What drives open innovation in Vietnamese manufacturing firms? Adaptive capacity at the nexus of strategy and orientation

This study investigates the strategic drivers and performance outcomes of open innovation in Vietnamese manufacturing firms, with a particular focus on entrepreneurial orientation, proactive environmental strategy, and adaptive capacity. Grounded in the Natural Resource-Based View and Dynamic Capabilities Theory, the study develops and empirically tests an integrated framework explaining how strategic orientations are transformed into open product and open process innovation through adaptive capacity. Using survey data from 122 manufacturing firms, the results show that proactive environmental strategy is a stronger and more consistent driver of both forms of open innovation than entrepreneurial orientation and plays a central role in enhancing firms’ adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity partially mediates the relationship between proactive environmental strategy and open product innovation but does not mediate entrepreneurial orientation effects. These findings highlight the importance of embedding proactive environmental strategy within adaptive organizational mechanisms to leverage open innovation for sustainable value creation in emerging-economy manufacturing contexts. • Proactive environmental strategy has a stronger effect than entrepreneurial orientation on open innovation in Vietnamese manufacturing firms, underscoring the strategic importance of sustainability in resource-constrained settings. • Adaptive capacity partially mediates the relationship between proactive environmental strategy and open product innovation, indicating that sustainability initiatives enhance firms’ ability to absorb and reconfigure external knowledge. • Open product innovation yields significant economic and environmental performance gains, whereas open process innovation shows no significant effects, highlighting the superior strategic and sustainability value of product-focused open collaboration.