17718: Open Innovation Partnership Dynamics and Outcomes Under Opportunistic Behavior (session 26223)

Opportunistic behavior (OB) is a well-known peril in open innovation (OI) partnerships, and its occurrence—or sometimes mere suspicion thereof—may lead to partnership termination or have other undesired outcomes for the companies involved, especially about creating and capturing value from an innovation and intellectual property rights perspective. While it is important to understand whether suspecting OB (falsely suspected at times) and facing actual OB in OI partnerships differ in terms of partnership outcomes, current research does not sufficiently distinguish between the two. Additionally, literature on partnership outcomes has focused more on a pecuniary perspective, and less on detrimental and non-pecuniary outcomes. Furthermore, partnership dynamics, defined here as the events leading to termination or continuation of a partnership, as well as potential mechanisms to alleviate OB, have received little attention in previous OI literature. We narrow these research gaps by investigating what roles suspected and actual OB play in how OI partnerships dynamics and their outcomes unfold. We do so by adopting a qualitative approach and identifying configurations of suspected/unsuspected and actual opportunistic/non-opportunistic behaviors (shaping a two-by-two matrix) for 28 OI partnerships. We further map pecuniary and non-pecuniary outcomes and partnership dynamics for stakeholders involved in the partnerships to these settings. Findings reveal that actual OB has negative consequences for ecosystem actors indirectly involved in the partnerships, in additional to those for individuals directly involved. To counter actual OB, organizations take legal actions but also opt for other types of mechanisms. False suspicions of OB may lead to partnership termination; this can be circumvented by increasing transparency and applying clarification mechanisms. Companies that face actual OB from OI partners tend to change their strategies; the same is true for companies that are falsely accused of behaving opportunistically, and for companies that suspect OB in hindsight.

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