A new Danish research unit will conduct research on open innovation at the Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics. The research unit, entitled Open Innovation Search has been awarded 8 million Danish kroner by the Danish Council for Independent Research | Social Sciences. The research unit is funded over the period 2010-2014.

The point of departure for the unit is that an increasing number of firms have moved away from relying on internal research and development as the central mechanism in the search for innovations, shifting towards more open and distributed models of innovation. Such activities call forth a new range of related practices to engage external parties in firm-level innovation efforts, making firms’ search processes more externally and collaboratively oriented. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that firms in their innovative activities tend to use a number of different internal and external sources of innovation such as suppliers, universities, customers and other users as inputs to their product and process innovations. However, while theory and practice suggest clear benefits from having access to a variety of knowledge inputs, using such inputs may also be costly. Bringing in external knowledge typically requires both large asset specific investments in personal and organizational networks and exposes the firm’s knowledge to unplanned disclosures. The central aim is therefore to examine gains as well as costs and to identify important trade-offs that emerge when firms embark on an open innovation strategy. Accordingly, the research unit seeks to develop an understanding of how costs and benefits relate to firm-external search strategies and how such strategies, in turn, influence organizational performance.

The unit is lead by professor Keld Laursen and consists primarily of a group of younger, talented researchers based at CBS. In addition to the CBS group, a number of foreign researchers are involved as well; among other places from London Business School, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, University of Zürich and Imperial College London.