Catalysts and Barriers of Open Innovation for SMEs in Transition Economy

Most open innovation studies have focused on different natures of innovation and innovation processes that generally take place in large enterprises. Whereas, there is no evidence that open innovation is more inherent to large enterprises rather than to SME-s. On the contrary, smaller enterprises could be more flexible to explore new business ideas. The present qualitative study of open innovation focuses on open innovation impact and success factors for SME-s. The aim of this research is to create qualitative basis to following quantitative research within SME-s and find answers to the research questions: how to do encourage the open innovation for smaller enterprises? What could be the main implicating factors to pay attention? The research has been provided on the basis of questionnaires and following expert interviews. Three countries were selected. Estonia represents a transition country from efficiency-driven to innovation-driven economy. Sweden is an innovation leader country from similar Northern European cultural background to Estonia. United Kingdom represents a large industrialized country with innovation-driven economy in Western Europe. Experts were selected from industry (SME representatives), academy and business consultants from each of the three countries. The questionnaire was constructed for balanced evaluation of internal and external factors that have impact to open innovation process. Factors were presented from literature study and interviewees had freedom to add factors that were important by their opinion but were missed out from proposed questions. The interviews were conducted face-to-face or by phone conference. The interviewees were asked to indicate five most important factors of open innovation and combine them with forces that have biggest impact to their reveal evidence. Finally interviewees were asked to rank up to ten supportive and prohibitive forces. Several open innovation success factors have dual characteristic simultaneously prohibitive and supportive. The main factors that influence the process of open innovation are the commercialisation of open innovation, the link between the innovation process and the market, and the SME's senior management's motivation and ability to learn. Most experts identified personal qualities of the open innovation leader as a critical factor to a successful open innovation process, where the success will be measured by commercialisation of open innovation results. The main differences between transition and innovation-driven economies were identified in the field of intellectual property commercialisation. There is also contradiction between "Experience of utilization of external knowledge" and "Involvement or employees to innovation processes" that is evaluated high in transition economy and lower in innovation-driven economies. In the future research these questions will need to be clarified to determine the more important.. Experts did not have common view about importance of the intellectual property commercialization capability for open innovation.