Xiuhao Ding’s scientific contributions

Open innovation (OI) has received considerable attention since its introduction and has positive and negative characteristics. To offer an overview for future research, this article produces a comprehensive review by combining bibliometric analysis and content analysis. A total of 4,463 journal articles and 3,061 conference papers on OI were extracted from Web of Science (WOS). The synthesized networks were constructed and visualized through CiteSpace software to aid analytical studies. After the descriptive bibliometric analysis of all publications, a content analysis of 213 articles was carried out to develop the conceptual framework of OI. The results reveal that OI still confined itself to limited disciplines and innovation-centric journals but is beginning to put more effort into becoming a more open ecosystem by influencing other disciplines. We also find some gaps in the extant research and provide some research directions in the OI field: empirical studies in various contexts could enrich the external validity of OI, other theoretical perspectives could provide novel views, and OI is on its way to becoming mature but has a long way to go.

Purpose Open innovation and information systems have been key topics in the theoretical domain, but little empirical research thoroughly examines how information technology (IT) capability affects open innovation performance. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between IT capability and open innovation performance and to expose the inner mechanism at the firm level. Design/methodology/approach This paper collected firm-level data in China; 232 usable questionnaires from different firms were collected. Then, the study used a structural equation model by AMOS for hypothesis testing. Findings The results indicate that both internal IT capability and external IT capability have positive impacts on open innovation performance; potential absorptive capacity and realized absorptive capacity mediate the relationship between external IT capability and open innovation performance. Additionally, realized absorptive capacity plays a mediating role in the relationship between internal IT capability and open innovation performance. Practical implications These findings indicate that practitioners should pay attention to the important relationship between absorptive capacity and IT capability and open innovation performance in Chinese businesses. Originality/value Existing research has emphasized the influence of IT on open innovation, but empirical studies have not thoroughly focused on the inner mechanisms of the effect of IT capability on open innovation performance. Drawing on firm capability theory, this paper classifies IT capability as internal and external IT capability and absorptive capacity as potential and realized absorptive capacity. Then, this paper confirms the mediating role of absorptive capacity between IT capability and open innovation performance.