Cesário, MarisaFernandes, Silvia C. Pinto de Brito2026-01-222026-01-222019-121757-7802http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/28169Smart Innovation is often considered as the capability of firms to create new opportunities through a dynamic relationship with the main actors in their setting, fostering higher innovation performances and sustainable competitive advantage. However, innovation indicators of Portugal in Europe show that Portuguese firms miss an open innovation strategy to cope quick and easily with complex new challenges. Relying on the results from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS 2014) this paper focuses on the analysis of the relationship between a smart‐open innovation approach and firms’ innovation performance in the sample. Furthermore, and using the LINEAR (automatic linear modelling) procedure in SPSS 24.0, statistically significant relationships are established between proxies for smart‐open innovation and a score for innovation performance. The findings provide relevant conclusions about how Portuguese firms should explore their networking strategies, both in terms of scale (or smart ‐ local/geographically) and scope (or open ‐ a variety of agents) in order to match their innovation to market, toward a continuous business value.engInnovation performanceLINEAROpen innovationScaleScopeSmart innovationjournal article10.1111/rsp3.12149