Knowledge management and open innovation in agri-food crowdfunding

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between knowledge management capabilities and successful open innovation within agri-food businesses. This particular piece of research focuses on agri-food businesses which utilize crowdfunding platforms. Design/methodology/approach: The research adopts a survey-based methodology, which is useful in enhancing the generalization of results. The final sample includes 80 cases for the analysis. The model and the hypotheses were tested through a hierarchical regression model. Findings: This research assesses the importance of knowledge management capabilities for successful open innovation in crowdfunding for agri-food businesses. In particular, it emerged that IT-based knowledge exploitation capabilities are enablers of open innovation strategies. Additionally, it emerged that knowledge exploration capabilities can positively mediate the relationship between IT-based knowledge exploitation capabilities and open innovation in the context of agri-food businesses. Originality/value: To the authors’ best knowledge, few researchers have explored this topic and, as such, there is a need to better conceptualize this intriguing phenomenon and to provide empirical evidence to support it.