Inbound, Outbound or Coupled? When being a family firm leads to higher innovativeness

Drawing from the open innovation (OI) and family business literatures, the aim of this study is twofold. First, it distinguishes among inbound, outbound and coupled OI processes and investigates to what extent these OI processes influence a firm’s innovativeness, in terms of product, process and organizational innovation. Second, it looks at the impact of being a family firm in moderating these relationships. Based on a unique database on 119 Italian firms, the hypotheses are tested through a hierarchical moderated multiple regression analysis. The results show that inbound and coupled processes positively influence product and process innovation, while outbound and coupled processes positively influence organizational innovation. However, being a family firm (FF) moderates these relationships: for higher levels of inbound and outbound processes, being a FF influences product innovation more positively than being a non-FF; for higher levels of coupled process, FFs perform better than non-FFs in terms of process innovation; for higher levels of inbound (outbound) OI, organizational innovation is higher for non-FF (FF) firms. Our results contribute to the ability-willingness paradox, showing how, once adopted, family firms are more able than their non-family counterparts to benefit from OI processes, but also shed light on possible criticalities that family firms could face with respect to organizational innovation.