Closing Open Innovation
An article by Henry Chesbrough and several other scholars to appear in Strategic Management Review notes that the literature on open innovation has documented how companies expand their boundaries to become more open, leaving out how boundaries narrow as open innovation relationships end—the closing of open innovation. They explain how open innovation creates new relationships on multiple levels—among firms, individuals, and technologies. Drawing on open innovation and alliance literature, they discuss how the closing of open innovation entails the dissolution of this web of multiplex relationships. They explain how the closing decision is not simply mirroring the initial decision to open up innovation, partly because of evolving interdependencies at multiple levels (firms, individuals, and technologies).