The matching process for innovation partnerships: A multi-sided market perspective

Many studies exist about open innovation as transfer of innovations inside and outside of the firm or as joint projects in collaborative partnerships. In this paper, we investigate the matchmaking between innovation seekers and innovation providers, with the focus on asymmetric partnerships between incumbent large companies and young entrepreneurial firms. In particular, we introduce the matchmaking problem as a multi-sided market with different internal and external agents and describe the phenomenon. Furthermore, the matching process on a multi-sided market is presented based on existing literature and an in-depth participatory action study.