How to Find the Right Partner? Open Innovation Partner Selection Process
Farzana Chowdhury
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review the paper. The paper examines the selection process of partners for open innovation. The article discusses an important and timely topic, but I have a few concerns regarding the current version of the paper:
1. Let me start with an introduction. One of the purposes of the introduction is to identify the research gap and the research question in the early section of the paper. The beginning portion of the introduction does not identify the gap at all. Instead, it just talks about how open innovation was started. The introduction also does not identify the research question or questions.
2. In addition to my previous comment, the introduction needs to include a discussion about the contributions of the current study. The current version of the paper does not discuss contribution at all. To address this shortcoming, it would be helpful to identify the gap in the literature first.
3. The paper needs to have an overarching theory. There is no mention of what theoretical framework was used.
4. I understand that you have hypotheses associated with the paper, but there is no theoretical section that explicitly mentions them. The article dives right into the results section after the introduction.
5. I am surprised that there is no discussion about what methods were used to address the questions of the paper. Did you use a survey? Secondary data? Interviews?
6. There is no discussion about research data; how was the data collected? How did you clean the data? Any outliers? What is your sample size? What types of organizations did you include?
I don’t know if this is a paper for a class. If it’s not, I suggest you look at a journal article and follow the formatting. The purpose of research articles is to be able to replicate the study.
Best wishes with the project and publishing it.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for asking me to review this paper, which deals with the partner selection factors in open innovation.
The paper could be improved if the authors structure it appropriately. After the Introduction, a literature review must be presented, followed by the methodology section and research results. Then, discussions and conclusions must be proposed.
The Literature review section is missing. Limitations and future studies are not included in the paper.
The abstract indicates that the research was conducted through interviews with experts and practitioners. But there were “three cases studied” and only practitioners' interview results are discussed. Who were the mentioned experts?
Before presenting Results in the second section, the methodology needs to be presented and explained thoroughly. The research approach and sampling need to be justified. Why were chosen 2 companies and 1 university for this study?
Table 1 needs a comprehensive explanation in the text.
The findings could be discussed in relation to the previous studies in the Discussion section.
More recent references need to be included.
Line 61-62: “Compared to previous studies examining the implementation of open innovation as an innovation strategy” - The references needed to support this argument. What previous studies? Conducted by whom, where and when?
Please check and improve the text to clearly communicate ideas. For example, sentence 555-556 seems incomplete: “Refers to various problems in the implementation of open innovation [6], it shows that the problem of finding a suitable partner is still ignored and it is not easy to do”.
I sincerely hope that my comments provide support to the authors to improve the paper.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Author(s),
Thank you for the submitted manuscript. The partner selection process in open innovation is, indeed, a very relevant research area, and in the same time, it is also a hot topic for decision-makers of organizations experimenting open innovation.
In spite of the increased relevance of your research, the main weakness of it is its overall scientific value added, because of the following key issues, that must be extensively addressed in order to be able to get your manuscript published:
1. Literature review
Although you mention some important basic literature data, your overall literature review completely lacks the recent scientific evidence of open innovation. I was rather surprised to see only two references from the last 5 years, both published in 2018. You have not cited any research data between 2019-2022. I don't think this is acceptable when you would like to discuss such a relevant topic like open innovation. This is also a reason why you haven't mention anything from areas with extensive research from the last years e.g. the role and functioning of inter-organizational innovation networks that would also significantly influence partner selection criteria.
2. Methodology
Your methodology would also be more credible if you'd develop more the scientific arguments from the literature for the used case studies. I would suggest you to start your manuscript with an extensive and very updated literature review, and immediately after, present your methodology (not at the end of the manuscript which is now the case)
3. Results
Since there is a significant gap in your literature review, as detailed above, it is very difficult to judge the scientific added value and the novelty of your research results.
I would very much recommend an extensive, major revision of the manuscript, starting with rewriting the literature and methodology. After that, all research data should be aligned with the novel scientific evidence, based on that, your conclusions should be reframed, as well.
Yours sincerely,
Reviewer
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The paper is relevant and discuss an important empirical gap.
There are some points that turn the text confused, so I recommend to review this points.
l. 27 Open Innovation is mentioned as OI, but is sould be mentioned at 1st time as “Open innovation (OI)”
there are some redundant in text: after quote OI the author repeat the word innovation.
L.31-32 reference out of style (West & Bogers, 2017)
Where are references 4 and 5?
Maybe some literature on “trust and reputation” must be called in lines 53-59
It is central to the paper structure to present the Material & methods BEFORE the results
There are some imbalance among the 3 “cases”, 6 interviews in a research based company, 3 interviews at Uni, , and 2 in the third case.
It is not clear it the 3 institutions are part of one collaborative process, so there are just one case, or they are 3 cases (so it woud be a multicase)
The author should expose which documentation were used.
The main construction of the research is the Table 1, So if the author found the 3rd order themes in filed maybe this table could be “inverted” , i.e., the firs column should be the selective empirical evidence, and the last, in the right side, the “third order theme (emerged from filed)”
Whats is FSI?
Wich analysis techniques were used? (the table suggest “content analysis”)
References
3 incomplete
24 incomplete
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for responding to my comments point-by-point and clearly demonstrating the improvement. I appreciate your efforts.
I can confirm that the authors have significantly improved the paper. My suggestions have been taken into consideration.
The paper can be published. 

Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
Thank you for the revised manuscript. I accept the submitted version.
Best wishes,
Reviewer
