Managing open innovation at a project level, a dynamic managerial capability perspective

While interest in the open innovation model is still growing, limits to its scope and application are starting to become evident. Empirical evidence has uncovered diminishing returns whereby opening the innovation process to too many actors reduces overall performance. Adopting a dynamic managerial capability perspective on open innovation, we narrow down the level of analysis to the project level to investigate the effect of three dimensions of an open innovation strategy on the type of innovation and project performance. The empirical results, based on a survey of 205 NPD projects in the manufacturing sector in the UK, suggest that the orchestration of the breadth, depth and ambidexterity dimensions of an open innovation strategy do not necessarily produce high performance for NPD projects but is contingent upon whether managers are seeking firm innovation or industry innovation.