Measurement of open innovation through intellectual capital flows: framework and application

The paper suggests a methodology for measuring companies’ openness degree through accounting data and providing a relation between open innovation activities and intellectual capital components. Four openness dimensions are defined and a synthetic measure of openness is suggested. The model is applied to a sample of 126 world top R&D spending companies in the bio-pharmaceutical industry for the period 2008–2012. Results show a negative correlation of openness with firm age, dimension and efficiency and a positive correlation with R&D intensity, with biotech companies being more open than pharmaceutical ones. Further, the most relevant component of openness is represented by the revenues deriving from joint development projects, out-licensing and R&D outsourcing. The paper contributes to the existing research by suggesting inbound and outbound metrics for open innovation and by underlining the role of intellectual capital. The framework can be used for monitoring and benchmarking the openness degree of companies with competitors.