Abstract:

Today, innovation is a receipt for most of the problems the firms are facing. Today, firms can’t develop innovations merely contenting themselves with their own effortful struggles. In addition to such initiative, they should cooperate with other actors. Cooperating with other actors outside the firm opens the innovation process. Open innovation has lots of advantages which can be categorised in two main groups : increasing revenues, and decreasing costs. The main idea in open innovation strenghtens the relations with external environment by increasing knowledge and technology inflows and outflows. However, dealing with the boundaries of the firm, there are barriers related with knowledge and technology flows. This research aims to explain evolution of open innovation, partnerships as main actors in knowledge and technology outflows, and intellectual property as the concept that protects knolwedge flows. external environment of the firm.

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