Is there a link between Open Innovation, Strategic Agility and Intellectual Capital?

Firms’ and startups’ ability to enhance their level of innovation in a world characterized by VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) factors depends mostly on resilience processes like the capacity for self-organization and self-management. Such processes require the devise of new dynamic strategies and adoption of more flexible and effective management approaches that have emerged in recent years, like the paradigms of Strategic Agility (SA) and Open Innovation (OI). Especially for startups, adoption of these paradigms may foster cooperation and establishing collaborative ties based on trust and shared economic goals that is considered among the main ways to overcome the limitation of internal resources, allowing access to additional or complementary resources. The firm's value derived from interactions with other parties can be defined as Relational Capital and is a crucial aspect of Intellectual Capital (IC). Although the issues of Strategic Agility and Open Innovation have been widely discussed, and numerous research have confirmed the role of Intellectual Capital in the development and application of an OI paradigm to date, no research directly correlates IC and SA. To fill this gap, the present work carries out a literature review, bringing together systematic findings of previous research looking for a relationship between these three topics, but also on studies that independently analyse OI, SA, and IC in the context ofstartups in order to be able to identify commonalities that will allow points of intersection to be drawn between them, facilitating the identification of a link. Open Innovation (OI) leverages external knowledge and resources, enhanced by Intellectual Capital (IC), particularly through diverse skills and strong external networks, to drive innovation. Strategic Agility (SA) enables quick adaptation and resource reconfiguration, facilitating the effective implementation of OI. In turn, OI and IC support the dynamism required for SA, creating a symbiotic relationship that enhances overall business agility and innovation capacity. This study has vital theoretical implications, enhancing knowledge in entrepreneurial innovation and startup innovativeness, particularly in strategic agility and open innovation, and offering new insights into intellectual capital's role in startups' strategic development as for practical implications, providing evidence of intellectual capital's impact on startups' innovation and agility benefits entrepreneurs in building valuable IC during startup phases and aids institutions and incubators in supporting startup growth.