Leveraging Big Data and Open Data “From” and “For” Open Innovation: Expanding the New Digital Frontier

ABSTRACT The ongoing megatrend of digitalization has transformed how organizations innovate with their stakeholders, building on the prevalence of Big Data (BD), Open Data (OD), and Open Innovation (OI). Since the involvement of external actors is a common feature across these three phenomena, this special issue gathered contributions to understand their interplay and dynamics. Indeed, data are a valuable source for organizational innovation capacity, value creation, and value capture, representing possible inputs for OI. At the same time, OI practices, which emphasize knowledge exchange beyond organizational boundaries, also serve as mechanisms through which data can be acquired, generated, shared, and refined. In this sense, BD and OD can also originate from OI, as outputs of collaborative innovation processes in data‐rich ecosystems. This bidirectional relationship between data and open and collaborative innovation demonstrates a new digital frontier for innovation activities. Yet, the current literature has only recently started to make sense of the distinctiveness of the new data‐driven and data‐enabled OI landscape. The individual studies published in the special issue adopt diverse methodologies and settings towards filling this gap. In this editorial, in addition to summarizing the special issue contributions, we develop a conceptual framework of “Open Innovation and the Convergence of Big and Open Data”, highlighting how the joint and contingent implementation of BD/OD and OI can lead to new and expended innovation outcomes and opportunities. The editorial concludes by outlining future research directions, calling for more empirical work across varied organizational contexts to deepen understanding of this intersection and guide managerial practice in leveraging BD/OD and OI in a mutually reinforcing manner.