Open Innovation is a proven approach for enhancing company performance and resilience so why does it often stall? New research has shown that lasting openness grows from shared meaning — a collective sense of purpose that makes innovation a natural expression of organizational life.

This work builds on research by Letizia Mortara and her colleagues (2009) that highlighted the cultural foundations of Open Innovation, showing that its success depends on how openness is encouraged, accepted, and gradually integrated into everyday work.

Further research, across global industrial and manufacturing firms, by Alessandro Caterina, together with Letizia and Josip Kotlar, examined how this culture can take hold and be sustained over time.   

Their research traced the conditions that allow openness to become part of how organizations think and operate. It revealed the importance of internal alignment around what openness is meant to achieve.

Alessandro comments; “Our research examined how companies institutionalise innovation and it reveals that openess is sustained not by systems but through micro-level acts of interpretation. – it is negotiated practice.”

Here he discusses the findings and the learning points for practitioners.

Open Innovation implementation as a contested space

Open innovation enables firms to support internal innovation, by leveraging external knowledge and resources while creating new opportunities to commercialize their own ideas. Although conceptually straightforward, it encompasses a wide range of strategies — from collaborating with startups or universities to developing new ways to commercialize internal IP. Many firms have experimented with these approaches, building networks of external partners as a core part of their innovation strategy.

Yet, when innovation leaders reflect on their journeys, the narrative is rarely linear — often diverging from the original Open Innovation model.

Our research, which examined how companies institutionalised innovation, revealed that Open Innovation has gone through cycles of momentum and decline. It spread rapidly in some contexts, only to stall in others. While it has sometimes captured executive attention, that interest rarely translated into lasting organisational change. Some firms embraced comprehensive strategies, others selective ones. Most shifted between these states over time — often without understanding why.

The reason may be simple but rarely acknowledged: Open Innovation implementation is a contested space.

Internal resistance

Inside organizations, openness is not simply implemented. It is interpreted, negotiated, and sometimes quietly resisted — not through open opposition, but through small, cumulative acts of framing and reframing. Its fate depends less on structure than on meaning, less on the tools deployed than on the identities and logics it encounters.

As the Open Innovation lead of a pioneering global food company commented:

“Open Innovation is another way of doing business, not another way of doing the R&D,”

Our research shows that openness is sustained not by systems, but by micro-level acts of translation and legitimacy work. These small interpretive efforts — often invisible and distributed — form the microfoundations that give openness its real stability.

Contest over what openness means

When companies struggle with Open Innovation, they often search for operational explanations: misaligned processes, slow governance, lack of incentives. But the most persistent obstacle is not operational — it is interpretive.

When we asked people across organizations what “Open Innovation” meant, we heard many answers. Across the same company, different teams sometimes described openness in strikingly different ways:

• Exploration and learning – R&D teams talked about OI as a way to reach ideas they cannot generate internally.
• Exposure – Legal and procurement units worried about risk, IP control, and unclear accountability.
• Complexity – Business and operations managers saw it as extra work where there were already tight delivery targets.
• Coordination – Corporate functions framed it as something that needs structure, governance, and measurable outcomes.

Each view was legitimate within its own logic yet collectively they failed to align.

Open Innovation becomes fragile when every part of the organization believes it understands openness, while in reality each understands it differently. Teams talk past one another. Sponsorship looks aligned on the surface but diverges in practice. What appears to be momentum is often a collection of parallel but disconnected understandings.

This interpretive contest did not necessarily appear dramatic. It could play out in meetings, budget discussions, and informal conversations. However, its impact seemed profound.

Navigating different definitions of Open Innovation

Openness moved slowly not because people resisted it, but because they navigated different definitions of what it was meant to achieve.

Legal manager in large industrial firm warns:

“…. without clear policies, Open Innovation can be mistaken for free innovation, risking IP exposure.”

Engineers saw it differently:

“OI feels like an add-on that does not integrate with our processes.”

Procurement added:

“We start with contracts where all IP belongs to us — but that does not work with startups.”

Each function supported openness, but attached a different meaning to it.

In the words of one of our interviewees:

“Openness fails not from opposition, but from a misalignment of meaning.”

Culture is not the backdrop — it is the arena

When organizations talked about culture, they often invoked broad values: curiosity, collaboration, empowerment. But the culture that shaped Open Innovation was not abstract but lived in subcultures — engineering teams, regulatory units, regional offices — each with its own norms and identity, shaping what was rewarded, avoided, or quietly discouraged.

Natural – in some environments, openness felt natural. Teams shared unfinished ideas, raised uncertainties, and sought external input without fear. In these contexts, asking for help did not feel like a weakness.

Risky – in others, openness felt risky. Admitting uncertainty might look like incompetence. Partnering externally might suggest that internal capabilities were lacking. When professional identity was predicated on mastery and control, openness threatened credibility.

That is why culture appeared not to be the backdrop for Open Innovation — but the arena in which it was challenged, reshaped, or ignored.

The invisible work that keeps openness alive

In every company where Open Innovation endured, someone — often a middle manager — performed work that did not appear in their job descriptions. This work was not technical nor administrative. It was interpretive and involved:

• Translating expectations between strategy and delivery functions.
• Making external collaboration feel legitimate for those who fear exposure.
• Protecting early experiments from premature scrutiny.
• Framing learning and uncertainty as credible progress.

Their influence rarely came from hierarchy. It came from trust, timing, and deep organizational understanding. In practice, these managers acted as custodians of coherence. They prevented Open Innovation from fragmenting across interpretations. They maintained a narrative consistency even as formal structures shifted.

When this interpretive work was absent, Open Innovation lost coherence quickly. When it was present, openness stabilized — often quietly, without fanfare, but with lasting effect.

In a food company experimenting with openness, early activity began “under the radar,” as one manager recalled: “We had permission from the top, but it was not yet certified — so we just did it quietly, making things happen.”

Another described being “a department of one,” scouting ideas alone to fill capability gaps.

Elsewhere, a newly appointed OI manager noted, “They gave us the role, but not the levers.” Across cases, openness advanced through conviction rather than structure — visible, but fragile.

Success comes from internal alignment

Looking across firms that tried to embed Open Innovation, a clear pattern emerged. Success came not from scale — not because of the number of pilots, partners, or platforms adopted — but from internal alignment around what openness was meant to accomplish.

Organizations that sustained OI built not just pipelines but the capacity to act in an orchestrated way and with criterion — to know how, when, and why to open. They treated pilots as stepping stones, not as showcases. They maintained coherent narratives even through leadership changes.

These organizations did not eliminate ambiguity — they managed it. They did not resolve tensions between logics — they bridged them. They did not treat Open Innovation as a program but as a negotiated practice that must be continuously maintained.

By contrast, organizations that lost OI did so quietly. Interpretations drifted. Narratives fragmented. Pilots continued but no longer led anywhere. Tools remained, but meaning for their use faded. People began to share less, ask less, expose less. On the surface, the company still looked like implementing Open Innovation — but internally, openness had lost its anchor.

In practice, openness advanced through recursive feedback — each success or setback reshaped how the next experiment with OI approaches was understood, evolving towards enduring or symbolic openness.

Learning points for practitioners – bridge the gap!

In practice, sustaining Open Innovation depends on how well organizations bridge three kinds of gaps:

1. Meaning gaps, where teams interpret openness differently. These are bridged through shared narratives, symbols, and language that clarify what openness is meant to achieve.
2. Role gaps, where accountability and ownership are unclear. These are bridged through boundary-spanning roles and routines that connect exploration with execution.
3. Practice gaps, where collaboration happens but remains unanchored. These are bridged through everyday routines — feedback loops, shared metrics, lightweight frameworks — that turn isolated experiments into habits.

Organizations that learn to bridge these three dimensions do more than manage Open Innovation — they institutionalize it.

Over time, openness will shift from an activity to an identity, embedded in how the company thinks, decides, and collaborates.

Open Innovation has always been described as outward-facing. But its endurance depends on something more inward: a collective agreement about what it means, why it matters, and how it fits within the lived reality of the organization.

In the end, sustaining Open Innovation is less about managing ideas — and more about managing meanings.

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