Improving Innovation Performance by Means of Open Innovation: The Role of Entrepreneurial Orientation and Information Technology Capability

Prior studies indicate that firms yield varying results while adapting to open innovation (OI). They suggest an optimum OI level using the concepts of external search breadth and depth, whose antecedents' relationships with innovation performance (IP) have been inadequately examined. This study explores how information technology capability (ITC) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) influence a firm's external search strategies and impact its IP. A survey of listed German firms (n=146) found no support for a curvilinear relationship between open external search strategies and IP. Moreover, the assumption that ITC positively affects the relationship between external search strategy openness and IP was unsupported, proposing a negative moderating impact of ITC. The study observes that EO has differential moderating and direct effects on external search strategy effectiveness and its collective impact on IP.