How open are SMEs? Exploring the impact of different open innovation practices

SMEs tend to collaborate with many other economic agents to gain new ideas and build a solid network, with the ultimate purpose of increasing their profitability and sales, and expanding their market share. Rooted in this context, this paper aims at shedding new light on the adoption of open innovation in SMEs. Specifically, we examine the combined effect of open innovation practices, innovation performance and the characteristics of the firm that, according to the literature, have been found to shape firms' performance. Given the heterogeneity inherent in SMEs, we expect to find different patterns that firms follow based on their capabilities, vision and characteristics. The empirical application is based on a sample of 32 SMEs located in the Spanish region of Valencia. The methodology we use is qualitative comparative analysis, which has been found to be suitable when assuming causal complexity, as it is the case in this study.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft