The impact of appropriation strategy on open innovation

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between firms´ appropriation strategy and open innovation. We identify four distinct groups of appropriation strategy in the electronics sector by Latent Class Analysis of data from the third Taiwan Innovation Survey and Taiwan Economic Journal databank. These four groups of appropriation strategy are proactive group, first-mover group, intellectual property rights (IPRs) group and non-proactive group. We found that firms in proactive group are more open and more likely to cooperate in innovation with competitors than other firms, but less probable to cooperate in innovation with suppliers. Firms belonged to first-mover group are more probable to engage in innovation-related cooperation with suppliers and government research organizations, but less likely to cooperate with clients or customers. Finally, we conclude this study with our findings and implications for further research.