The fit between firms’ open innovation and business model for new product development speed: A contingent perspective

Recent studies suggest that the effectiveness of open innovation (OI) can significantly differ among firms. One possible reason is the different ways of implementing OI strategies. Another is the ignorance of the explicit role of business model (BM). In this study, we integrate the two plausible explanations by exploring the impact of the interplay between different OI implementations and BM on firms’ new product development (NPD) speed. Empirical results from a survey of 265 Chinese firms show that both OI breadth and OI depth positively affect NPD speed. More importantly, we find that an efficient BM strengthens the positive effect of OI depth while it weakens the positive effect of OI breadth. We also find that a novel BM strengthens the positive effect of OI breadth while it weakens the positive effect of OI depth. This research contributes to OI literature by underscoring the importance of matching the BMs to the OI strategies to facilitate NPD.