Organizational Learning Capability and Open innovation as An Instrument for the Development of Traditional Bamboo Craft SMEs in West Java Indonesia Rina Ariyanthi Dewi, Aurik Gustomo, Yudo Anggoro
School of Business and Management, Bandung Institute of Technology (SBM ITB). Jalan Ganesa 10, Bandung.
Abstract
Firm^s ability to innovate has become crucial aspect to gain competitive advantage, this also applies to traditional SMEs such as the bamboo craft SMEs. West Java province in Indonesia has enormous bamboo materials for diverse products and service sectors. Despite these potentials, bamboo craft SMEs in West Java faced various challenges and innovation gap to utilize the plentiful bamboo resources. This study builds upon the organizational learning and open innovation literature to overcome the challenges faced by bamboo craft SMEs in West Java and materialize bamboo^s potentials among them. Because there is little research on the topic of bamboo craft industry or the open innovation combines organizational learning literature for traditional SMEs, we collected qualitative data using semi-structured interview from three bamboo craft SMEs in West Java to analyze the main challenges faced by these traditional SMEs. The study reveals that traditional bamboo craft SMEs in West Java faced two main challenges, first, difficulty in new product development and, second, difficulty in process development. This study proposes a combination of organizational learning capability and open innovation to overcome these challenges. As a result, we suggest that learning and generating innovation based on three external knowledge sources will excel and have a positive impact on new product development and process development of traditional bamboo craft SMEs, namely supplier innovation, user innovation, and inter-organizational innovation. Based on our findings further research is required on fostering open innovation to improve human resource capacity to generate globally competitive products.
Keywords: Open innovation, organizational learning capability, bamboo craft SMEs, product development
