An exploration of an entrepreneur’s open innovation mindset in an emerging country

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to connect open innovation and entrepreneurship literature by focusing on the influence of entrepreneurs’ open innovation mindset and alertness on a firm’s financial performance in a country that has recently transitioned from socialism into capitalism.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is based on a sample of 188 entrepreneurs who answered a survey about their personality characteristics in Time 1. In time 2, the authors collected firm-related data from a national database on firms’ financial statements.

Findings

The results show that an individual’s level of open innovation mindset has a positive impact on entrepreneurial alertness. The results also show an important and previously under-investigated relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and firm financial performance.

Research limitations/implications

This study spurs research in the field of open innovation on the individual level of the entrepreneurs who have considerable influence on small firms’ results, and draws attention into the under-investigated innovation and entrepreneurship agenda in a small and transitioning country.

Practical implications

Open innovation starts with an open innovation mindset of entrepreneurs, so entrepreneurs are those who set the open innovation path of firms.

Originality/value

While open innovation triggered interest among business practitioners and management innovation scholars, it remained focused on management topics connected to a broad strategic setting of a firm. However, research related to entrepreneurial companies which benefit significantly from external sources of innovation has received scarce attention, and open innovation on the entrepreneur’s individual level even less so.