Cui Bono? The Selective Revealing of Knowledge and Its Implications for Innovative Activity

By Oliver Alexy, Gerard George, Ammon J. Salter. 2013

400 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Current theories of how organizations harness knowledge for innovative activity cannot convincingly explain emergent practices whereby firms selectively reveal knowledge to their advantage. We conceive of selective revealing as a strategic mechanism to reshape the collaborative behavior of other actors in a firm's innovation ecosystem. We propose that selective revealing may provide an effective alternative to known collaboration mechanisms, particularly under conditions of high partner uncertainty, high coordination costs, and unwilling potential collaborators. We specify conditions when firms are more likely to reveal knowledge and highlight some boundary conditions for competitor reciprocity. We elaborate on strategies that allow firms to exhibit managerial agency in selective revealing and discuss selective revealing's implications for theories of organization and open innovation and for management practice.

Subfields: Computer Science Applications, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e963ccf91e6ba15cfb96c43647d909f7e42e78c0

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In Computer Science Applications

In Strategy and Management

Citations in the corpus

The open innovation research landscape: established perspectives and emerging themes across different levels of analysis (2016, positive): “Socio-cognitive theories of resistance to change (Ford, Ford, and D’Amelio 2008), for example, may help shed light on why certain individuals are more keen than others to embrace OI in their ways of working (Alexy, George, and Salter 2013).”
A review of the ecosystem concept — Towards coherent ecosystem design (2017, background): “The theoretical background of the BEP is organizational boundary theory within general strategic management theory (Alexy et al., 2013; Meyer et al., 2005; Santos and Eisenhardt, 2005; Teece, 2007).”
The paradox of openness: Appropriability, external search and collaboration (2014, methodology): “In the context of open source software, Henkel (2006) describes such an approach as “selective revealing” (see also Alexy et al., 2013).”
A framework of intellectual property protection strategies and open innovation (2021, background): “The collaborative strategy implies a certain degree of conscious and selective revealing (Alexy et al., 2013; Henkel et al., 2014).”
Towards a theory of ecosystems (2018, neutral): “…platform governance (Cennamo & Santaló, 2013; Wareham et al ., 2014), or intellectual property rights and other contractual forums, are key tools that hubs use to discipline and motivate ecosystem members (Alexy et al , 2013; Brusoni & Prencipe, 2013; Leten et al , 2013; Ritala et al. , 2013).”