Title: Complementarity vs. compatibility: what really matters for partner selection in open innovation?

Authors: Nisit Manotungvorapun; Nathasit Gerdsri

Addresses: College of Management, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand ' College of Management, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract: Open innovation (OI) is one of attractive concepts in innovation management literature. Many firms have been investing their resources and efforts into activities and development programs along with the OI concept to improve their innovation performance. The fundamental of OI concept relies on making the best usage of innovation through either integrating external complementary resources with internal ones or commercialising unused internal technologies to the market or both. Hence, the value creation and value capture in OI involve partnering firms with the perfect blend of complement traits and compatible ones. Given multiple choices of alliances in a technology market, managers are however vulnerable to a risk of selecting inappropriate partners especially external ones. The consequences possibly lead to unsmooth coordinations and failures in the OI activities and projects. Drawing on OI literature, this article presents the understanding of complementarity and compatibility dimensions and discusses the roles of managers in determining the appropriateness of external partners.

Keywords: open innovation; partner selection; complementarity; compatibility; value creation; value capture; external partners; managerial role.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTIS.2016.082063

International Journal of Transitions and Innovation Systems, 2016 Vol.5 No.2, pp.122 - 139

Received: 01 Feb 2016
Accepted: 10 Jul 2016
Published online: 06 Feb 2017 *

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