Introduction

Changes that are taking place in the contemporary environment of enterprises have resulted in a situation when it is more effective to create open innovation based on cooperation with external actors rather than doing it within a closed model. The innovation process is open in the conception and commercialisation stage. The concept of open innovation is a paradigm according to which companies can and should use external as well as internal ideas in their innovation processes and internal and external paths to the market.

There is a wide variety of reasons why enterprises decide to opt for open innovation model. In the literature those reasons are referred to as “motives” or “drivers.” Since most researchers use both terms interchangeably, the authors consider them as a synonymous. This paper is aimed at identifying the main motives/drivers for creating open innovation in enterprises operating in the Polish market. Conclusions were drawn based on the results of the study carried out in 2019 on a group of 122 innovative enterprises operating in the Polish market within the framework of a research project titled “Motives and Barriers for Creating Open Innovation.”

Due to the absence of a universal list of potential motives for creating open innovation that could be generally approved by all researchers, the authors proposed their own classification that was empirically validated on a group of innovative enterprises in Poland.