Determinants of Open Innovation Adoption in Colombian SMEs: Evidence from a PLS-SEM Analysis

Abstract

Open innovation has become a central framework for explaining how firms access, integrate, and exploit knowledge beyond organizational boundaries. However, the conditions shaping its adoption by small- and medium-sized enterprises remain insufficiently understood, particularly in Latin American contexts. This study examines the determinants of open innovation adoption in Colombian SMEs and develops an analytical model that integrates six explanatory dimensions: external partnership and cooperation, government support, rules and regulatory factors, market and customer factors, organizational and human resource factors, and technological factors. Empirically, the study combines an exploratory qualitative phase, based on semi-structured interviews with SME managers in Bogotá, D.C., with a quantitative phase using survey data from 319 SMEs operating in ISIC 6201 and 6202. The hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results show that technological factors have the strongest direct association with open innovation adoption, followed by government support and external partnership and cooperation. Market and customer factors, as well as organizational and human resource factors, also exert positive and significant effects, whereas rules and regulatory factors do not show a significant direct effect. Additional analyses indicate that organizational and human resource factors partially mediate the relationship between technological factors and open innovation adoption, while a complementary moderation test does not support an interaction-based effect. These findings suggest that open innovation adoption in SMEs is technologically enabled, partially translated through organizational and human resource capabilities, and shaped by a configuration of relational, institutional, market-based, and internal conditions rather than by any single determinant.