Adopting open innovation strategy to empower SMEs in developing countries

Recently open innovation practice in SMEs has received an extensive attention in the scientific research, management and government. Nonetheless, most previous studies were contextualized to firm's capabilities and quality of the external knowledge infrastructures from the advanced countries. Studies on the practices of open innovation in SMEs from developing countries are scant. Researching the practice and benefit of OI strategy with regard to the actual capabilities of SMEs and the actual technological and knowledge infrastructures is imperative. This paper explores how open innovation strategy could be adopted to accelerate the technological learning and performance of SMEs in developing countries. It examined the practices and trends and searched contextual framework for adopting open innovation practice of SMEs in developing countries. The paper shows that establishing synergetic relationship oriented towards the jointly and individually creation, diffusion and usage of knowledge is critical to boost the SMEs' learning capability and performance in developing countries.