Open innovation in ecosystems: Exploring how the affiliation of an ecosystem partner impacts the benefits of collaboration in open innovation

By combining insights from the open innovation literature with the dynamic capabilities framework, we investigate how three types of open innovation partner choices—partners from competing ecosystems, partners within the same ecosystem, and partners outside any ecosystem—affect firms' innovation outcomes. Additionally, we examine the moderating role of firms' adaptability in this relationship. Analyzing panel data for 70 global airline companies from 47 countries, we find that collaborating with a partner from a competing open innovation ecosystem enhances a firm's innovation effort more than partnering with a company from the same ecosystem or one without an ecosystem. Moreover, our results indicate that this relationship is particularly pronounced for firms exhibiting greater adaptability in times of crisis. Overall, we contribute to open innovation research by challenging the implicit assumption that open innovation occurs solely within dyadic relationships and viewing the open innovation system as static. Instead, we emphasize the interplay of interdependencies and competition across innovation ecosystems, conceptualizing the open innovation system as more dynamic. In this dynamic system, especially under conditions of uncertainty, we highlight firm-level adaptability as a critical boundary condition for successful open innovation.