Article Open innovation from the inside: Employee-driven innovation in support of absorptive capacity for inbound open innovation Eric Michael Laviolette Novancia Business School, France Renaud Redien-Collot Novancia Business School, France Ann-Charlotte Teglborg Novancia Business School, France Abstract This article analyzes how employee-driven innovation (EDI), an innovation policy mainly aimed at non-research and development (non-R&D) personnel, can be supportive of a firm’s absorptive capacity for inbound open innovation. Building on Vega-Jurado et al.’s integrative model of absorptive capacity in an R&D context, we adopt an abductive methodological approach to develop four proposals on the various functions of EDI in the light of an extreme single case study: (1) EDI fosters and sustains the structural antecedents of absorptive capacity; (2) EDI develops a broader range of gatekeepers among non-R&D personnel; (3) EDI diversifies knowledge sources (scientific, industrial, and user based) as well as different types of innovation (incremental, disruptive, product, and process) with internal and external knowledge combinations; and (4) EDI favors doing, using, and interacting in addition to science, technology, and innovation learning processes. Keywords absorptive capacity, employee-driven innovation, inbound open innovation Introduction Absorptive capacity is one of the major sources of organi- zational knowledge. It can be generated in a variety of ways (Knockaert et al., 2010), outside the traditional scope of research and development (R&D) personnel (Robertson et al., 2012) with various types of gatekeepers (Jones, 2006) importing new ideas from outside (Easterby-Smith, et al., 2008). However, while such a mosaic of individuals is postulated as a key determinant of absorptive capacity, there is very little research on how any employee of a firm can contribute to its constitution and sustainment. Employee-driven innovation (EDI) encourages R&D and non-R&D employees to engage in innovation practices whatever their educational background and their position in the organization are (Aaltonen and Hytti, 2014; Kristiansen and Bloch-Poulsen, 2010). This democratization of innovation has gained acceptance in many large European companies sharing their practices within professional net- works. Employees are being encouraged to innovate out- side the scope of their day-to-day activity by tapping in external and internal knowledge sources and integrating them in new ways within the scope of their company. In that respect, EDI may be considered as an inbound open innovation process defined as the exploration and integra- tion of external knowledge sources by collaborating with multiple stakeholders, including the development of cus- tomer, supplier, competitor, and research institution Corresponding author: Eric Michael Laviolette, Novancia Business School, 3 Rue Armand Moisant, 75015 Paris, France. Email: elaviolette@novancia.fr The International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation 1–12 ª The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1465750316670490 ijei.sagepub.com