Since Chesbrough (2003)’s seminal work, “open innovation” (OI) is a buzzword that many companies and academics constantly refer to. This paper addresses the question of implementation of outside-in open innovation, and analyzes how companies adopting this approach implement it in terms of partnership development and internal organization. To do so, we rely on OI and strategic alliances literature. We then conduct a multiple case study analysis on 18 companies famous for their OI practices. We study what impact OI approaches had on their innovation methods, their way of managing partners, and their internal organization. We thus show that OI approaches are not always based on an extensive openness of external partnerships, and that companies can choose among three OI strategies: topic-oriented OI, partner-oriented OI or fully open approaches, which are not mutually exclusive. We also show they face a trade-off between breadth and depth of partnerships, which evolves over time. As for internal organization structures to handle OI approaches, we find that companies usually dedicate staff and budget resources to the project at the beginning of the process. When this new culture is widely developed and the OI approaches mature enough, it does no longer require any specific staff or department.
