This Dissertation is intended to examine how marketing managers can utilize the
inflow and outflow of knowledge/communication to improve project and firm
performance metrics under the open innovation paradigm. The dissertation shows the
applicability of the NPD and consumer engagement perspectives to a range of strategic
issues, such as management of network and knowledge assets in community-based NPD,
management of inflow and outflow openness under team diversity, and utilization of
social media marketing and traditional marketing such as advertising to increase new
product sales.
First, this dissertation reveals that for inflow knowledge management, it is
important to take an integrative approach to align knowledge and network assets in open
innovation. The results show that network depth-knowledge breadth and network
breadth-knowledge depth combinations are optimal for open innovation success, but
network breadth-knowledge breadth or network depth-knowledge depth combinations are
suboptimal. Contrary to the traditional wisdom, more network or knowledge assets in
open innovation do not necessarily lead to better success.
Second, this dissertation examines both the inflow and outflow of knowledge and
proposes an integrative theoretical model to study the configuration of inflow and
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outflow openness. The results suggest that just having a wide array of connection from
inflow openness does not guarantee development success. It also needs to consider the
dimension of performance and team structure.
Third, this dissertation investigates the interplay of two major marketing tools of
traditional advertising and social media activities on consumer engagement. It
differentiates Consumer-to-Brand and Consumer-to-Consumer engagement and suggests
that traditional advertising paly different mechanisms to enhance or reduce the
effectiveness of social media activities on Consumer-to-Brand and Consumer-to-
Consumer engagement, and ultimately on new product sales.