Marketing

Moderation

Microeconomics

Social psychology

Economics

Computer science

Business

Economic geography

Psychology

Politics

Open innovation

Political science

Artificial intelligence

Industrial organization

Perspective (graphical)

Investment (military)

Industrial and Corporate Change

Although open innovation has become increasingly established in the management literature, comprehensive theoretical explanations of what drives firms to be open are sparse. Taking the perspective of the behavioral theory of the firm, we conceive of open innovation as a form of nonlocal search, arguing that firms will turn to open innovation when substantially under- or over-performing relative to their aspirations. We further enquire how this relationship is moderated by firm-specific innovation-related resources: human capital, research and development investment, and patents. Employing a representative survey of UK firms, we find some evidence of moderation, allowing us to present explanations of search through open innovation and contribute to the behavioral theory of the firm itself.

Toward an aspiration-level theory of open innovation