To address climate change, firms are increasingly forming sustainability alliances. Pursuing sustainability via such alliances is challenging as it means working with multifaceted and not necessarily compatible goals. Moreover, it often requires collaboration among heterogeneous partners outside traditional industrial contexts as well as dealing with wicked problems. This article presents a multiple-case

Highly regulated industries such as healthcare can reap significant benefits from new digital technologies. However, due to institutional constraints, adopting such technologies is a slow and difficult process. Technology providers need to legitimize their underlying technologies to the customers and other stakeholders in the field. Drawing on multiple case studies in the healthcare industry, this

This study explores the dynamics between the extremes of open innovation (OI)—from inclusive co-creation to exclusive vertical integration (VI). This analysis addresses the management issues of how Tesla and Porsche manage value capture and value distribution in the e-mobility industry through their contrasting approaches and strategic shifts between OI and VI. It develops a novel theoretical model

Artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance, enable, or replace traditional open innovation (OI) practices, changing the scope and efficiency of both outside-in and inside-out OI. This article provides a comprehensive framework to analyze AI’s influence on OI, supported by illustrative examples, and outlines the key implications for organizations and researchers. The co-evolutionary relationship between

Open Innovation (OI) has become a key part of corporate strategy, and many firms have adopted dedicated organizational functions to leverage OI. However, current literature lacks insights into how firms deploy such functions and what they do. To address this issue, this article provides insights from interviews with senior managers in dedicated OI functions in 20 different firms. The findings reveal

Disruptions often call for rapid innovation at scale. Open innovation (OI) is critical in such contexts because it allows organizations to access resources beyond the firm’s boundaries. Yet, many OI projects fail, posing significant risks during disruptions. This article examines 12 ventilator development projects during the COVID-19 pandemic, of which only seven succeeded. Fifty-five interviews were

SummaryI have been invited to discuss the prospects for Open Innovation (OI) as part of this special issue of the California Management Review. To organize my discussion, I will examine three phases of the evolution of this concept: the antecedents of OI, some of the main findings from OI (including both successes and failures), and prospects for the future of OI.

SummaryPublic organizations are embracing open innovation (OI) to better serve their societal mission. This study presents a “Strategy Perimeter Framework,” developed and validated at the European Space Agency, to integrate OI into their strategy development. The framework helps manage stakeholder engagement within the strategy perimeter, thereby fostering collaborative innovation. It enables the alignment

SummarySince the 1970s, telecommuting has generated significant interest among academics and practitioners alike. However, the topic of flexible working arrangements has become more relevant lately, particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As digital technologies continuously advance, immersive workplaces facilitated by technologies such as virtual reality (VR) become more appealing. This article

The rise of digital technologies and open innovation has revolutionized innovation practices, creating new opportunities for moving born-physical open innovation settings to metaverse-like virtual environments. This study explores a virtual corporate-startup collaboration program in the energy industry to understand how digital feature usage facilitates trusted relationships and enables successful

Since their beginnings, virtual worlds have experienced two major media hypes in their short lifetime—the first in 2003 after the launch of Second Life and the second in 2021, with Mark Zuckerberg announcing his strategy for the Metaverse. Most academic research on virtual worlds emerged between these two peaks of interest. This article delves into the enduring relevance of such research, contrasting

Legacy companies are firms that rely on stable business models, established internal processes, and familiar technologies. Existing research acknowledges that legacy companies need to explore new technologies, but scholars largely neglect to analyze how this process unfolds. This knowledge gap is particularly relevant when disruptive technological paradigms are about to modify the business arena, as

This study presents a metaverse flywheel model providing insights into how the emerging layered modular architecture of the metaverse can enable new types of value-creation opportunities for organizations. Based on interviews with early metaverse adopters and innovators, this article identifies three key metaverse affordances: prospection of future conditions, persistence of editable and evolving virtual

The metaverse, although yet to be fully realized, offers a compelling vision: a scalable and interoperable ecosystem of virtual worlds that can be simultaneously accessed by multiple users using continuous, user-generated, and embodied identities (i.e., avatars). Since the metaverse will likely achieve widespread user adoption once innovators and early adopters recognize its values, it must evolve

Metaverse architects face challenges akin to urban planners developing a new city: multiple stakeholders must coordinate on technical standards for interoperability and establish social consensus around specific choices. The article presents an analogy between the metaverse and the Las Vegas Strip in the unincorporated town of Paradise, NV, which arose in the mid-twentieth century as a focal destination

This article explores the effects of open innovation on innovation performance in military bureaucracies. While the understanding of how bureaucratic organizations can benefit from open innovation is still limited, this study discovered that open innovation can have a negative effect on innovation performance. However, leveraging an innovative culture can lead to improved innovation performance in

Digital platforms are often characterized as enablers of new ecosystems. However, platforms are sometimes introduced into pre-existing ecosystems, where a platform’s ability to harmonize with the ecosystem is critical for its success. This article draws on the case of digital healthcare platforms and introduces the concept of platform grafting, which denotes the process of integrating a new platform

This article explores Nordic countries’ and companies’ sustainability practices. It explores how nations like Denmark, Finland, and Sweden and companies such as Novo Nordisk and Ørsted achieve top sustainability rankings through their distinctive approach to stakeholder cooperation. It discusses the historical and cultural context that has shaped the Nordic approach, emphasizing the importance of long-term

Managing acquired subsidiaries can be daunting. Parent and affiliate executives strive to co-create value, but fixed mindsets around subsidiary autonomy can result in diverging interests and outcomes. Through a longitudinal study of Audi’s post-acquisition integration of supercar manufacturer Lamborghini, this article provides guidance on how to manage the level of acquired subsidiary autonomy as a

Several firms worldwide that attempted to penetrate the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) with digital service innovations have encountered disappointing returns. This article explores what capabilities firms should develop and how they should nourish them for value creation at the BOP. Using the multiple-case method, this study inductively derives persuasion, co-creation, adaptation, and self-sustainability

Two organizations that focus on tech-based health innovation have partnered to improve the mental health of young adults. In this “tech for good” project, Hopelab and Grit Digital Health worked together to create an app using human-centered product design. With the core needs of users at the forefront, the team developed an app both with and for college students to combat loneliness, a prevalent issue

This article analyzes the connection between gamification and business success, focusing on customer retention, new customer acquisition, and transforming user perceptions. Based on a qualitative comparative analysis of 40 high-profile gamification projects, it shows that a combination of three key features—virtualization, social comparison, and tangible rewards—explain the various pathways to success

Product innovation increasingly involves both human designers (engineers, developers, lead users, creative geniuses, and other innovators) and machine designers (algorithmically organized software ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are engaged in a harsh battle for market dominance. This article examines the emergence of a dominant design in terms of technology, service, and business ...

In the context of platforms, an open architecture is instrumental in enabling innovation by complementors. But as complementors increasingly deplete the innovation opportunities that the platform a...

Orchestrating an ecosystem requires coordination to create value, but prior research has tended to emphasize centralized ecosystem control over solutions involving distributed governance. By studyi...

SummaryCorporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is often criticized for being overly broad and abstract, if not cynical and deceitful. This leaves many stakeholders frustrated or disengaged, including...

The ability to commercialize products based on distributed innovation is one of the critical challenges of large-scale open innovation. While this issue has been largely investigated in relation to...

Open innovation rests on the idea that not all the smart people work only for you, and managing human interaction across organizational boundaries is therefore central to open innovation. This arti...

Although corporate venture capital (CVC) has been studied as part of open innovation (OI), assumptions about knowledge flows crossing organizational boundaries between “the inside” and “the outside...

This article presents a strategic decision-making tool to assist corporate management in analyzing the trajectory of their business model portfolio. The tool provides a robust means of assessing th...

Digital technologies have become omnipresent in our professional and personal lives. While they provide numerous opportunities, they also cause tensions, many of which are paradoxical. They confron...

Many companies are implementing transparency initiatives to improve environmental and social impacts throughout their supply chains. Meaningful change, however, is elusive, and transparency efforts...

Corporate transparency is an aspirational ideal that is very difficult to achieve because organizations can never be completely transparent. As a result, effective management of transparency requir...

Calibrating environmental impacts and dependencies in financial metrics, known as natural capital accounting (natural capital valuations; assessments), is critical for transparency and effective de...

Two strategic factors of any business are customer interaction (how close you are to your customers) and customer participation (how involved customers are in producing the offering). In recent yea...

Materiality assessments play an important role in helping firms to select the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics to include in their sustainability report. This article presents the...

Research on prosocial entrepreneurship so far has focused either on ex-ante motives to create prosocial enterprises or on ex-post strategies to protect mission orientation. Surprisingly little is k...

Multisided platforms are new organizing forms that can boost innovation in the healthcare sector by empowering patients as innovators and facilitating the commercialization of innovations by and fo...

Multi-sided platforms (MSPs) are becoming increasingly important in contemporary economies. This special issue of California Management Review aims to stimulate collective discussion among research...

Many of the most successful firms—such as Alibaba, Google, and Uber—operate platforms. Electric vehicles (EVs) are platform goods as well because value comes from the vehicle plus complementary pro...

In the traditional offline context, the mental health industry suffers from poor local demand and a lack of trustworthy supply. Emerging digital platforms can solve this problem to a large extent b...

During the last decade, MedTech companies started to invest in building digital healthcare platforms to maintain their competitiveness in the Digital Economy. However, launching a new digital platf...

Digital platforms have disrupted many sectors but have not yet visibly transformed highly regulated industries. This study of Big Tech entry in healthcare and education explores how platforms have ...

SummaryConsiderable resources are invested in producing sustainability reports, yet few organizations reap the transparency benefits they promise. This article explores the way ten leading global f...

SummaryEcosystems are the result of a delicate balance between centripetal forces that push economic activities toward integration, and centrifugal forces that pull economic activities out onto the...

As industry boundaries dissolve and digitalization grows apace, ecosystems are becoming increasingly important. Yet for all the excitement and Big-Tech envy, there is little guidance for how to create ecosystems. How should a firm best engage? Should it become a partner to someone else’s ecosystem, or build its own? Should it focus on a broad range of digitally connected services, or narrow down? How

Countless enterprise blockchains fail to live up to high expectations, often because the supporting governance structures are insufficiently established or have become stagnant. Based on interviews with 153 blockchain executives and an analysis of publicly documented use cases, this article offers a guide for blockchain scholars and practitioners. Its framework highlights the coordination and control

Climate change has risen to board level on the corporate agenda. Under pressure from institutional investors, companies are reformulating their strategies for a low-carbon world. A novel aspect of the emerging corporate response is that executive compensation is being linked to climate performance. This article examines the different ways that climate-linked incentive pay is used at European and U

How can companies develop and maintain global supply chain networks that are robust—that is, capable of maintaining an uninterrupted flow of goods and materials—when confronted with a geographically spreading disruption that could cause the shutdown of multiple suppliers at once? To answer this question, this article combines an empirical analysis of supply chain networks of three global automotive

Supply-chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are of unparalleled magnitude because of a confluence of circumstances: a sudden rise in demand for some products, unforeseen shifts in demand points, supply shortages, a logistical crisis, and an unprecedentedly quick recovery in major economies. This article maps the changes that will occur in supply-chain planning and management in a post-COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic shocked the global economy, laying bare the coordination challenges and vulnerabilities of global value chains (GVCs) across sectors. Governments, consumers, and firms alike have called for greater GVC resilience to ensure critical products are delivered to the right place, at the right time, and in the right condition. This article investigates whether GVC reconfiguration through

While COVID-19 has caused significant short-term disruptions in global value chains (GVCs), in the longer run, the pandemic will not be the primary catalyst in GVC evolution. As GVCs recover from the initial shock, managers will make GVC restructuring decisions guided by long-term strategic considerations. This article describes barriers that lead firm managers may encounter when rethinking location/control

This article examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on resilience. Resilience is not a one-dimensional concept but has different meanings at the levels of the firm (operational efficiency), the global value chain (appropriate governance), and the nation-state (national security). It illustrates resilience dynamics through lessons from case studies of four medical supply products—rubber gloves

The pandemic crisis caused a severe shock to global value chains and led to supply shortages for complex medical goods such as respiratory ventilators. What followed were calls to reshore production for security, and the loss of efficiencies from foreign global value chain (GVC) operations for the multinational enterprise. This article merges internalization and GVC theory to demonstrate a dynamic

For manufacturers, remaining competitive depends on their ability to digitalize their business models (i.e., offer digital and digitally enhanced products and services). To achieve this, they must engage with new digital partners and help their existing suppliers, partners, and other stakeholders to digitalize. Orchestrating this growing ecosystem is challenging. Manufacturers struggle with this endeavor

The COVID-19 crisis has underlined the need for accelerated innovation to rapidly help business solve social problems. These problems require access to capabilities and knowledge that no single organization or existing supply chain possesses. Drawing on the experience of the open innovation and rapid-scale-up achieved by the VentilatorChallengeUK to address a shortage of ventilators required by patients

This article identifies barriers that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) encounter when they openly innovate, according to the open innovation (OI) mode used (inbound, outbound, coupled). A qualitative analysis—involving seven case studies of SMEs active in digital (high-tech) or social economy (low-tech) sectors—reveals that they face more internal than external OI barriers. Overall, the nature