The influence of open innovation practices on business performance in Mexican family and non-family SMEs/Influencia de las practicas de innovacion abierta en el rendimiento del negocio en Pymes familiares y no familiares en Mexico./Influencia das praticas de inovacao aberta no desempenho dos negocios nas PMEs familiares e nao familiares no Mexico.
| Autor | Garcia-Vidales, Marisela-Yazmin |
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Introduction.
The concept of traditional innovation involves attributes, results and processes, and can also be seen as an enhancer of the company's progress (Morris, 2009). As such, innovation provides new ideas, products, strategies, and practices which create competitive advantages. Innovation helps the organizations to identify different opportunities for transformation, and take advantage of them (Tidd & Bessant, 2009), it is considered a fundamental aspect of any company that wishes to survive under the current competitive environment.
The evolution from closed traditional innovation towards a more open concept involves the use of ideas coming from the exterior of the organization alongside those from the interior, (Chesbrough, 2003). This transformation allows companies not only to use information exclusively created from the inside, but also to incorporate external viewpoints to obtain more benefits.
Undoubtedly companies nowadays are becoming more conscious of their inability e to fully compete with others using only internally developed ideas. As a result, there is a stronger trend towards collaboration, including the development and adaptation of processes through sharing collaborative activities (Michelino, Caputo, Cammarano, & Lamberti, 2014; Tobiassen & Pettersen, 2018). Therefore, open innovation is seen as a new scenario where companies must leave their comfort zones and open themselves up to external professionals combining internal and external knowledge.
Some of the benefits of opening up innovation practices may be obvious for large multinational firms. However, in the field of small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries the picture is different (Chesbrough, 2010) and more so for family and non-family business. Regrettably, in these contexts studies are even scarcer, despite these types of firms being a great source of opportunity in the open innovation panorama, as they can contribute faster, specialize better and easily adapt to opportunities that emerge from beyond their particular market.
Additionally, as these benefits greatly enhance business performance, the capability to innovate is a critical element for competitive improvement in volatile markets (Rajapathirana & Hui, 2018). Open innovation prioritizes the development of new products and services that may become essential in a firm's performance (Hauser, Tellis, & Griffin, 2006), especially in family firms where pressures to innovate are higher in order to compete properly with other Open innovation includes inbound and outbound practices which, when exerted, may increase the company's strength. Both are primordial factors for the company's proper functioning and survival, and may increase its position in the highly competitive markets to which family businesses belong (McCann, Leon-Guerrero, & Haley, 2001). Open innovation has been considered as an essential topic on family firms investigations (De Massis, Sharma, Chua, & Chrisman, 2012), since it brings new ideas of products and processes to the ones that already exist. Furthermore, family businesses are considered as the main engine of the economies worldwide, due to the huge contribution to the growth and stability they provide (Klein, 2000). Some other authors even suggest that such companies are the main generators of highest profits that contribute in a very high part of the world's wealth (Craig & Dirbrell, 2006). In addition, family firms enhance competitiveness, generate progress, and represent 85% of all organizations in OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries (Van den Berghe & Carchon, 2003).
There is evidence to suggest that after the generalization of the concept of open innovation, many (principally large) companies began to implement it in their processes (Chesbrough & Crowther, 2006; Schroll & Mild, 2011; Sisodiya, Johnson, & Gregoire, 2013; Chesbrough, & Brunswicker, 2014; Ollila & Ystrom, 2015; Wang, 2018). In Europe and the United States of America these practices are mostly exercised and with very good results. However, in emerging economies (such as the state of Aguascalientes, Mexico) there are still certain limitations and ignorance of open innovation practices carried out within SMEs.
Within this panorama, the Mexican context may also be significant, since Mexico is the country with the highest number of family firms (La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, & Shleifer, 1999). However, to thrive it is necessary to face big challenges; most of these companies are founded to generate jobs and heritage but strength is needed to survive.
Therefore, the main purpose of this investigation is to contribute to the literature with empirical evidence of the influence that open innovation has on business performance in family and non-family SMEs in Aguascalientes, Mexico, through a survey-based quantitative research method and using structural equation modelling to analyse the obtained data.
The present article is organized into the following sections: section 2 consists of the literature review and hypotheses related to the influence of open innovation on business performance; section 3 explains the methodology used to test the hypotheses posited in the study; section 4 discusses the obtained results; and finally, section 5 addresses the conclusions, recommendations and limitations for future investigations.
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Theoretical framework
Open innovation has gained popularity in recent years due to several studies in the literature which concur that this construct can be classified as one of the most important performance drivers for many companies (Hauser et al., 2006; Lichtenthaler, 2009; Lee, Park, Yoon, & Park, 2010; Mazzola, Bruccoleri, & Perrone, 2012; Chaston, 2013; Kuang-Peng & Chou, 2013; Caputo, Lamberti, Cammarano, & Michelino, 2016; Casprini, De Massis, Di Minin, Frattini, & Piccaluga, 2017; Park & Kwon, 2018). The concept is wideranging; it can be defined as a new set of forms that serve as a model in innovation administration (Gassmann, 2006), it uses sources of internal and external knowledge that help in the acceleration of innovation (Van de Vrande, De Jong, Vanhaverbeke, & De Rochemont, 2009), and it involves procedures related to external collaboration and cooperation to promote the growth and development of new products or technologies (Freel, 2006).
According to Inauen and Schenker-Wicki (2011), over time it has become easier for certain companies to acquire knowledge and technological skills previously shared by other companies, which are available thanks to the transformation of traditional closed innovation towards more open innovation. With this change, companies can share their strategies, helping others to replicate good practices and discard those that were defective.
Moreover, closed innovation is diametrically opposed to open innovation (Park & Kwon, 2018); which implies that companies must change their way of viewing things, from assuming that only the best people work in their organizations, to admitting that not all the best people are part of the company (Chesbrough & Crowther, 2006). In short, they must change closed ideas for more open ones.
Consequently, companies have increasingly recognized that open innovation should be practiced in order to obtain external knowledge, experience and wisdom of workers who are not part of their workforce, and to acquire functional practices that have previously been carried out by other companies (Elmquist, Fredberg, & Ollila, 2009).
Additionally, open innovation encompasses any knowledge exchange between companies with the aim of boosting performance through the transformation of processes or products (Christensen, Olesen, & Kjaer, 2005; Lichtenthaler, 2011). Continuing with this perspective, open innovation embraces collaboration to achieve performance increases; therefore, firms would be wise to align these two variables to take the greatest advantage possible and turn it into profit. It is worth mentioning that in open innovation processes, companies have a strong interaction with their environment (Cooper, 2008), allowing them to obtain more knowledge about political, economic, cultural, social, and demographic factors that may affect the business. This knowledge may help in the generation of synergies, which has led several organizations, mainly in R&D intensive large firms (Spithoven, Clarysee, & Knochaett, 2010) and high tech large companies in developed countries to migrate from their current innovation system to a more open model.
Another approach of the concept is that for the correct implementation of open innovation practices, it is necessary to trust in companies' in-house capabilities, allowing them to express their technological management strategies together with the innovation processes. There is a spectrum of companies on a scale from completely closed innovation to those with fully open innovation processes (Hung & Chou, 2013). It is essential that companies know how to integrate only the knowledge they require and share only the information that may be useful for others, without risking the position of the company.
According to Henry Chesbrough, one of the pioneers of open innovation, over the past decade most of the academic attention has moved significantly from the old ideas of closed innovation to a more open philosophy (Hung & Chou, 2013), in which new concepts and understandings are readily admitted, allowing companies to adapt external knowledge to their own processes to contribute to their internal acceleration of innovation.
For companies to remain profitable, it is necessary to understand that innovation should not be generated exclusively within organizational, on the contrary, it is essential to take advantage of external information that serves as a basis for implementing improvements. Companies must be willing to share knowledge that can also help other companies, and it is necessary to implement both inbound and...
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