Open Innovation is the paradigm that suggests the collaboration between companies and other institutions in innovation processes to share risks and costs and maximize the results.

However, companies involved in Open Innovation have to cope with implementation difficulties and collaborations often fail because the actors involved do not obtain satisfactory results: inefficiencies occur along the innovation process or the expected outputs (e.g., new products) are not achieved.

Recently, the scientific community is trying to identify tools that could improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Open Innovation.

The paper “The effect of knowledge collaboration on innovation performance: the moderating role of digital technologies“, published in the International International Journal of Technology Management and written by a research team from LIUC School of Industrial Engineering composed by Valentina Lazzarotti, Raffaella Manzini and Gloria Puliga, and Luisa Pellegrini from the University of Pisa, Mohammad Eslami from Jönköping University (Sweden) and Harry Boer from Aalborg University addresses this theme.

By analyzing a sample of Italian, Swedish, French and Spanish manufacturing companies, the work highlights the important role of digital technologies in supporting the success of Open Innovation initiatives, fostering the integration of the skills of the actors involved, a key ingredient to efficiently achieve the expected outputs.