What drives biopharmaceutical firms' exploratory openness? A comparative process tracing approach to the analysis of R&D microfoundations

By responding to the call for a multidimensional approach in the open innovation domain, the present work aims to clarify the interplay of different internal R&D resources as microfoundations through which exploratory openness is encouraged and enacted.By combining the use of fuzzy- set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and process tracing, we undertake an in-depth analysis of specific causal mechanisms, linking a combination of internal R&D resources to predicting biopharmaceutical exploratory openness. In line with the theoretical framework, the breadth and depth of the firm knowledge base were translated into three different sources of diversity, which represent the three fsQCA conditions: R&D team composition, corporate research relationships, and R&D resource allocation.The study reveals that diversity in R&D resources contributes in a multifaceted way to firms' exploratory openness and is determined by the interactions among different dimensions of diversity.