The effects of inbound open innovation, outbound open innovation, and team role diversity on open source software project performance

This manuscript delineates two open innovation strategies, inbound and outbound, to examine how their tradeoff effects on open source software project performance are affected by project team role diversity. We leverage Opportunity-Motivation-Ability (OMA) theory to explain that inbound open innovation provides opportunities to access external knowledge in open innovation community networks; but whether a project can absorb and utilize such external knowledge depends on outbound open innovation and project team role diversity, which influence the team members? motivation and ability to do so. Using a large sample of open source software projects, the empirical findings suggest project performance should be distinguished as internal (technical performance) and external (market performance) to understand the effects of open innovation strategy. Technical performance is enhanced with a coupled open innovation strategy that leverages both high outbound open innovation and high inbound open innovation, in conjunction with low team role diversity. However, an inbound open innovation strategy is optimal for market performance, particularly when team role diversity is high. Thus, project team role diversity explains the trade-off effects of inbound and outbound open innovation strategies on project technical performance and market performance.