PurposeOpen innovation is regarded as the driven factor for organizational resilience, but open innovation's role and effect mechanism in leveraging organizational resilience has been limited explored. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between two types of open innovation and organizational resilience and the mediating effect of intellectual capital on open innovation and organizational resilience.Design/methodology/approachAfter a literature review, a research model including open innovation, intellectual capital and organizational resilience is proposed. Survey data are collected from information and communication technologies (ICT) sector in China and analyzed by using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and Bootstrapping procedure to present results of each hypothesis test.FindingsResults indicate that inbound open innovation has a significant and direct impact on organizational resilience, while outbound open innovation has not. In addition, all three dimensions of intellectual capital were significantly correlated with organizational resilience and had mediating roles in the indirect effect of inbound open innovation and organizational resilience. Nevertheless, only social capital played a mediating role in the relationship between outbound open innovation and organizational resilience.Originality/valueThe study explores the relationships among open innovation, intellectual capital and organizational resilience in a comprehensive model, which is the first known study to highlight that open innovation can enhance organizational resilience through intellectual capital, and provides valuable suggestions for improving organizational resilience.