Open innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises: An overview
为特刊引言，概述了中小企业开放式创新的研究现状，指出现有研究多聚焦于高科技跨国公司，而针对中小企业的理论驱动和实证研究相对匮乏，并介绍了特刊中四篇填补此空白的研究。
Our introduction provides the foundation and background for this special issue on open innovation. Since the beginning of the 21st century, innovation has evolved from being the artefact of an individual or internal process within firms to an interactive process between firms and/or in collaboration with knowledge-creating institutions at both the domestic and global levels. The open innovation model suggests that firms should combine external and internal ideas and technologies as effective pathways to market when advancing and commercialising technologies. However, existing research focuses mainly on high-technology multi-national firms hence, theoretically driven and empirically-based research exploring open innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises remains relatively scarce. This special issue offers a critical contribution to this gap with four articles which explore differing aspects of open innovation within smaller firms. The introduction to this special issue commences with an overview of the relevant literature; it then describes the articles and, finally, suggests potential avenues for future research.