Adoptionsbarrieren bei der Umsetzung von Open Innovation Strategien in Kleinen- und Mittleren Unternehmen in Österreich – Erfahrungen, Ursachen, Verbesserungspotential

The actual economic situation is characterized by accelerated technological change and merging economic areas. In this situation of global competition, fast-changing markets and rapid developments lead to ever shorter product life cycles and thus to a constantly increasing pressure on companies operating in this demanding environment.
In such a challenging situation, the ability to innovate is a major factor influencing the competitiveness on the market, because the ability to innovate also significantly strengthens the economic success and thus the sustainability of companies.
In the last few years, the opening up of the innovation process and the integration and use of external resources in form of cooperation and networks under the name of "open innovation" has now established itself as a recognized paradigm shift.
Particularly with regard to the special conditions and existing restrictions on innovation management in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this opening up of the innovation process and the associated integration of external resources is considered as a successful method in order to close the existing gaps in the innovation process of SMEs.
Since the term "open innovation" is widely used in business and science and as a result, more and more companies and organizations are jumping on this trend, barriers and hindering factors are also increasingly being observed in the application and implementation of such open innovation strategies.
Despite the obvious economic relevance of this topic, there is currently very little available literature dealing with the adoption barriers and the resistance to the implementation of open innovation strategies and thus, allow conclusions about potential possibilities for improvement.
Especially for Austria, there are currently hardly any exploitable research results available.
Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to investigate adoption barriers and hindering factors to the implementation of open innovation strategies in SMEs in Austria, and furthermore identify potential improvements for future implementations.