Open Innovations and International Collaboration in the Context of Emerging Economies

In this paper we examine how firms perform open innovation in the context of an emerging economy.Specifically, we investigate how Jordanian pharmaceutical firms collaborate internationally, over a period oftime, for open innovations and how this influences their innovation performance. The research is based on fourdetailed case studies of leading firms. We find that participating in international collaboration has a positiveinfluence on open innovation performance, but only when the form of collaboration is highly integrated and theinternal R&D can absorb and adapt innovation. In particular, the greater the degree of open innovation, thehigher the innovation performance. Internal R&D and external innovation strategies are found to complementeach other, demonstrating that a strategy of open innovation is not a substitute for internal capabilities, but rathera development path to developing higher innovation performance.