Open Innovation and Experiential Knowledge: Key Drivers of Dual Innovation and Organizational Memory in Latin America and Caribbean Entrepreneurs

Abstract

In a constantly evolving business world, the interaction between the different aspects of innovation and knowledge management is becoming increasingly important. This study addresses the underexplored impacts of open innovation, experiential knowledge management, dual-innovation implementation, and organizational memory in Latin America and the Caribbean. Through an online survey of 172 entrepreneurs and using partial least squares structural equations (PLS-SEM) the results reflected significant impacts among the study variables. The results reflect that entrepreneurs not only implement innovations by managing and assimilating knowledge, but also transfer and valorize this knowledge in the exploitation phase, thus increasing their competitiveness. The combined use of internal and external knowledge is highlighted to foster a collaborative culture that is key to the effective implementation of innovation. This study is innovative in revealing the cyclical and nonlinear nature of the open innovation process in which organizational memory is crucial. This highlights how organizational memory, transformed into transactive memory, drives a continuous cycle of open innovation strategies, facilitating the dynamic process of information acquisition, encoding, storage, and retrieval.