Overcoming open-innovation barriers when developing a radical new technology for a novel food product

Abstract

Literature Open innovation (OI) is an activity that enables knowledge to be transferred across traditional company boundaries. Although sharing knowledge is not something new, the broad scope of collaborations, and the implementation of external knowledge throughout the entire innovation process make open innovation something unique. The popularity of OI is highly influenced by rapid global developments in business environments, which make a collaborative form of innovation more attractive. Benefits include a faster recognition of new ideas, sharing costs and investments, generating extra income by selling intellectual property, and improved innovation results. It is of vital importance to keep improving products and processes when operating in the food and beverage industry. Next to that, the food and beverage industry is under an increasing amount of pressure from consumers and retailers, who demand a higher innovation pace in an environment where time and money are scarce. It is, however, difficult for firms to keep up with the rate and complexity of newly introduced innovations when they operate on their own. It is therefore considered that a focus on OI is needed. Searching outside a company’s boundaries for knowledge assists in increasing a company’s innovation practices. Theoretical framework As with all types of innovation, an OI process faces challenges and barriers that need to be recognized and overcome during the OI development process. Interestingly, an overlap between OI barriers and regular innovation barriers was found, as aspects of ‘regular innovation’ barriers can be recognized in the reviewed OI barriers. However, the reviewed literature on OI does not specifically mention this similarity with regular innovation barriers, and the found OI models and frameworks limit their scope to arranging and sustaining partnerships, leaving other (open) innovation barriers untouched. Thus, to learn more about the faced barriers and used solutions in an OI process, initiated for developing and implementing a novel technology in the Dutch food and beverage industry, an answer to the following questions is looked for: 1. What does the process of open innovation of novel technologies in the food and beverage industry look like? What were the different phases of the NPD process? 2. Are there substantial similarities between barriers in an open innovation food project and a regular NPD project? How do the similarities in a open innovation food project differ from barriers in a general NPD project? 3. How have any barriers of the focal project been overcome, and what barriers have not been overcome? Method In order to find answers to the research questions, an in-depth case study research is conducted in the Dutch food and beverage industry. The present case was studied during a three-month period and is based on a literature study, 12 interviews, and three follow up emails. All interviews have been audio-recorded, transcribed, and coded following the grounded theory method. Results The results showed the development process consisted of an initial development part, and a second part in which a back-up plan needed to be initiated. Therefore the process of the focal case could be divided in two parts. For each part the main barriers and solutions are divided in core categories: Part 1: Everything that happened ‘before the back-up plan initiation’: - ‘Internal preparation of open innovation’, - ‘Sharing & communicating’, - ‘Balance difficulties & common interests’, and - ‘Make use of useful knowledge sources’ Part 2: Everything that happened ‘after the back-up plan initiation’: - Managing open innovation’, - ‘Open up innovation process’, - ‘Reaching common understanding’, and - ‘Facing challenges’ The results showed multiple barriers occur during internal processes and partnering processes. Conclusions When analyzing the results it was found that the focal OI process contained innovation phases that can also be found during regular innovation. When comparing the findings of the present study with literature, it was concluded that a large overlap existed between barriers of a regular innovation process and barriers of an OI process. No overlap was found for partnering barriers, which indicates these barriers are unique for OI. Next to that, during the focal project both barriers for internal processes, and partnering barriers were difficult to find solutions for during the OI process. These findings indicate that the scope of current literature on OI phases is too narrow, and should be extended. Also the findings verify the partnering barriers, which are indicated throughout literature.