‘Ready for Take‐off’: How Open Innovation influences startup success

The formation of new ventures is among the most significant sources of technological innovation and fast economic development. Nonetheless, most attempts at starting new businesses will be unsuccessful. This study seeks to predict new venture success (‘Take‐off’) based on different factors observed in the pre‐startup phase. We apply the resource‐based view of the firm (RBV) to develop a framework synthesizing the entrepreneurship and Open Innovation (OI) literatures on new venture creation. We then assess the influence of three categories of internal resources (finance, technology, human capital) and introduce the concept of teams' ‘openness’ in the founding process as a crucial organizational capital resource shaping startup success. Drawing on a sample of 134 business plans submitted to the final round of the INTEL Global Challenge at UC Berkeley, we significantly associate ‘Take‐off’ to each category of resources. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to emphasize the relevance of teams' ability to combine and transform their initial resources through the pursuit of OI (i.e., the elaboration of organizational capital resources) in explaining startup success. Our analysis extends RBV‐based research on nascent entrepreneurship and suggests new fields of research into OI.