Although corporate venture capital (CVC) has been studied as part of open innovation (OI), assumptions about knowledge flows crossing organizational boundaries between "the inside" and "the outside" have limited those explorations. Drawing on an abductive approach to grounded theorizing, this article introduces an intuitive yet novel framework that traces the sources and applications of knowledge obtained from CVC to derive new conditions for how those investments allow companies to orchestrate knowledge flows to overcome barriers and increase their innovation effectiveness. Besides exploring traditional OI knowledge flows within the CVC context, this article further identifies and examines both outside-out knowledge flows (which help to shape an ecosystem for a corporate innovator) and inside-in knowledge flows (which overcome internal silos to achieve real innovation impact).

During the last decade, MedTech companies started to invest in building digital healthcare platforms to maintain their competitiveness in the Digital Economy. However, launching a new digital platform business revealed several challenges that MedTech incumbents must overcome, including value impedance. This is caused by digital transformation gaps, which, when left unmanaged, can stall digital healthcare platforms' growth and even lead to their demise. This article distills four dynamic capabilities: sensing the internal environment, value-capturing through connectedness, orchestrating silos, and transforming organizational boundaries. These mitigate value impedance and bestow competitive advantage to MedTech incumbents' digital platform business.