Big data for open innovation in SMEs and large corporations: Trends, opportunities, and challenges

TLDR

Big Data is increasingly viewed as a source of innovative solutions, especially from external origins, offering a promising avenue for enhancing open innovation, yet no comprehensive overview has been provided. This study aims to fill that gap by offering a broad review of Big Data use in open innovation. The authors examine SMEs and large corporations, surveying key academic literature and industrial applications related to Big Data‑driven open innovation. They identify the principal trends, opportunities, and challenges that SMEs and large firms encounter when leveraging Big Data for open innovation.

Abstract

The notion of ‘Big Data’ has recently been attracting an increasing degree of attention from scholars and practitioners in an attempt to identify how it may be leveraged to create innovative solutions and business opportunities. Specifically, Big Data may come from a variety of sources, especially sources outside the usual boundaries of organizations, and it represents an interesting and emerging opportunity for sustaining and enhancing the effectiveness of the so‐called open innovation paradigm. However, to the best of our knowledge, no prior works have provided a broad overview of the use of Big Data for open innovation strategies. We aim to fill this gap. In particular, we have focused our investigation on two types of companies: small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and big corporations, reviewing the major academic works published so far and analysing the main industrial applications on this topic. As a result, we provide a relevant list of the main trends, opportunities, and challenges faced by SMEs and large corporations when dealing with Big Data for open innovation strategies.