Frasch, S. (2011). Antecedents and consequences of distributed innovation in firms [Master Thesis, Technische Universität Wien]. reposiTUm. https://resolver.obvsg.at/urn:nbn:at:at-ubtuw:1-60432
Most firms are used to generating innovations based on internal resources and R&D capabilities. Due to environmental changes in the nature of firms such as increasing technological complexity and rising costs for technological innovation, funding options for smaller firms and shorter product life cycles, firms are looking for external collaboration to improve their innovation output. The research field of distributed innovation explores different types of collaboration and explains different point of views of collaboration. I define distributed innovation as the phenomenon of widely spread knowledge originating from different sources in combination with the question of how firms, both internally and externally, can find and share this knowledge. Distributed innovation in firms is a complex topic because multiple disciplines are involved. Existing studies in distributed innovation related literature analyze sub-topics of the disciplines. Up to now, there is hardly any aggregated overview about antecedents and consequences influencing the different mechanisms of distributed innovation. This paper applies a systematic literature review to create a holistic model. This holistic model gives an overview of existing findings in distributed innovation related literature. The holistic model explores (a) antecedents influencing mechanisms of distributed innovation and (b) mechanisms influencing consequences, positively or negatively, for firms that implement distributed innovation. The most analyzed antecedents in the field of distributed innovation are firm capabilities, strategy and industry. The most analyzed consequences in existing distributed innovation literature are firm capabilities, innovation/product and financial performance. Furthermore, collaboration with other firms (licensing, alliances, etc.) and users (user innovation, ICT-enabled tools etc.) as types of partnering or mechanisms are the most analyzed aspects in existing literature. This paper contributes to the discourse of distributed innovation by providing a better understanding of the phenomena to both researchers and practitioners from different fields.