Does it pay to be open? Corporate knowledge development, community-based innovation and value creation

El trabajo investiga los beneficios que una empresa podría obtener por sus contribuciones de código fuente como se refleja en los precios del mercado de valores. El estudio se basa en la línea de investigación de la innovación basada en la comunidad y trata de explicar cómo una empresa puede beneficiarse por contribuir al bien común. Las hipótesis se prueban con un dato nuevo que captura las reacciones del mercado de valores a 149 notas de prensa realizadas durante un período de trece años. Los resultados sugieren que las contribuciones de código abierto generan retornos anormales positivos para la empresa contribuyente. Además, nos descubrimos que las contribuciones de código nuevo en lugar de código existente generan mayor valor para la empresa y que las contribuciones de código nuevo a los proyectos de software dirigidos a los usuarios finales en lugar de los desarrolladores generan sistemáticamente aún mayores retornos.

Firms are increasingly contributing knowledge to the open and collaborative product development organizations known as user innovation communities. This behavior is perplexing in light of traditional theory in strategy and innovation management, which emphasizes protecting knowledge in order to sustain competitive advantage. As a result, explanations for why firms contribute knowledge to innovation communities have focused on indirect sources of value generation, such as the introduction of complementary products and services, displacing competitors in the value chain, and standard setting. However, another powerful source of value generation exists: the ability to co-develop knowledge that will subsequently be used in commercial products. We build a theoretical basis for this possibility: by drawing on recent work in the area of user and community-based innovation we explain why insights from innovative users can generate value for firms. We test our hypotheses on a novel data set that captures the stock market response to open source code contributions made by public, U.S.-based, software firms over a thirteen-year period. We find that knowledge contributions generate pecuniary value for firms. We also find that contributions of more novel knowledge generate greater value for firms than contributions of updated or existing knowledge. Finally, we find that contributions of novel knowledge intended for products aimed at generalist consumers rather than experts generate even greater returns.