Investigating the Critical Success Factors and Infrastructure of Knowledge Management for Open Innovation Adoption: The Case of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in Egypt

During the past few years organizations are moving towards the adoption of open innovation models to make use both internal and external knowledge. Recent efforts concerning open innovation involve building portfolio of relationships and networks that provide access to technology, information and knowledge. For successful open innovation implementation knowledge management (KM) strategies adopting its frameworks are important. This study investigates the critical success factors for the underlying KM frameworks in developing countries. The case of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has been investigated as one of the few examples of KM initiatives in Egypt. A comparison of GSK´s critical success factors of its KM framework between the cases of its headquarters and its Egyptian branch, resulted in identifying a set of factors that have been customized for GSK Egypt specifically. We further argue that these newly identified, additional factors, could serve as lessons learnt for others.