In the last decade, the open innovation paradigm has aroused considerable interest, in both the academic and the industrial world (Chesbrough, 2003). However, studies on this topic have mainly focussed on certain industries, such as high-tech (Vrontis et al., 2017). Despite the maturity of the F&B sector, there are still relatively few studies of F&B companies engaging in this innovation approach (Sarkar and Costa, 2008; Lefebvre et al., 2015). However, changes in the business environment within the F&B industry are influencing the way firms organize their innovation activities (Bresciani et al., 2016; Vrontis et al., 2016) forcing firms to consider internal vs external dilemmas in the organization of their innovation activities. As highlighted in the call for paper and in other prior research in the open innovation field, the shortening of the products lifecycle, digitalization, the changes in consumers’ taste and needs and other relevant factors, call for a new open and networked approach to accelerate innovation and reduce risks (Bigliardi and Galati, 2013). This is confirmed by the fact that the external environment and the network that F&B firms build outside their own boundaries are particularly important (Lefebvre et al., 2015; Castellano and Khelladi, 2016). In this timely special issue, the papers specifically address emerging trends in open, networked and dynamic innovation in the F&B industry, utilizing qualitative and quantitative analysis as well as more conceptual research.

The papers collected in this issue have been produced by 13 authors spanning a range of countries such as Italy, Cyprus, Denmark, UK and Liechtenstein and they address, within the F&B context, topics such as ideas and knowledge generation, new product development (NPD) processes, marketing strategies and branding activities. Overall, these papers explicitly or implicitly refer to the open innovation paradigm in the F&B industry highlighting some key relevant factors that can fertilize other streams of research such as family business networks or business models (BM)(Bigliardi and Galati, 2013; Del Giudice and Maggioni, 2014; Broccardo et al., 2015). In general, these papers can be divided into four main groups that are related to different sub-topics in the F&B industry research: family firm innovation; BM innovation; co-creation with costumers; and mapping of new fields and systematization of the literature.