The Impacts of Open Innovations on Organizational Performance: A Perspective based on Information Technology and Knowledge Ecology

Open innovation is a paradigm related to knowledge sourcing. It argues that firms should take advantage of both external and internal ideas for innovation in organizations. The purpose of this research is to investigate how different knowledge management strategies and IT capabilities may have effects on the implementation of open innovation and whether the adoption of open innovation may affect organizational performance. We have developed a research model and a questionnaire survey was conducted in Taiwan and Japan to collect matched-pair responses from 213 companies. Our research results indicate the following: (1) IT capabilities are found to have direct effects on open innovation; (2) Organizations with higher level of knowledge interaction and collaboration have higher level of open innovation implementation; (3) Higher level of open innovation leads to higher organizational performance; (4) Inbound open innovation and outbound open innovation have different effects on organizational performance in different economic contexts.