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Mechanisms In Open Innovation: A Review And Synthesis Of The Literature, Ruben H.A.J. Ogink, Martin C. Goossen, A. Georges L. Romme, Henk Akkermans

Management Faculty Publications

A large body of literature explores the role of context, structure, actors, and outcomes of open innovation (OI), yet pays little attention to the mechanisms underlying these relationships. In this review paper, we synthesize the OI literature using a context-mechanism-outcome approach to identify and classify the various mechanisms observed in empirical OI studies. Our findings demonstrate that the OI literature draws on a wide variety of mechanisms originating from the fields of management, sociology, economics, and psychology. The fifteen mechanisms most frequently observed in the literature fall into four categories: governance and policies; environmental dynamics and interactions; knowledge, skills, and …