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Introduction
In late 2011, personal care conglomerate Beiersdorf “celebrat[ed] the most successful deodorant launch ever seen in the almost 130-year history of the company” (Beiersdorf, 2011). The deodorant leaves no stains or white marks on clothes, but peculiar about the new product is that it was co-developed in an open innovation project with partners using the recently launched online platform Pearlfinder. It was established to guarantee a new level of openness in research and development (R&D) projects and to leverage new collaborations with external partners (Beiersdorf, 2014; Bilgram et al., 2011, 2013; Mattes, 2011). From an intellectual property perspective, Beiersdorf’s platform differentiates to competitor initiatives concerning the confidentiality of submitted knowledge. The intellectual property rights remain with the inventors and are not automatically assigned to Beiersdorf. Instead, a mutual agreement is signed that guarantees reciprocal confidentiality and no sole patent activity so that the benefits of the joint work are shared among Beiersdorf and the inventors. Conversely, when submitting to P&G’s connect + develop initiative, knowledge can only be proposed if some form of intellectual property protection exists (Procter and Gamble, 2014b). Further, P&G will not sign non-disclosure agreements (Procter and Gamble, 2014a).
From these two prominent examples, it becomes evident that even though these firms are in the same industry, diverging approaches are used when it comes to the strategic management of knowledge via intellectual property rights in open innovation processes. Chesbrough (2003a) defined open innovation opposite to the vertically integrated closed innovation model in which all innovation activities, including entire R&D processes, are internal to firms. Here, firms innovate, subsequently protect new knowledge and appropriate returns through intellectual property rights. In open innovation, firms utilize internal and external knowledge by establishing upstream and downstream paths to markets, e.g. to suppliers and customers (Hagedoorn, 1993, 2002). Existing boundaries between firms and their environments become porous, wherefore knowledge flows between them. Hence, firms can commercialize knowledge generated outside their own R&D departments (Chesbrough, 2003b).
“Intellectual property […] refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce” (WIPO, 2015). In law, intellectual property is protected by intellectual property rights, specifically the different right regimes such as patents, copyrights and trademarks. In open...