Open Innovation and Market Orientation: An Analysis of the Relationship

Open innovation has become an emergent topic in innovation management founded on the assumption that the development of innovative processes may lie outside the companies' boundaries. In particular, this paper has pursued to address one gap in existing research on open innovation, namely the investigation of its relationship with market orientation that promotes continual processes of innovation leading to higher customer value. Findings have shown how market-driven companies tend to overcome the classical view on relying innovation on internal Research & Development departments in order to become more permeable to the outside environment. In fact, market-driven companies develop distinctive outside-in, inside-out, and spanning capabilities that encourage the matching and integration of internal resources with external partners and open innovation emerges as an essential driver to preserve and improve their competitiveness.