European Planning Studies

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Beyond R&D: a configurational approach to open

innovation in the Veneto region

Silvia Rita Sedita & Roberto Grandinetti

To cite this article: Silvia Rita Sedita & Roberto Grandinetti (2022): Beyond R&D: a
configurational approach to open innovation in the Veneto region, European Planning Studies,
DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2022.2114316

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Published online: 25 Aug 2022.

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EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2022.2114316

Beyond R&D: a configurational approach to open innovation

in the Veneto region
Silvia Rita Sedita and Roberto Grandinetti
Department of Economics and Management, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The innovation performance of regions is increasingly dependent Received 24 December 2021
on the capacity of firms to rely on collaborative networks to Revised 10 August 2022
develop new products, services, and processes. This work adopts Accepted 11 August 2022
a systemic approach to explore the collaborative innovation
KEYWORDS
strategies of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), identifying the Open innovation;
existence of multiple combinations of collaborative networks configurational analysis;
associated with high innovation performance. We conduct a fuzzy set qualitative
configurational analysis to study the innovation performance of a comparative analysis; SMEs;
sample of manufacturing SMEs in the Veneto region and obtain regional innovation
several interesting results. First, we identify eight configurations performance
of open innovation (OI) strategies associated with the same
outcome, i.e. high innovation performance. Second, we identify a
dual mode of OI, stemming from the presence or absence of
an in-house R&D lab. In particular, non-R&D SMEs rely on
knowledge-intensive business services as innovation knowledge
brokers. Third, start-up companies emerge as OI champions,
sourcing both technology-driven and customer-driven knowledge
from a wide variety of partners.

1. Introduction
The debate on innovation in SMEs as the result of a systemic process dates to the litera-
ture on industrial districts, geographical clusters, and regional innovation systems. From
the seminal research of Becattini (1979) on Marshallian industrial districts to the more
modern approaches to the evolutionary trajectories of clusters (Sedita, Caloffi, and Laz-
zeretti 2020) and the investigations of the complex network structure of regional inno-
vation systems (Asheim and Gertler 2005; Cooke 1992; Cooke, Gomez Uranga, and
Etxebarria 1997), many scholars have opened the black box of localized forms of inno-
vation (Maskell and Malmberg 1999). They are generally based on a complex network
of information and knowledge flows, where the heterogeneity of roles of actors within
the network foresee the innovative capacity of local firms as the result of different rela-
tional geometries, where the one-fits-all model does not apply.
In the field of innovation management studies, the tendency of some firms to build
external networks of collaborations and modify their business model accordingly is at
the core of the open innovation (OI) model proposed by Chesbrough (2003). As more

CONTACT Silvia Rita Sedita silvia.sedita@unipd.it Department of Economics and Management, University of
Padova, Via del Santo 33, 35123 Padova, Italy
© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 S. R. SEDITA AND R. GRANDINETTI

literature on the phenomenon has emerged (Chesbrough 2006; Laursen and Salter 2006;
Dahlander and Gann 2010; Öberg and Alexander 2019; West and Bogers 2014), it has
begun to be understood as ‘a distributed innovation process based on purposively
managed knowledge flows across organizational boundaries, using pecuniary and non-
pecuniary mechanisms in line with each organization’s business model’ (Chesbrough
and Bogers 2014, 17). Empirical research has shown the positive relationship between
open innovation strategy and innovation performance, also with specific regard to
SMEs (Brunswicker and Vanhaverbeke 2015; Saunila 2020; Vanhaverbeke 2017),
which, due to their small size and related resource constraints, are not able to cover all
the innovation activities necessary for successful innovation in-house (Edwards, Del-
bridge, and Munday 2005; Macpherson and Holt 2007).
However, existing studies of the OI orientation of SMEs generally neglect the systemic
nature of the innovation process, which necessarily combines different collaborations in
ways that are specific to the industry, the geographical area, the socio-economic and pol-
itical context, and the firm’s resources and strategy (Edquist 1997; Lundvall 1992). The
latter are strongly affected by the company’s stage of development: while pioneering
small high-tech firms tend to collaborate with universities, research centres, and suppli-
ers, demand-driven SMEs prefer to interact with users and customers (Brunswicker and
Vanhaverbeke 2015).
Some studies on industrial clusters have shown that local firms can find multiple inno-
vation partners within and sometimes outside their cluster (Belussi and Sedita 2012;
Grandinetti 2019) or region (Belussi, Sammarra, and Sedita 2010).
Nonetheless, existing academic contributions, both in the realm of innovation man-
agement and economic geography, have devoted little attention to mapping the existence
of multiple equally successful combinations of collaborations, focusing instead on the
outcomes of each type of collaboration taken in isolation. Most existing empirical con-
tributions focus on the identification of innovation champions or of the most successful
collaborations for innovation, failing to account for the importance of firm heterogeneity
and contextual factors, which require the detection of multiple OI models (Speldekamp,
Saka-Helmhout, and Knoben 2020a, 2020b).
To address this limitation in the literature, we explore how multiple collaborative
network configurations (including relationships with suppliers, knowledge-intensive
business services, research centres, universities, customers, and competitors) lead to
high innovation performance among SMEs. We adopt a configurational comparative
approach, which, in combination with the OI framework, enables us to address two
important questions. First, is there a single most effective way of applying an OI strategy,
or are there multiple ways in which manufacturing SMEs can achieve high innovation
performance? Second, where multiple configurations of innovation drivers exist, how
do these drivers combine to positively affect innovation performance?
To empirically examine these questions, we perform a fuzzy set qualitative compara-
tive analysis (fsQCA) (Ragin 2000, 2008a) on an original dataset of 165 manufacturing
SMEs operating in Veneto, a region that is rich in SMEs and industrial districts (Apa
et al. 2021).
Since a configurational approach relies on a hybrid research design (Verweij and
Gerrits 2012), we use extant literature to deductively derive the factors that affect the
innovation performance of SMEs and inductively explore how they are configured in
 EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES 3

complex contextual combinations associated with high innovation performance. Our

contribution does not merely confirm the saliency of these factors in promoting or hin-
dering innovation performance of SMEs; rather, it demonstrates that combinations of
these factors explain differences in innovation performance.
Our article is structured as follows. First, we offer a theoretical discussion on SMEs’
open innovation resources. Second, we explain our research design and present the
results of the configurational analysis, which are further discussed. Finally, we present
some concluding remarks.

2. Internal and external resources for open innovation in SMEs

Following several empirical studies that have explored the link between inter-firm collab-
oration and innovation (Pittaway et al. 2004), the OI paradigm assumes that the more
open a firm is to external resources, the greater its innovation performance (Chesbrough
2003). The Community Innovation Survey (CIS) has become the standard source for
identifying a firm’s portfolio of external resources. Following this approach, the variety
of actors that make up a firm’s innovation network can be grouped into five broad cat-
egories: suppliers of materials, components, or technologies; customers; competitors;
universities and other public or private research institutions; and consultants and
other knowledge-intensive business services.

2.1. R&D and other internal resources

While the positive impact of in-house R&D on innovation performance has been widely
demonstrated, it is also well known that SMEs face a range of barriers while investing in
internal R&D (Moilanen, Østbye, and Woll 2014; Rammer, Czarnitzki, and Spielkamp
2009). Nevertheless, a firm without a formalized R&D structure can achieve high inno-
vation performance if it can develop collaborative relationships (formal or informal) with
external knowledge sources useful for its innovation process (Rammer, Czarnitzki, and
Spielkamp 2009; Thomä and Zimmermann 2020). The absence of an R&D lab is often
compensated by employees who work full- or part-time on innovation activities even
if they do not work within an organizational unit labelled R&D (Apa et al. 2021;
Hervás -Oliver et al. 2015).
The complementarity between internal and external resources for innovation is
explained by the concept of absorptive capacity, which refers to the firm capability to
understand and assimilate knowledge not produced in-house but available through
external relationships. In their seminal contribution to this topic, Cohen and Levinthal
(1990) claimed that absorptive capacity is intimately linked to a firm’s R&D investments.
However, it is now widely recognized that this link is far from exclusive, that is, that the
resources on which absorptive capacity depends are not enclosed within R&D units alone
(Grandinetti 2016; Moilanen, Østbye, and Woll 2014).

2.2. The university-industry (UI) collaboration conundrum

Universities and research centres constitute a fundamental pillar for fostering innovation
(Perkmann and Walsh 2007; Skute et al. 2019). However, according to the CIS, only a
4 S. R. SEDITA AND R. GRANDINETTI

minority of European SMEs use universities or research centres as a source of infor-

mation for innovation, thus suggesting a problematic relationship between these actors
(Rõigas, Mohnen, and Varblane 2018). Despite the obstacles to collaborations between
SMEs and universities and research centres, scholars who evaluated the impact of UI col-
laboration on the innovation performance of SMEs generally found a positive effect
(Ahn, Minshall, and Mortara 2015; Zeng, Xie, and Tam 2010).
Since there are cases when this collaboration is not established or not conducive to
increased innovation performance, there is room for exploring the specific combination
of factors that make a university–SME collaboration part of a successful OI strategy.

2.3. In search of knowledge-intensive business services

Knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) are service providers that are characterized
by three common traits: the knowledge intensity of their services, their consultation, and
problem-solving function, and their close interaction with their customers (Bettencourt
et al. 2002; Muller and Zenker 2001). They provide service in a wide range of fields
(including R&D, information and communication technologies, engineering, design,
marketing, and professional services), developing innovations themselves and supporting
the innovation processes of their clients, thereby operating as knowledge brokers
(Grandinetti 2018; Shearmur & Doloreux 2019). The important role of KIBS as inno-
vation partners for manufacturing firms, with whom they collaborate to co-produce
innovative products and services, has been clearly outlined in the literature (Amancio
et al. 2021; Muller & Doloreux 2009). Stemming from the seminal contribution of
Muller and Zenker (2001), empirical research has demonstrated that manufacturing
SMEs that interact with KIBS are more oriented toward innovation than those who do
not and that KIBS act as co-innovators with SMEs. The brokerage role of KIBS is of par-
ticular interest: KIBS may act as substitutes for other information sources or as transla-
tors in an OI strategy that includes cognitively distant partners. Again, a configurational
approach would help clarify the role of and the contextual factors that make KIBS drivers
of superior innovation performance.

2.4. Downstream and upstream collaborations

Firms can gain important information about markets, new technologies, and users’ needs
through vertical collaborations with clients or suppliers (Whitley 2002), which can sig-
nificantly impact product and process innovation.
Brunswicker and Vanhaverbeke (2015) highlighted that cooperation with suppliers
of technology, components, or other inputs generally enables companies to gain tech-
nological expertise, engage in fruitful collaborations for new product development, and
reduce lead times while improving product quality, flexibility, and market adaptability.
Empirical evidence indicates that collaboration with suppliers positively affects the pro-
portion of turnover linked to improved products (Faems, Van Looy, and Debackere
2005; Nieto and Santamaría 2007). Collaborations with clients enable firms to access
crucial information on clients’ needs otherwise difficult to achieve and to open oppor-
tunities for co-design of new products and new businesses (Brunswicker and Vanhaver-
beke 2015; Faems, Van Looy, and Debackere 2005; Tsai 2009). Such collaborations are
 EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES 5

beneficial for developing novel and complex innovations and markets (Zeng, Xie, and
Tam 2010).
Existing studies have demonstrated a generally positive link between the innovation
performance of SMEs and their collaborations with suppliers and clients, particularly
for new product development (Kaminski, de Oliveira, and Lopes 2008). However, less
is known about the combinatorial effect of numerous collaborations or whether collab-
orations within the value chain need to be supported by other types of collaborations to
be effective. Again, a configurational approach is suited to address these questions.

2.5. The delicate equilibrium of co-opetitive collaborations

Firms, including SMEs, belonging to the same sector can compete and cooperate simul-
taneously (Bengtsson and Kock 2000), and co-opetition strategies often concern inno-
vation (Gnyawali and Park 2009). These collaborations may be pursued to carry out
basic research and establish standards, or they may occur when companies face
common problems, for example, in co-production arrangements or pre-competitive
research programmes (Tether 2002). Through these collaborations, firms share their
technological skills and knowledge and engage in a virtuous process of problem-
solving and novelty creation. von Hippel (1987) suggested that horizontal collaborations
may also occur when a) technological progress is quicker to achieve through collective
efforts than through individual ones, b) knowledge recombination offers more advan-
tages than single-source knowledge, and c) avoiding knowledge leaking does not lead
to any major competitive advantage.
However, cooperating with competitors may cause difficulties, especially if the cultural
distance between the parties is high (Bacon, Williams, and Davies 2020). Moreover, hori-
zontal collaborations may be vulnerable to opportunism and may create organizational
problems in absence of transparency (Tomlinson and Fai 2013). Thus, loss of control
over the innovative process and technology leakage to rivals are the most common draw-
backs when collaborating with competitors (Ritala and Hurmelinna-Laukkanen 2013).
Consequently, in the literature, the impact of co-opetitive collaborations on SMEs’ inno-
vation performance is unclear. Some studies have found that collaborating with rivals
boosts a firm’s innovative capacity (Quintana-Garcia and Benavides-Velasco 2004).
However, there is also evidence that such cooperation has no significant impact (Tom-
linson and Fai 2013) or even a negative impact on the innovation performance of
SMEs (Freel and Harrison 2006; Nieto and Santamaría 2007). Some SMEs prefer out-
sourcing over alliances, possibly because of the higher costs and risks associated with
the management of partnerships (Narula 2004). This lack of agreement in the literature
on the effects of co-opetitive innovation strategies means that further investigation of the
necessary conditions for these collaborations may be beneficial for SMEs.

3. Research design
The empirical setting is the Veneto region, in the northeastern part of Italy, which counts
4,869,830 inhabitants, 429,779 firms (mainly small or medium companies –94.1% and
5.2% respectively), and 1,777,739 employees. It is among the most developed regions
in Europe in terms of employment rate and GDP per capita. The industrial structure
6 S. R. SEDITA AND R. GRANDINETTI

is particularly rich in SMEs, i.e. firms having less than 250 employees and either a turn-
over of less than €50 million or an annual balance sheet of less than €43 million (Euro-
pean Commission, 2017). Many of them are localized in clusters such as the sports
footwear district of Montebelluna, the women’s footwear of Riviera del Brenta, the
eyewear district of Belluno, the furniture district of Livenza, and the jewellry district of
Vicenza (Belussi and Sedita 2009; Camuffo and Grandinetti 2011). These are populations
of SMEs, in a specific and restricted territory, specialized in different stages of production
within one or related industries (Becattini et al. 2003). District firms realize their inno-
vation processes by recombining knowledge acquired via vertical and horizontal knowl-
edge flows (Malmberg and Maskell 2002). Although the Veneto region does not
correspond to a typical regional innovation system as defined in the literature (Cooke
and Morgan 1994), it is considered an innovative region because here innovation net-
works are critical drivers of regional innovation performance, and firms can rely on an
excellent pool of KIBS – knowledge intensive business services (Bettiol et al. 2013; De
Marchi and Grandinetti 2017). It represents an emblematic case of the regional inno-
vation model named ‘innovation without research’ (Apa et al. 2021; Colombo and Lan-
zavecchia 1997) because of its low public and private investments in R&D. In short, the
Veneto region is a suited empirical setting for the scope of our research.
The analysis was carried out on a sample of 165 manufacturing SMEs. A survey was
administered in the period December 2015 - January 2016, through a structured ques-
tionnaire, and was addressed to entrepreneurs or general directors of the firms using a
computer-based telephone interviewing method. The questionnaire collected infor-
mation on SMEs’ innovation activities during the period 2012–2014. To analyze the
data, we used fsQCA, which identifies combinations of explanatory variables (causal con-
ditions) that influence the levels of a dependent variable (outcome). The method over-
comes the limitations of conventional correlation analysis by allowing for causal
complexity, equifinality, and asymmetric relationships, thus considering the combination
(and not the individual impact) of a variety of causal conditions on an outcome (Ragin
2000).
By applying the fsQCA, we investigated the combination of innovation networks
(causal conditions) associated with high innovation performance (the outcome).

3.1. Measures and calibration

The descriptive statistics and the correlation matrix for all the variables are displayed in
Tables 1 and 2, respectively.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics.

Variable Description Mean Std. Dev.
IP Innovation performance 13.090910 7.033730
SUP Collaborations with suppliers 3.142424 1.912576
KIBS Collaborations with KIBS 2.145455 2.616212
COMP Collaborations with competitors 0.818181 1.868457
CLI Collaborations with clients 3.775758 2.492309
UNI Collaborations with universities and public research organizations 0.733333 1.767364
SIZE Size of the firm 36.339390 37.053930
AGE Age of the firm 38.612120 18.855540
R&D R&D endowments 0.357575 0.480745
 EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES 7

Table 2. Correlation matrix.

IP SUP KIBS COMP CLI UNI SIZE AGE R&D
IP 1
SUP 0.0888 1
0.2568
KIBS 0.3462 0.1079 1
0.0000 0.1676
COMP 0.3033 0.1284 0.1938 1
0.0001 0.1002 0.0126
CLI 0.2982 0.0995 0.0808 0.0802 1
0.0001 0.2036 0.3023 0.3056
UNI 0.1761 0.1664 0.1997 0.4025 −0.0095 1
0.0237 0.0326 0.0101 0.0000 0.9036
SIZE 0.1389 0.0900 0.1578 0.1035 −0.1060 0.0752 1
0.0752 0.2501 0.0429 0.1859 0.1754 0.3369
AGE 0.2192 −0.1686 −0.0112 0.0835 0.0359 −0.0383 0.1019 1
0.0047 0.03046 0.8864 0.2864 0.6471 0.6257 0.1929
R&D 0.3167 0.1366 0.0990 0.0932 −0.0294 0.0699 0.3248 0.0322 1
0.0000 0.0802 0.2059 0.2339 0.7081 0.3726 0.0000 0.6813
Note: Numbers in italics represent significance levels of the correlation coefficients (p-values)

Regarding the measure of innovation performance (outcome), we referred to the

definition used in the CIS since the 2005 edition, which specifies four innovation
types: product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, and organizational
innovation. In our questionnaire, we asked the interviewed firms whether they had devel-
oped each type of innovation and then asked them to evaluate the intensity of the devel-
opment of each type on a seven-point Likert scale. By the criterion proposed by Apa et al.
(2021) and consistent with the approaches taken by other authors (e.g. Dewangan and
Godse 2014; Hagedoorn and Cloodt 2003), we calculated innovation performance (IP)
as the sum of the intensity of the firm’s development of each of the four types of inno-
vation. Consequently, IP takes a value ranging from 1 to 28.
To transform IP into a fuzzy set, with scores ranging from 0 to 1 (representing the
degree of membership of cases in sets), we calibrated the variable using a sample-depen-
dent method. We established that the full non-membership threshold (value 6.06) corre-
sponds to the mean minus the standard deviation of the distribution, that the crossover
point (value 13.09) corresponds to the mean, and that the full membership threshold
(value 20.12) corresponds to the mean plus the standard deviation.
As for the independent measures (Table 1), we divided them into two groups. The first
one is composed of the different types of collaborations for innovation, which were
detected in the survey: collaborations with suppliers (SUP), clients (CLI), universities
and public research organizations (UNI, KIBS), and competitors (COMP). We specifi-
cally asked respondents to identify whether the company had established a collaboration
with each possible partner to develop innovations in the period 2012–2014. We also
asked participants to evaluate the efficacy of the relationship by rating the extent to
which the company had actively used the partner’s knowledge on a seven-point Likert
scale. Inspired by the CIS, we identified the following possible subjects: suppliers of
equipment, materials, components, or software; KIBS; clients or customers; competitors;
universities and public research organizations. We calibrated each measure using a
sample-dependent method, adopting the same formula as for the outcome measure.
The second group of independent measures is composed of internal resources, such as
accumulated knowledge (proxied by the age of the firm), overall capacity to organize
8 S. R. SEDITA AND R. GRANDINETTI

innovation resources (proxied by the size of the firm in terms of the number of employ-
ees), and R&D endowments (a dummy variable indicating the presence of a dedicated
R&D lab).
Regarding the variable AGE, we defined three groups of firms: those with less than 10
years (the threshold for full non-membership), those with 10–30 years (with 30 as the
crossover point), and, finally, those with more than 50 years (threshold for full member-
ship) of activity.
The variable SIZE represents the number of employees of the firm in 2014. Inspired by
the European Union’s definition of SMEs, we considered three subgroups of firms based
on the number of employees (10–49, 50–99, and 100–249 employees). Therefore, we used
the value 50 (small enterprises) as the threshold for full non-membership, the value 100
(medium-small enterprises) as the crossover point, and the value of 250 (medium enter-
prises) as the threshold for full membership.
The variable R&D indicates the existence of a dedicated R&D lab in the firm. It is one
of the most used measures of absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal 1990). We cali-
brated R&D with 0 (indicating no R&D lab) and with 1 (indicating the existence of an
R&D lab).

3.2. Analysis of necessary conditions

After calibration, the fsQCA method requires the analysis of necessary conditions, those
causal conditions that must be present for the outcome to occur, even if their presence
does not guarantee the occurrence of the outcome. Conventionally, a condition is necess-
ary if its consistency score exceeds the threshold of 0.9 and its coverage is higher than 0.5
(Ragin 2006). Table 3 reports the results of the analysis, which takes into consideration
the eight causal conditions (uppercase) and their negations (lowercase), as usual.
No type of collaboration exceeded the acceptable consistency level of 0.90 (Ragin
2006). Therefore, none of them qualified as necessary conditions. However, the negation
of the causal condition ‘size’ belonging to the firm characteristics group exceeded the
threshold level (size: 0.94) and had coverage above 0.5 (size: 0.52). Therefore, being a
small company is a necessary condition for achieving high innovation performance.

Table 3. Analysis of necessary conditions.

Consistency Coverage
SUP 0.590476 0.651213
sup 0.540777 0.601192
KIBS 0.589929 0.747330
kibs 0.503229 0.494887
COMP 0.482867 0.772504
comp 0.687137 0.581742
CLI 0.716912 0.693309
cli 0.391461 0.506946
UNI 0.477504 0.753758
uni 0.695128 0.592738
AGE 0.738807 0.663945
age 0.395840 0.570797
SIZE 0.115381 0.796073
size 0.941653 0.566816
R&D 0.457143 0.707797
r&d 0.542857 0.467830
Note: Uppercase characters indicate the presence of a condition, lowercase characters its absence
 EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES 9

3.3. Truth table analysis and minimization

We set IP as the outcome and the five types of collaborations and the two internal
resources proxy variables AGE and R&D as causal conditions. SIZE was not entered
since it was found to be a necessary condition (Ragin 2008b). The truth table algorithm
identifies all the possible combinations of conditions, the number of cases (N) in which a
certain configuration is found, and the consistency measure (raw consist), which indi-
cates the proportion of cases that display the outcome (see Table 4). To minimize the
truth table, we used an algorithm based on Boolean algebra. We excluded from the analy-
sis the combinations associated with less than two cases and used a value of 0.08 as the
consistency level of the configuration (a measure of overall fitness of the configuration),
as recommended by Ragin (2000, 2008a).

3.4. Findings
The configurational analysis generates three solutions: a complex solution, a parsimo-
nious solution, and an intermediate solution. Table 5 represents a visual summary of
the results, which identifies eight equifinal combinations of causal conditions, meaning
that they can each obtain the same result (in this case, a high innovation performance).
Core conditions (which have a strong causal relationship with the outcome) are rep-
resented with larger dots and peripheral conditions (which have a weak causal relation-
ship with the output) with smaller dots (Fiss 2011). Operationally, core conditions are
those present in both the parsimonious and intermediate solutions, whereas peripheral
conditions are those that are only present in the intermediary solution.

Table 4. Minimized truth table.

SUP KIBS COMP CLI UNI AGE R&D N IP raw consist PRI consist SYM consist
0 1 1 1 0 1 1 2 1 0.990888 0.982222 0.982222
0 1 0 1 0 0 1 2 1 0.990683 0.980892 0.980892
1 1 0 1 1 0 1 3 1 0.979080 0.965870 0.979239
1 1 0 1 0 1 1 5 1 0.973806 0.960648 0.983412
1 1 1 1 0 1 0 3 1 0.902697 0.789341 0.789340
0 1 0 1 0 1 1 4 1 0.898032 0.835735 0.843023
1 1 0 1 0 1 0 3 1 0.874725 0.748345 0.753333
1 0 0 1 1 1 0 2 1 0.863744 0.689189 0.689189
1 1 0 1 0 0 0 3 1 0.842939 0.636667 0.636667
0 1 0 1 0 1 0 7 1 0.833333 0.703884 0.715461
0 0 0 1 0 1 1 3 1 0.826790 0.731183 0.731183
1 0 0 1 0 1 0 2 1 0.821246 0.653466 0.653465
1 0 1 1 0 1 0 3 1 0.816415 0.606482 0.606481
0 0 0 0 0 1 1 5 0 0.783019 0.664234 0.664234
0 1 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 0.777607 0.526144 0.526144
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0.762025 0.578476 0.632353
1 0 0 1 0 1 1 6 0 0.737190 0.543103 0.590625
0 1 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 0.731707 0.485019 0.502913
0 0 0 1 0 1 0 14 0 0.705882 0.551793 0.578892
1 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 0 0.691792 0.426791 0.440514
0 1 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0.665722 0.311953 0.311953
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 0.639871 0.266376 0.268132
1 0 0 1 0 0 0 11 0 0.538091 0.272727 0.286093
0 0 0 0 0 1 0 8 0 0.534256 0.225547 0.238153
1 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0.517954 0.168855 0.168855
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0.494279 0.131631 0.131631
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 11 0 0.425307 0.152850 0.156706
10 S. R. SEDITA AND R. GRANDINETTI

Table 5. fsQCA results.

CONFIGURATION
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Clients (CLI)

Suppliers (SUP)

Competitors (COMP)

Universities (UNI)

KIBS

R&D

AGE
Raw coverage 0.164 0.227 0.104 0.103 0.061 0.074 0.069 0.051
Unique coverage 0.037 0.078 0.017 0.015 0.006 0.019 0.015 0.028
Consistency 0.824 0.874 0.860 0.842 0.880 0.841 0.918 0.979
Overall solution coverage 0.404
Overall solution consistency 0.852
Note: Black circles indicate the presence of a condition, while circles with an X indicate the absence of a condition; large
circles indicate core conditions and small ones indicate peripheral conditions. Blank spaces refer to ‘do not care’
conditions.

Table 5 also reports some measures of fitness: the values for the raw coverage, unique
coverage, and consistency of each configuration and the overall solution. The raw cover-
age informs of the capacity of a given configuration to cover the outcome. The unique
coverage is the proportion of the outcome that is explained by a given configuration
alone (Ragin 2006). The consistency measure refers to the proportion of the outcomes
predicted by each configuration.
The solution coverage informs on the proportion of outcome cases that are explained
by the combination of all configurations. Finally, the consistency of the model represents
an overall measure of the fitness of the model, referring to the proportion of the outcome
that is predicted by the model. The overall consistency was 85%, which was above the
threshold of 80%, and the overall coverage was 40%, which was largely above the
threshold of 25% (Schneider and Wagemann 2012).

4. Discussion
Overall, the analysis provides robust and original evidence on the variety of equally
effective OI strategies associated with a high innovation performance of SMEs. Results
provide answers to our research questions by showing that 1) multiple combinations
of collaborations are equally associated with high innovation performance and that 2)
a given type of partnership never works alone but always in combination with other types.
Regarding the specific configurations revealed by the fsQCA, our findings point to
several interesting insights. First, for all configurations, collaboration with clients was
a core condition for achieving high innovation performance goals. This critical role of
clients as innovation partners is supported by several empirical studies that have
 EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES 11

identified clients as actors with whom manufacturing firms and especially SMEs interact
and collaborate because they are carriers of knowledge relevant to the innovation pro-
cesses of their suppliers (De Marchi, Di Maria, and Ponte 2013; Faems, Van Looy, and
Debackere 2005; Sedita and Apa 2016; Tsai 2009; Zeng, Xie, and Tam 2010). The impor-
tance of absorbing knowledge from customers and, in some cases, co-producing inno-
vations with them has been documented not only concerning customers who use the
purchased products as inputs for their production processes but also in business-to-con-
sumer markets (Bogers, Afuah, and Bastian 2010), where end users often play the role of
innovation driver.
By contrast, in all configurations, collaborations with competitors were scarcely
exploited. The lack of relevance of this type of collaboration as an innovation driver
for SMEs finds support in the literature. While such collaborations may be beneficial
for a company carrying out basic research outside its boundaries, especially in pre-com-
petitive research programmes or co-production arrangements (Tether 2002), the
company may find it difficult to interact (Bacon, Williams, and Davies 2020) and feel
exposed to the risk of technology leakage (Ritala and Hurmelinna-Laukkanen 2013).
Even in industrial districts, where the potential for horizontal cooperation is very
high, given the geographical proximity and the information and knowledge flows that
enable district enterprises to imitate their neighbouring competitors, formal cooperation
is low (Camuffo and Grandinetti 2011; Malmberg and Maskell 2002).
We found that in four configurations (configurations 1–4), external innovation part-
ners were a substitute for internal R&D. This confirms that SMEs can achieve innovation
outcomes without investing directly in R&D (Rammer, Czarnitzki, and Spielkamp 2009;
Thomä and Zimmermann 2020). Importantly, these four configurations were those with
the highest raw coverage, that is, with the highest relative importance. Therefore, we
found strong support for the existence of innovation without (internal) research,
which has been associated with regions such as Veneto distinguished by a large preva-
lence of SMEs and industrial districts, i.e. regions for which the innovation pattern
has been called ‘grassroots’ (Asheim 2007; Cooke 1998). However, non-R&D SMEs are
not devoid of employees who engage full-time or at least part-time in innovation (Apa
et al. 2021; Hervás -Oliver et al. 2015; Rammer, Czarnitzki, and Spielkamp 2009). In
the non-R&D firms in our sample, these employees averaged 3.8 (in R&D firms, they
averaged 2.8, in addition to the 2.9 employed on average in R&D labs). Nevertheless,
this grassroots model cannot fully explain SMEs’ innovation strategies, since it coexists
with other OI configurations that require the presence of an R&D lab (configurations
5–8).
The group of non-R&D configurations can be further divided into two types.
Configurations 1 and 2 resemble the traditional grassroots way of achieving innovation
for manufacturing SMEs, which has a long history. It is rooted in a strong network of
cooperation with clients and suppliers, both of which are core conditions for the
outcome. Configurations 1 and 2 point to the presence of an OI system that is limited
to a supply chain, where the knowledge needed to develop innovations is produced
within the firms located at various points in the supply chain and through the vertical
relationships that connect them.
Configurations 3 and 4 represent a model of innovation organization in which vertical
collaborations are important; these collaborations are with customers in configuration 3
12 S. R. SEDITA AND R. GRANDINETTI

and with both customers and suppliers in configuration 4. They are complemented by
collaborations with KIBS, which are important actors in the OI landscape and appear
in both configurations 3 and 4 as a core condition for the outcome. The positive role
of KIBS in supporting SME innovation is reflected in previous studies of these service
providers (see Amancio et al. 2021 for a literature review). SMEs that are represented
by configurations 3 or 4 neither have internal R&D, nor relations with universities and
research centres as core or peripheral causal conditions. This means that collaborations
with KIBS are the only interface to knowledge sources otherwise not accessible directly by
the company.
The second set of configurations followed an innovation pattern that can be defined as
R&D-based since the presence of an R&D lab was a core causal condition for each of
them. Although their average raw coverage was markedly lower than that of the non-
R&D configurations, they demonstrate that SMEs can overcome the barriers to R&D
investments and become successful innovators (Rammer, Czarnitzki, and Spielkamp
2009). An additional element that distinguishes these configurations from the first
group is that they all demonstrate complementarity between internal and external inno-
vation resources. Regarding whether external sources are substitutes for or complemen-
tary to internal R&D – a question that has been a focus of debates on OI (Dahlander,
Gann, and Wallin 2021) – both answers find support in our research on SMEs.
Three of the four R&D configurations (5, 6, and 7) have in common the absence of
active collaboration with suppliers together with the presence of active collaboration
with customers as core causal conditions. By integrating the information obtained
from the questionnaire with other information acquired from the companies’ websites,
we found that structural factors accounted for this downstream–upstream asymmetry
of supply chain relationships. For instance, companies purchasing mainly standard
inputs are less likely to engage in fruitful innovation collaborations with their suppliers.
Configuration 5 had the lowest cooperation breadth and was based on the combination
of robust internal R&D and anchoring to the market through learning relationships with
clients. Configurations 6 and 7 also included cooperation with KIBS as a core condition.
Specifically, it is the R&D–KIBS coupling that characterizes these two configurations.
KIBS represent key players in the knowledge economy, being able to cherry picking
from dispersed sources of general scientific and technological information and
respond to local requirements and problems of client firms. By doing so KIBS work as
catalysts that bridge codified scientific and technical knowledge with tacit knowledge
and know-how, which is embedded in the daily practices of their client SMEs (Grandi-
netti 2018).
The role of KIBS as knowledge brokers has been proposed in many empirical studies
(e.g. Bettiol, Di Maria, and Grandinetti 2011; Miozzo et al. 2016; Pinto, Fernandez-Esqui-
nas, and Uyarra 2015) and confirmed by our findings. More specifically, in two of our
configurations (3 and 4), KIBS understand and satisfy the innovation needs of firms
enabling them to overcome cognitive constraints. In contrast, the fact that an internal
R&D structure is included among the causal conditions in both configurations 6 and 7 indi-
cates that our sample includes SMEs that can tackle innovative projects of a certain complexity.
Finally, configuration 8 captures the innovation modality of young or start-up com-
panies, which stand out from the other types of firms insofar as they are deeply
engaged in OI practices and in broad knowledge networks, where clients, suppliers,
 EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES 13

KIBS, universities, and internal R&D labs are used in combination to create conditions to
enhance their innovation capacity.
Our findings offer key insights into the university–SME collaboration conundrum. In
the configuration where collaborating with universities is important for innovation (even
if it appears as a peripheral condition), the presence of an internal R&D lab and collab-
oration with KIBS give the firm the necessary absorptive capacity to benefit from aca-
demic knowledge (Spithoven, Clarysse, and Knockaert 2010). While it is without a
doubt that collaborating with universities and research centres can endow firms with
crucial inventive ideas and preindustrial knowledge (Brunswicker and Vanhaverbeke
2015), it is also true that such opportunities can only be exploited if the potential receiver
of this external knowledge possesses the ability to assimilate it by interacting with its
owner (also called absorptive capacity - Cohen and Levinthal 1990). While configuration
8 suggests that the R&D–KIBS association is a requirement for SMEs-university relation-
ships to be effective in supporting firm innovation, the existence of configurations 6 and 7
tells us that this is not enough. More in general, it should be emphasized that collabor-
ation with universities is a causal condition for the outcome in only one of the eight
configurations, the configuration with the lowest raw coverage, which represents a
‘champion’ of the OI paradigm. Firms in our sample have a limited propensity to collab-
orate with universities (less than one in five do so), something in line with the grassroots
model of innovation at the regional level (Asheim 2007), and the UI relationship does not
necessarily translate into superior innovation performance.
If on the one side, collaboration with universities is conspicuously absent in almost all
the configurations, on the other side, engagement with KIBS represents a core condition
in five of our eight configurations. Thanks to their work as knowledge brokers, some of
the knowledge produced in universities that is potentially useful for SMEs can find an
indirect channel to contribute to their innovation performance.

5. Conclusions
Our research is aimed at deepening the current understanding of the relationship
between OI strategies and SMEs’ innovation performance by providing original empiri-
cal evidence from a sample of manufacturing SMEs in the Veneto region. Previous inno-
vation management studies tend to limit their analyses to investigate the effects of each
type of innovation partner on innovation performance through regression analyses while
failing to capture whether and how these different external collaborations can be com-
bined in configurations that perform equally well in terms of innovation. Existing
regional studies omit a more granular analysis of the drivers of innovation performance
of regions, which is nonetheless highly dependent on the structure of the innovation net-
works of their firms.
To fill this gap, our research contributes to the innovation management and regional
studies literature by offering an alternative perspective of analysis of the study of the
relationship between OI strategies and the innovation performance of SMEs. Indeed,
our configurational approach enabled us, first, to point out different combinations of
external collaborations associated with similar performance outcomes and, second, to
identify matches between different causal conditions and thus to identify complementary
and substitution effects, as emerged in the discussion section.
14 S. R. SEDITA AND R. GRANDINETTI

5.1. Managerial implications

Our research shows that SMEs adopt a variety of innovation networks, in which all poss-
ible innovation resources are not necessarily mobilized. These findings suggest managers
improve resource allocation because the development of the full set of external collabor-
ations for innovation is not necessary to reach high innovation performance, but rather
specific combinations of a subset of them. Some OI strategies suit SMEs with an R&D lab,
while some work better for SMEs without an R&D lab. Collaboration with universities
appears to be particularly difficult to translate into positive innovation results for
SMEs, while other knowledge providers (KIBS) are more accessible and fruitful. More-
over, the engagement of clients and suppliers in the innovation process is almost
always beneficial, although collaborations with clients appear to be more relevant than
collaborations with suppliers. Managers should be aware of the OI modes that suit the
nature of the firm, its experience, and its business model.

5.2. Policy implications

Our findings also offer useful guidelines for policymakers. Taking the point of view of
regional policymakers, the most relevant findings pertain to the role of KIBS and univer-
sities as knowledge providers supporting the innovation processes of regional enterprises.
As we have seen, while KIBS are well present in our configurations, universities are
almost absent. Such evidence lends itself to two considerations and related implications.
On the one hand, since collaboration between SMEs and KIBS appears to be so signifi-
cant for high innovation performance, more actions in favour of the KIBS–industry
linkage – which has thus far always remained in the shadows concerning the UI
linkage (Corrocher and Cusmano 2014) – should be implemented. Collaborations
with KIBS tend to be a ‘substitute’ for collaborations with universities in SMEs, which
confirms the role of KIBS as brokers that facilitate the convergence between scientific
and technical knowledge.
On the other hand, the fact that collaboration with universities is absent even in our
R&D-based configurations suggests a gap between what is produced by university R&D
labs and the innovation goals of firms. This consideration is in line with the findings of
some quantitative studies on innovation in European regions (Ganau and Grandinetti
2021; Hervás-Oliver et al. 2021), which show that public R&D expenditure is not corre-
lated significantly with regional innovation performance despite being the most empha-
sized factor as a driver of regional innovation performance. Therefore, it is not a matter
of simply favouring an increase in university R&D expenditure, but of selectively pro-
moting university R&D capable of intercepting the innovation needs of firms and
business innovation projects.
The two policies suggested by our research are not mutually exclusive but complemen-
tary in building an effective innovation ecosystem at the regional level (Oh et al. 2016).
Consistent with this perspective, a special note is due concerning the specificities of
younger firms, particularly start-ups. These emerge as OI champions in our study, as
they can combine a wide variety of innovations and engage simultaneously with the
market, technical, and scientific knowletor to reach a high innovation performance.
This suggests the potential benefits of policy interventions to support the start-up
 EUROPEAN PLANNING STUDIES 15

ecosystem through the creation and maintenance of specific innovation infrastructures,

such as angel networks, business incubators, and science parks (Apa, Grandinetti, and
Sedita 2017). In addition, OI policy interventions for start-ups should carefully
monitor the efficacy of organizations supporting the early-stage development of SMEs.

5.3. Limitations and further research

Our study has some limitations that should be acknowledged and that may represent
interesting opportunities for future research. First, since the empirical results are geo-
graphically bounded, our findings might be region-specific. Further research could
base the analysis on samples of SMEs from other regions to allow the generalization of
the results. Second, since fsQCA is partially based on criteria selected by the researchers
who performed the analysis, some interpretational bias could be acknowledged. In
addition, one variable that our research did not capture is the location of partners:
having this would allow us to distinguish between regional versus extra-regional firm net-
works, a not negligible piece of information if we need to rethink innovation policies,
particularly regarding the involvement of universities or other knowledge providers
(Marzucchi, Antonioli, and Montresor 2015).
Finally, since the fsQCA methodology allows for a limited number of causal con-
ditions to be included in the analysis, future research based on multiple case studies
might add contingent factors influencing firms’ contexts to the investigation of configur-
ations of collaborations or even analyze the contribution of the different partners to the
development of specific innovations and their interdependencies.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID
Silvia Rita Sedita http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4589-6934

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