Despite its popularity as a strategy to accelerate innovations there is evidence\nthat open innovation does not always increase innovation performance. Extant\nliterature provides inconsistent and inconclusive arguments in respect of\nthe relationship between open innovation practices and innovation performance.\nExisting theories mostly have an internal focus and fall short of explaining\nwhy some firms succeed in open innovation initiatives and why others\nfail. Open innovation is about knowledge flows. We argue that boundary\nconditions matter in innovation performance and sequential coherence can\nexplain why some succeed while others fail in open innovation. A qualitative\ninquiry we made reveals that sequential coherence that facilitates the knowledge\ntransfer at boundary level influences innovation performance in open\ninnovation initiatives. Sequential coherence is measured through the push\nand the pull effects by willingness and ability of the participants of teacher\nfirm and the preparedness and ability of the participants from the student\nfirm respectively. We trust that our findings bridge a gap in open innovation\nliterature. These initial findings could be generalized through a quantitative\nstudy with larger samples. Managerial implications of the finding is that ability\nto scan the entire chain of knowledge flow across boundaries and taking\ncorrective measures for any bottlenecks or hindrances observed can bring\nbetter results from open innovation initiatives. Further, sequential coherence\nleads to multiple research opportunities in furthering our knowledge in open\ninnovation.
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