A study on the open innovation model for win-win collaboration between large and small-medium enterprises

As the importance of mutual growth of large and small-medium enterprises has increased, the necessity for open innovation between them has been emphasized. However, few studies of open innovation have considered both sized of firms, and they just analyzed differences of innovation from the empirical point of view. Based on the survey of manufacturing firms conducted in 2012, the Korean Innovation Survey, this study proposes open innovation models between large firms and SMEs for win-win cooperation, reflecting the circumstances and characteristics of innovation for each size of firm. For this, first, we derive their respective needs for open innovation between them by analyzing the importance of internal needs and the performance of potential cooperation by means of weighted sums of correlation coefficients. Secondly, we build a typology matrix of enterprises, considering the innovation needs with a 2 by 2 matrix. We utilize this for the next step of defining types of open innovation by matching each type of large firm and SME. Finally, we develop open innovation models by multi-flow charts consisting of layers (subjects), edges (open innovation activities), and boxes (innovation process). The research results support SMEs managing strategic open innovation with large firms, which encourages balance of the large enterprises and SMEs for coexistence.