Abstract:

The paper suggests an accounting-based methodology for defining open innovation adoption modalities, based on economic and financial transactions in inbound and outbound processes. The framework is applied to a sample of 274 science based companies operating in bio-pharmaceutical and technology hardware & equipment industries. For biotechnological companies open innovation represents a core activity, with most of them having high values of revenues deriving from joint development projects and licensing. On the other side, for pharmaceutical companies open innovation is somehow ancillary: even if most open innovation activities are widespread, their values are not really significant if compared to the total business volume. For companies in the technology hardware & equipment industry the use of spin-ins as a mean for incorporating external knowledge is a characteristic activity and also the acquisition and selling of innovation-related intangibles is quite pervasive. Further, a limited number of semiconductors companies have remarkable values of licensing revenues.