Open innovation in SMEs: a study of the Swedish bio-pharmaceutical industry
Björn Remneland Wikhamn, Wajda Wikhamn, Alexander Styhre · Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship · 2016
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how small and middle-sized enterprises (SMEs) utilize open innovation in practice. Open innovation has become a well-used rhetorical concept among key bio-pharmaceutical spokespersons, suggesting that it would help to renew the stagnated industry. We report a survey (N = 104) on Swedish SMEs in the bio-pharmaceutical industry, where we shed light on how widespread the knowledge and practical uses of open innovation activities actually are. The findings not only show that very few respondents are aware of the open innovation concept, but also that open innovation-related activities are to a large extent integrated within their ordinary innovation practices. The study also suggests that firms that are engaged in open innovation activities tend to be more innovation-productive than those who do not. Based on these findings, we propose that there is a casual relation between open innovation and entrepreneurial growth, in which open innovation activities can act as accelerators for entrepreneurial growth. At the same time, much ‘openness’ is still performed on informal and ad-hoc basis by SMEs in the industry.