Local Ecosystem Open Innovation Intermediaries as Key Enablers for the Development of Incumbents' Digital Technology Partnerships

Partnerships between incumbents and digital technology entrepreneurs are prone to develop innovative solutions needed by the coming “new normal” society. This paper focuses on the banking sector, which is currently facing huge challenges related to open innovation and digitalization. The qualitative approach adopted is based on observations and interviews involving actors from a given ecosystem: Luxembourg. The objective of this article is to explore the roles of innovation intermediaries in the capability development of incumbent firms’ to establish new collaborations with innovative digital technology startups. We employ the dynamic capabilities framework to tackle this issue. Our findings show the crucial complementary roles of both external and internal innovation intermediaries in enabling digital technology partnerships and developing incumbents’ relational capabilities. This paper contributes to knowledge in the field of strategic management by showing how traditional, highly structured organizations such as banks can regenerate their dynamic capabilities by being strongly engaged in their open innovation ecosystem and connected to a variety of actors from their ecosystem, especially open innovation intermediaries. For policy makers, this research suggests the deployment of means to empower these key interfaces to act in favor of their ecosystems.