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Combining Open and Closed Forms of Innovation: An Investigation of Emerging Tensions and Management Approaches

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Nordic Contributions in IS Research (SCIS 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 326))

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Abstract

It is increasingly common for firms to engage in both external and internal crowdsourcing to access ideas and solutions coming from external customers and internal employees. These IT platforms can be seen as forms of open and closed innovation search, where the first aims to perform distant search beyond the organizational boundaries, while the second is used to conduct local search within the firm. Nevertheless, limited attention has been placed on investigating which tensions emerge when firms combine these conflicting innovation search strategies and related management approaches to address them. By drawing on a qualitative, inductive case study of a large organization headquartered in France, our study identifies and discusses three key paradoxes emerging from pursuing both innovation forms: (1) paradox of identity; (2) paradox of organizing the innovation process; and (3) paradox of boundary management. Moreover, we discuss different management approaches implemented by managers to address the identified paradoxes.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université Savoie-Mont-Blanc, 27 Rue Marcoz, 73000, Chambéry, France

    Emilie Ruiz

  2. Aarhus University, Fuglesans Alle 4, 8000, Aarhus, Denmark

    Michela Beretta

Authors
  1. Emilie Ruiz
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  2. Michela Beretta
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Correspondence to Michela Beretta .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Sune Dueholm Müller

  2. Department of Political Science, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Jeppe Agger Nielsen

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Ruiz, E., Beretta, M. (2018). Combining Open and Closed Forms of Innovation: An Investigation of Emerging Tensions and Management Approaches. In: Müller, S., Nielsen, J. (eds) Nordic Contributions in IS Research. SCIS 2018. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 326. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96367-9_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96367-9_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-96366-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-96367-9

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