Open innovation and information technology use: Towards an operational alignment view

Abstract A centralised open innovation search approach refers to setting up a dedicated and specialised sourcing unit to search external sources for knowledge, while a decentralised open innovation search approach refers to empowering employees in various functional units to search external sources for knowledge during their routine research and development work. This research examines the operational alignment of the open innovation search approach with information technology (IT) use given that open innovation search can be significantly enhanced by IT. We theorise that organisations that have a high extent of employing a centralised (decentralised) open innovation approach and a high IT use intensity for external (internal) information flows are likely to have a high extent of exploratory (exploitative) innovation. We further posit that harnessing exploratory and exploitative innovation can lead to organisational innovation performance. This theory was validated through a field survey involving 186 organisations. The findings from this study advance the IT and open innovation literature by gaining an understanding of the interplay among different open innovation search approaches and IT use, and the resulting variances in innovation performance in terms of new product sales and patents.