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Joel West
Professor, Keck Graduate Institute
Associate Editor, Research Policy
29 June 2016
How Standards
Research Can Inform
Open Innovation
EURAS 2016

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Overview
• Standards and standardization were open
innovation before there was an “open
innovation”
• Also true for co-opetition
• Thus EURAS research is relevant to a broader
audience
• Publication opportunity:
• Beyond focusing on just standards outcomes
• Instead addressing broader questions
• to be cited by both standards and other
researchers

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Prior Research

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Standards Research
• Standardization activities, processes
• SSOs, SDOs, alliances, consortia
• Technical compatibility standards
• As artifacts, actors or institutions
• Proprietary, open or shades of gray
• Technical and organizational modularity
• Platforms, ecosystems and third party
complements
• Shared implementations via open source
software (OSS)

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Co-opetition
A firm “is your complementor if
customers value your product
more when they have the other
[firm’s] product than when they
have your product alone.”
- Brandenburger and Nalebuff
(1996)

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Open Innovation
• “Open innovation” coined by Chesbrough
(2003)
• New paradigm covers both new and existing
processes
• Considerable interest in research and practice

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Open Innovation (1)
“Open innovation is the use of purposive inflows
and outflows of knowledge to accelerate
internal innovation, and expand the markets for
external use of innovation, respectively.”
— Chesbrough (2006)

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Open Innovation (2)
Not all firms can profit from all innovations
Contingent upon creating a business model
• Value creation
• Sustainable value capture
• Embedded in a value network of suppliers,
complementors and customers
Chesbrough (2003, 2006a, 2006b); Chesbrough & Rosenbloom (2002);
Vanhaverbeke & Chesbrough (2014)

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Open Innovation (3)
Three modes of open innovation:
1. Inbound: accessing external innovations to
improve a firm’s innovations
2. Outbound: using external markets to
commercialize those innovations
3. Coupled: combining inbound & outbound
flows to innovate inside (or outside) the firm
Gassmann & Enkel (2004), Enkel et al (2009), Piller & West (2014)

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Open Innovation (4)
Our interest is the network form
• Coupled or inbound
• Peer-to-peer (Powell 1990) or hub-and-spoke
These include
• Communities
• Consortia
• Ecosystems
• Platforms
West (2014)

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Relates to Standards
• Simcoe (2006): open standards have optimal tradeoff
between public value creation and private value capture
• Vanhaverbeke & Cloodt (2006): managing networks for
value creation and capture
• West (2006): interdependent networks of
complementors and suppliers in systems products
• Dittrich & Duysters (2007): leveraging OI networks to
define and implement standards
• West & Lakhani (2008): communities and open
innovation
• West & Wood (2013): neglecting complementor value
capture leads to collapse of platform ecosystem

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Research Opportunities

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Importance of Framing
For reviewers and editors, framing is essential
• What is your paper about?
• What literature does it build upon?
• What do you promise to deliver?
You have a choice of framing
• Same study can be framed different ways
• Framing must align to actual data, findings and
contribution
• Some ways will have more impact than others

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Narrow Framing
This paper “shows how victory in a standards
competition can be negated by the introduction of a
new architectural layer that spans two or more
previously incompatible architectures.Ӡ
• Study of IBM’s PC strategy in Japan
• Relevant to platforms and standards architectures
• Beyond that: ????
† West & Dedrick (2000)

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Broad Framing
“This article … describes the use of innovation
networks as a means to adapt swiftly to changing
market conditions and strategic change.Ӡ
• Study of Nokia’s value creation networks
• Relevant to alliances, network management,
mobile telephony, ecosystems, innovation
exploration/exploitation
† Dittrich & Duysters (2007)

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Approach
Requires joining another literature
How could this inform a broader audience?
• What research has studied similar phenomena?
• What is the same and different?
• What terms/concepts are different?
• Who are the key authors?
Don’t include too many literatures in one study

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Standardization
Possible themes
• Tension of public/private gain
• Bilateral/multilateral alliances
• Creating/joining enduring or ad hoc institutions
• Governance, voice, permeability, openness
• Knowledge flows
• Effects/limits of intellectual property

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Compatibility Standards
Possible themes
• Modularity
• Technical
• Organizational: “Mirroring” hypothesis
• Refactoring/coordination
• Tacit/explicit knowledge
• Creating/evolving product architectures
• Interdependence of public/private architectures

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Platforms
Possible themes
• Ecosystems
• Identifying, incentivizing complementors
• Too much vs. too little friction (excess entry)
• Free vs. “free” vs. proprietary complements
• Platform evolution
• Linkage of technical and interorganizational
components
• Degrees of openness

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OI Opportunities
• Inbound (or coupled) open innovation:
evidence of improved firm success
• Coupled open innovation: interdependence of
inflows and outflows
• Network forms: interdependence of partner
success
• Role of not-for-profit or individual actors
Vanhaverbeke et al (2014); West (2014); West & Bogers (2014); West et al
(2014)

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Conclusions

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Conclusions
• Standards research is relevant to a broader
audience
• It is possible to study standards topics and
address multiple audiences
• Both greater costs and greater potential rewards
• At the same time, it is important to stay true to
the phenomenon (an emic perspective)
• “To thine own self be true” — Hamlet, Act 1, Scn 3

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Thank You!
KGI@joelwest.org
www.JoelWest.org/Research