) financial performances. The openness degree is defined after a pecuniary approach, involving all the transactions in the innovation market. Hypotheses are formulated and, then, tested on a sample of I26 world top R & D spending bio-pharmaceutical companies for the period 2008-20I2. Open innovation is more pervasive among small and young companies, for most of which it represents the very core business. Inbound and outbound practices have a similar diffusion in terms of number of companies adopting them, but the cumulative values of inbound flows are higher, whereas outbound flows are more relevant when compared to the total business of the firms. Inbound practices are substitutive to internal R & D activities, while outbound ones are complementary to internal development. The performances of companies have an inverted-U shape trend versus inbound practices and a fundamentally decreasing trend versus outbound ones.

The purposes of this paper are to (1) define the open business models of companies and (2) relate them to the intangibles portfolio composition in terms of R&D, goodwill, and other intangibles. A sample of 234 worldwide top R&D spending firms is examined, drawing on secondary data from audited consolidated annual reports for the period 2010-2012. The work provides a contribution to both innovation management theory and practice. On one side, it investigates inbound and outbound aspects of open innovation after a pecuniary perspective. Five models are defined - collaboration, outsourcing, licensing, trading, and incorporation - which, if combined, denote the openness of companies' innovation strategy. On the other side, the devised framework constitutes a starting point to develop guidelines for managers to leverage the intangible assets of their organisations in order to innovate and generate value in an open innovation context.

The purpose of this study is to examine the composition of companies' intangibles portfolio and relate it to the degree of openness of their innovation processes, assessed after an accounting perspective. The analysis is performed on a sample of 234 world top research and development (R&D) spending firms in the bio-pharmaceutical and technology hardware and equipment industries for the period 2010-2012, for a total of 702 consolidated annual reports examined. Results show that the intangibles portfolio of open companies contains mainly R&D and patents. Conversely, firms registering a significant amount of goodwill on balance sheet are less open in their innovation processes.

The paper suggests a methodology for measuring companies’ openness degree through accounting data and providing a relation between open innovation activities and intellectual capital components. Four openness dimensions are defined and a synthetic measure of openness is suggested. The model is applied to a sample of 126 world top R&D spending companies in the bio-pharmaceutical industry for the period 2008–2012. Results show a negative correlation of openness with firm age, dimension and efficiency and a positive correlation with R&D intensity, with biotech companies being more open than pharmaceutical ones. Further, the most relevant component of openness is represented by the revenues deriving from joint development projects, out-licensing and R&D outsourcing. The paper contributes to the existing research by suggesting inbound and outbound metrics for open innovation and by underlining the role of intellectual capital. The framework can be used for monitoring and benchmarking the openness degree of companies with competitors.