Assessing the performance of open innovation practices: A case study of a community of innovation

Abstract

The field of Open Innovation (OI) has been explored in many studies concerning several aspects of its fundamental characteristics. Research has mainly focused on the capability of companies of integrating and reconfiguring external and internal knowledge to create value. Increasingly, academic investigation efforts and practical needs of many companies have converged in a common purpose: to find out those proper Intellectual Capital (IC) elements capable of acting as key drivers of OI practices.The purpose of this paper is to develop and implement an innovative managerial methodology, by means of a case study carried out in a Community of Innovation of the Italian leading group operating in the Aero-Space & Defence industry. The proposed methodology aims at assessing the performance of OI practices conducted by a Community of Innovation and at advising the proper allocation of IC resources within the value creation process.The described case study has made it possible to verify the capability of the methodology of pointing out areas of advantage and disadvantage in the value creation process and of singling out those particular activities to be leveraged in order to increase the performance of OI initiatives. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.