Who and where in open innovation: Partners to be involved along the innovation funnel

This paper, while operationalizing Open Innovation choices in terms of whowhere question (i.e. in terms of number/types of partners and number/types of phases), aims at answering two research questions: 1) in which (where) phases of the innovation funnel does the collaboration take place with the different typologies of partners? 2) What are the drivers that explain the position of the different partners along the innovation funnel? In order to answer the above research questions, an international survey involving 389 firms was carried out in 2012 in Finland, Italy and Sweden. The uncertainty of the questionnaire answers, which are measured by Likert scales, suggests the possibility to employ a fuzzy approach for data analysis. Although preliminary, results are interesting. First, it emerges that, differently from vertical and lateral partners, horizontal partners are not involved in the first phases of the innovation funnel, probably because of problems connected with the appropriability of innovation. Second, vertical partners are involved all along the innovation funnel, but the drivers that underpin collaboration with them evolve while moving from the beginning to the end of the innovation process. Third, the collaboration with vertical and lateral partners at the beginning of the innovation funnel, although driven by the access to advanced technologies and the development of innovative products, does not aim at expanding the company???s competence base and stimulating creativity and idea generation capacity. Fourth, risk sharing/reduction is not a driver in the generation phase with any typology of partner.