We investigate how the interplay between academic researchers’ and innovators’ entrepreneurial intentions and open innovation activities fosters their market commercialization activities. We qualitatively analyse five case studies of European research consortia to propose potential theoretical mechanisms that limit or abet market commercialization activities. Our results show that inbound and coupled open innovation activities compensate for lower entrepreneurial intentions among scientists. However, establishing partnerships remains challenging, particularly in pre-prototyping phases. Noticeably, our findings point towards prosocial motivation as an enabler to make innovation outcomes more publicly available.