How Entrepreneurs from Incubated Start-ups Adapt to Open Innovation: An Illustration through Romanian Business Incubators

In this chapter, we examine how entrepreneurs behave in open innovation (OI) projects. To this end, we investigate why entrepreneurs develop open innovation projects, which appear to be driven primarily by the benefits gained from joining such schemes. Open innovation projects also involve many difficulties and challenges that business owners need to deal with. To cope with all the challenges arising from such projects, entrepreneurs require open innovation competences. We conducted a study of 73 entrepreneurs from 16 Romanian incubators to gain insights into the behaviour adopted by the latter in open innovation projects. Our findings indicate that the sample population mainly uses open innovation competences with regard to self-management, interpersonal management and content management. The most important benefits include a better network of contacts, improved market reputation and a change in attitude. Additionally, our findings demonstrate a link between open innovation competences and the benefits resulting from open innovation projects. In addition, such competences can help entrepreneurs to address the major difficulties that crop up in an open innovation project, frequently arising from the absence of a shared learning history. Our findings have implications for both entrepreneurs, who can develop their open innovation competences in order to improve their innovation output and for incubator management teams that can use them as recruitment criteria and training tools.