The Contingent Effect of Absorptive Capacity on Open Innovation Performance
Topics: Future of Work Infrastructure Internet of Things
Karim R. Lakhani
Seminars and Conferences
Technology, Innovation, and Learning (TIL)
• Tuck Campus • Hanover, NH • USA
March 25, 2011
Title: The Contingent Effect of Absorptive Capacity on Open Innovation Performance
(co-author Andrew King)
Abstract:
We investigate the impact of absorptive capacity on performance of nine “wiki-like” programming contests consisting of over 4.7 million lines of code. We distinguish and measure the effect of four separate mechanisms for absorptive capacity: experience in invention or adoption on the capacity of an individual to invent or adopt. We further explore how these relationships are influenced by a change in the technological approach (or “path”) to the overall design. Our evidence both confirms the theory of absorptive capacity and suggests refinements to it. We find a powerful cross-fertilization effect of adoption experience on invention capacity. We also find that absorptive capacity from different sources is differently effected by a change in technological approach. In fact, the advantage of absorptive capacity can even be reversed when individuals switch technical paths: prior accumulated experience actually harms innovation capacity.
Karim R. Lakhani is an assistant professor in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at the Harvard Business School. He specializes in the management of technological innovation and product development in firms and communities. His research is on distributed innovation systems and the movement of innovative activity to the edges of organizations and into communities. He has extensively studied the emergence of open source software communities and their unique innovation and product development strategies. He has also investigated how critical knowledge from outside of the organization can be found and put to use inside for innovation in the biotechnology, life sciences and industrial chemicals industries. He is co-editor of Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software (MIT Press, 2005) and co-founder of the MIT-based Open Source research community and web portal.
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