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Open innovation as a practice to enhance sustainable supply chain management in SMEs

ABSTRACT Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can take advantage of existing market limitations by offering new sustainable technologies and business models. The literature on open innovation examines the capabilities of firms to integrate external actors in order to create value. In this context, the research highlights the need to understand practices, the processes implemented and the interfaces between certain internal functions and suppliers of SMEs. Our study is based on SMEs in the textile industry and allows us to observe the practices of sustainable purchasing and supply management in a type of organisation and an industry that are not often addressed in the literature. Our results highlight open innovation as a practice within a sustainable supply chain that offers opportunities for mutual gain and learning without creating imbalance between customer and supplier and by developing sustainable purchasing.