| In today's economy, enlightened firms collaborate to innovate openly across the entire innovation chain. To sustain competitive advantage in today's fast moving open innovation ecosystem, the executive leadership of a firm should create and sustain a new business model for open innovation. The four building blocks of an open innovation business model are capacities that allow it to accumulate social capital, organically build network ties, span boundaries of firms to access knowledge, and maintain absorptive capacity crucial for organizational learning and knowledge transfer. This paper develops the Innovative Capacity Index (ICI), based on these four building blocks, to provide executive leadership with a dashboard mechanism to track and cultivate the innovative behaviors and actions of the firm for competitive advantage. The ICI measures provide visibility into a portrayal of "who is talking to whom about what" and give leaders the insights needed to reinforce and redirect priorities, resources, recognition and rewards to influence desired activities and behaviors. Executive leadership can then adapt and refine the corporate strategy, investments, practices and culture to achieve and sustain enduring competitive advantage. |
