Open innovation has strong roots in both academia and industry and resulted in the adoption of this practice across all departments of companies. This paper discusses different criteria needed to adopt open innovation in the product development process. The research explores open innovation in product development based on company needs, strategic planning and managerial preferences. The conceptual framework of this paper was developed from open innovation and management science-related literature. A total of 60 intensive open innovation dependent companies were surveyed in 20 countries concerning the product development process. Statistical techniques were used to analyse the data. The collected data helped to identify six crucial preferences of companies to adopt open innovation. The results provided validation of the conceptual framework and ranked the priorities based on managers’ opinions.