Open Innovation in Geographically bounded Organizational Fields: Recent developments in the pharmaceutical industry

Abstract

Many companies have changed their strategy from closed to open innovation. Empirical investigations of open innovation reveal that an ideal-typical model rarely occurs in reality. The present study identifies various open innovation approaches and analyzes regional open innovation processes to contribute to the development of a theoretically based and empirically grounded analytic concept of the linkage between regional economies and corporate regional open innovation strategies. Therefore, we focus on proximity in the open innovation process, especially the cultural underpinning of interorganizational relationships. Open innovation researchhas often neglected these two aspects. A more network-based perspective on open innovation provides a clearer and more differentiated analytic framework for understanding relationships among economic, political, and scientific actors along the “wholeinnovation chain.” To expand the regional open innovation analytical framework, we investigate open innovation processes in the Basel region life sciences industry, where two large pharmaceutical companies have shaped the region and developed different open innovation strategies.We found that companies use different open innovation strategies related to spatial scales reflecting their awareness of proximity among actors and the socio-cultural underpinning of their interactions. The cultural underpinning seems to provide an important cornerstone of success in the partner interaction. Keywords - Open Innovation, Culture, Organizational fields. Cluster, Life sciences