As an extension to the research on “Open Innovation”, this thesis, based on an empirical study of university spin-offs (USOs), intends to make some contributions to the increasing understanding of “openness”, not only for micro and small size firms, but also in another context other than U.S.. Moreover, instead of analyzing from a traditional firm-level perspective, the study approaches the topic by emphasizing the role of the firm’s external and geographical context in shaping the flows of knowledge that the firm can act on. Therefore, the following research questions are brought to the fore, aiming to shed some light on regional policy making: How does the concept of “Open Innovation” apply in the background of USOs in terms of their external contexts, to what extent are these firms open, and what factors will influence their openness? To initiate the study, the most urgent question ahead is to quantify the intangible concept of openness. Thanks to the magic of mathematics, different dimensions of openness are drawn from the literature, including external knowledge breadth, depth, capacity and diversity. External knowledge breadth indicates the number of types of information and knowledge a firm can access, while external knowledge depth is related to the tie strength between the firm and its various partners. External knowledge capacity denotes the “size” of the external knowledge pool, constructed by both breadth and depth. And external knowledge diversity is about the heterogeneity of partners’ social backgrounds in the knowledge pool, while also taking into account the spatial orientation of the firm. These dimensions are framed as “Openness Index”, and virtually constitute an external knowledge pool that firms “reside in”. Furthermore, influencing factors, basically enabling and strategic intention factors are extracted to reveal the power of influence on different characteristics of openness. Results from multiple regression analysis show that: 1) spin-offs in a less urbanized area (Trondheim instead of Delft) tend (or are forced) to be more open in diversity, so do older and larger firms; 2) although larger size firms receive more local supports, they generally have a smaller external knowledge capacity; 3) a founding team with a deep industrial experience may be reluctant to explore the capacity of external knowledge and receive supports, whereas a broader experience may lead to a higher diversity of the firm; 4) a prospector strategy (a competitive strategy that emphasizes product/service innovation and protection of that innovation) may stimulate the firm to become more open in diversity and receive more helps locally; and 5) a high ambition level of the firm generally benefits its openness both in capacity and diversity consistently. Remarkably, according to the test of hypotheses, probably the importance of “market space” has been underestimated, which may play a significant role in such a turbulent and rapid-changing environment that (high-tech) spin-offs pertain to. To move a step forward, the universal principles underlying the openness of university spin-offs were explored. The results imply that scalability does exist, particularly regarding diversity, which manifests a sub-linear scaling – a decreasing return with increasing firm size, and there is virtually a ceiling as diversity grows. This could be a practical and critical hint for policy makers or problem owners, as to promote diversity, some measures may be necessary for compensating this effect of diminishing return. The Structural Equation Modeling method, as “insurance” of multiple regression analysis, and a more convenient way to perform multivariate analysis, to check mediating, indirect effects and potential interrelations, was also adopted in the study. The importance of diversity is illustrated again, as a dominant variable among openness indices. This result is tagged into previous theories and analysis results, and may even relate to the concept of biodiversity, regarding the firm as a living organism. Finally, to answer the question posted in the beginning, the link between openness and performance of spin-offs needs to be exposed. Therefore another set of data was collected to gather the information of both employee (fte) and turnover in 2010. The growth rate, taking some form of absolute or relative growth, was calculated and used as dependent variables, with the openness indices as independent ones. The outcomes demonstrate that in the arena of openness, the highest employee growth and highest turnover growth do not fall in the same niche, but awarded to different winners – “innovators” that have a high diversity but weak and loose ties with partners, and “resource addicts” that have strong ties with partners, but low diversity, respectively. This inconsistency illustrates that a strategy blindly targeting at openness is neither wise nor beneficial, or even harmful. Hopefully, the analyses of this specific dataset can change some mindsets of the policy makers, especially the regional governments. They can see that: 1) tailor-made policy is preferable for either spin-offs in different stages of development, or the different players in openness arena, while a uniform approach may be more appropriate after certain (developmental) threshold; 2) the differences in entrepreneurs’ profile can be used as selection criteria, and supporting science-based firms can strongly stimulate job creation; 3) supporting policy can be developed more efficiently by benchmarking to find out the most needed and most lack-of supports currently; 4) subsidizing firms with a prospector strategy and stimulate them to a higher ambition level can benefit both turnover and employee growth; and 5) specifically, mentoring and learning-by-doing types of support should be provided to fresh startups, while more “traditional” types of support can be given to older survivors. The use of the word art not only fits nicely into the title, but also associates some of the old wisdoms into the work. The choice of art here is the image that the word conjures up of being more fluid, and denotes a tendency of the world’s convergence that there may be some universal patterns underlying different phenomena. There may be no single approach or way to guarantee an appropriate level of openness within a firm or other organizations. Rather, the approach to being open must be crafted around the ecosystem created by the intersections and interactions between the firm’s internal resources, its virtually porous boundary, and the external resource/knowledge pool facilitated by networking relationships. Lessons and stories are presented in this thesis, however, how to make sense of them, and steer them for a better “performance” is truly and remains an art lies in the hands of various problem owners.