The Role of External Knowledge in Open Innovation - A Systematic Review of Literature

The importance of knowledge and knowledge management for organizations has been widely discussed in recent years. Historically, the lion's share of organizational knowledge was generated internally, e. g., by a company's R&D department. Today, only few firms can sustain their competitiveness and innovativeness by focusing exclusively on internal knowledge sources. In order to keep track of recent trends, they are increasingly drawing in knowledge from external sources. Managing highly specific knowledge from customers, technologies, markets, etc. is a key to innovation. Its importance is widely reflected in research on, e. g. "user innovation", "collective invention" or "interactive added value". However, integrating external knowledge to foster innovation faces companies with a number of challenges. Open innovation as paradigm shift in innovation management and strategic approach to include the outside world into internal innovation processes is widely regarded as a promising approach in current research. The present article examines the role of external knowledge in the field of open innovation. By carrying out a systematic literature review the author develops eight categories with 19 subcategories of potential external knowledge sources. A systematization of the identified sources investigates a variety of assets and drawbacks that can be associated with the integration of such knowledge. Thereby, the article shows that (a) the current research on open innovation is already highly concerned about the role of external knowledge, but (b) mainly focuses on just a few categories/subcategories and (c) tends to neglect many positive and/or negative influences on creativity and innovativeness. The study illustrates that selecting external sources of knowledge is one of the main challenges of open innovation. Therefore, the author provides a set of strategic recommendations: Firms must concentrate on the most valuable sources, limit their number, provide the necessary means to acquire that knowledge and accurately measure if such additional external knowledge does not over-expand the complexity of innovation processes.