Antecedents, moderators, and outcomes of innovation climate and open innovation: An empirical study in SMEs

In recent years, open innovation (OI) has attracted much attention in innovation management research. Although showing signs of advance, most of the existing literature still relies, to a great extent, on case studies and conceptual frameworks, with little empirical research in the specific context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This paper adds to the literature by empirically assessing the effects of organizational antecedents and innovation climate on OI as well as its consequences on firm performance in SMEs. In addition, the moderating roles of environmental dynamisms and competitiveness in the relationships between innovation climate and inbound and outbound OI are analyzed. To achieve these goals, this paper develops an integrative research model, which analyses the network relations using covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM) on a data set of 429 Spanish SMEs. Results revealed that organizational factors such as commitment-based human resources practices have a positive influence on innovation climate and that innovation climate contributes to both inbound and outbound OI. Another important finding is that contingent factors such as environmental dynamism strengthen the positive effect of innovation climate on outbound OI. The main conclusions of this research can be valuable to SMEs that implement or intend to implement OI. •This paper extends previous work on open innovation (OI).•Antecedents and outcomes of open innovation in SMEs are analyzed.•Innovation climate contributes positively to both inbound and outbound OI.•Environmental dynamism is found to be a key relationship moderator.•Outbound OI and inbound OI contribute positively to firm performance.