The (Unknown) Providers to Other Firms' New Product Development: What's in It for Them?

For every inbound activity by a firm in open innovation, a reciprocal outbound activity by another firm must be generated. The reciprocal outbound activities range from transferring of knowledge and ideas to solutions delivered to other firms' new product development projects. This paper names the firms that produce the reciprocal outbound activity for “providers,” and is the first to empirically investigate such providers of ideas, solutions,...