IT-enabled relational capabilities and open innovation performance

To address the issue how firms improve their open innovation performance in multi-firm context and what role IT enablers play in this process, we synthesize open innovation theory, the relational view and information systems (IS) literature to build a unified conceptual model, which links relational assets to open innovation performance, and indicate the mediated effect of IT-enabled relational capabilities. The model suggests that relational assets positively affect open innovation performance, and they play a strategic role when combined with IT to create IT-enabled relational capabilities. We shed light on the open innovation research from relational view, provide implications for IS research and practice, and it is an important contribution since open innovation performance has been hard to demonstrate despite attempts to draw on a variety of method and theory. Hypotheses are derived from the conceptual model and measurement items are designed for further empirical research.