Open Service Innovation and the Firm’s Search for External Knowledge

The concept of open innovation captures the increasing propensity of firms to search for, absorb and utilize external knowledge and to share, exchange or trade internally-generated knowledge. Insofar this phenomenon has largely been studied from the viewpoint of manufacturing businesses while services have received much less attention despite the predominant role they play in advanced economies. In this paper we investigate whether and how open service innovation differs from open innovation in manufacturing. We analyze a unique dataset generated through an original survey of open innovation practices amongst UK firms. We find that services are more active seekers of external knowledge than manufacturers and that the provision of a complex output which integrate a service component is associated with openness, and this holds true not only for services but for all businesses. In addition, and against expectations, we find that universities and the public research base are relatively more important than cus...