Title: Enabling knowledge creation through outsiders: towards a push model of open innovation

Authors: Sebastian Spaeth, Matthias Stuermer, Georg Von Krogh

Addresses: Department of Management, Technology and Economics, ETH, Kreuzplatz 5, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland. ' Department of Management, Technology and Economics, ETH, Kreuzplatz 5, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland. ' Department of Management, Technology and Economics, ETH, Kreuzplatz 5, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland

Abstract: Open innovation is increasingly being adopted in business and describes a situation in which firms exchange ideas and knowledge with external participants, such as customers, suppliers, partner firms, and universities. This article extends the concept of open innovation with a push model of open innovation: knowledge is voluntarily created outside a firm by individuals and organisations who proceed to push knowledge into a firm|s open innovation project. For empirical analysis, we examine source code and newsgroup data on the Eclipse Development Platform. We find that outsiders invest as much in the firm|s project as the founding firm itself. Based on the insights from Eclipse, we develop four propositions: |preemptive generosity| of a firm, |continuous commitment|, |adaptive governance structure|, and |low entry barrier| are contexts that enable the push model of open innovation.

Keywords: open innovation; open source software; knowledge creation; governance structures; push models; newsgroup data; commitment; low entry barrier; external knowledge.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTM.2010.035983

International Journal of Technology Management, 2010 Vol.52 No.3/4, pp.411 - 431

Published online: 06 Apr 2013 *

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