Innovation Culture,Collaboration with External Partners and NPD Performance

Researchers and managers have found that the use of external knowledge in the process of new product development (NPD) helps to sustain a firm's competitiveness by strengthening its innovative performance. However, little is known about why some firms use external knowledge sources for NPD in an extensive manner while others hardly ever use them. In addition, there is disagreement about which external partners significantly contribute to the innovative performance of a firm as valuable knowledge sources. Based on the resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm and Kitchell's innovation adoption model, this paper expects a firm's innovation culture to have a significant impact on its openness to external knowledge – measured in terms of its collaborative behaviour with five different external partners – and for that behaviour to influence the firm's NPD performance. A sample of 254 technology‐based firms across several industries is used to empirically test the research model with covariance‐based structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings deepen our understanding of the discrepancies between successful pioneering firms active in technology and knowledge sourcing and others being less successful.     

SMEs' Preference for Innovation Networks: A Choice Experimental Approach

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the importance of selected characteristics of innovation networks in affecting the decision of food SMEs when joining such networks. The paper develops and tests a series of hypotheses through a choice experiment exercise ran on a sample of 231 firms in six EU countries. The results showed that SMEs prefer networks that are composed of manufacturers and supply chain members, where information is shared confidentially among network partners, and when the network provides support to help the firm build its own networks of partners for innovation. In addition, SMEs' choice of the network is also affected by the interaction between specific network attributes and two firm characteristics, i.e. the firm's collaborative experience and innovation objectives. Based on the results, we conclude that the success of inter‐organizational networks depends on the fit between the network's design and the innovation and networking behaviour of the firms.     

Impact of digital leadership capability on innovation performance: The role of platform digitization capability

Following a mixed-methods approach, we theorized that digital leadership influences innovation performance by digitalizing the firm's platform. A multiple case study of ten companies was deployed to derive a theoretical model relating digital leadership and innovation performance. The resulting model was empirically tested on a sample of 117 European firms. We find that digital leadership improves a firm's innovation performance by digitalizing the firm's platform. We contribute to IS research by theoretically developing the concepts of digital leadership capability and platform digitization capability and empirically analyzing the relationship of these two critical IT capabilities and their impact on innovation performance.     

The choice of governance mode in ICT alliances: A property rights approach

We employed a property rights approach to formulate a set of hypotheses explaining the choice between equity and non-equity alliances in the Information and Communication Technology industry. The firm's need to control knowledge exchange and the resulting innovation makes property rights an important concern permeating partners’ strategic behavior. We showed that equity alliances were preferred, when partners kept a competitive relationship and followed a diversification strategy. However, non-equity alliances were preferred, when partners exhibited high resource complementarity. Finally, our research indicated that, when alliances targeted innovation development, prior ties between partners positively affected the choice of equity alliances.     

Integrating open innovation and business process innovation: Insights from a large-scale study on a transition economy

Open innovation and business process innovation (BPI) have been investigated by their respective research communities for decades. However, the important relationship between externally focused open innovation and internally implemented BPI is currently unexplored, particularly in transition economies. The main purpose of this study is to contribute toward closing this important research gap. This study describes the main findings of a research study of innovation practices of 224 companies operating in a transition economy.We propose and validate a comprehensive model of integrative innovation and offer some important insights into the relationship between externally focused R&D collaboration and a firm's internal process innovation.     

How interfirm collaboration benefits IT innovation

Many studies have observed that close interfirm collaborations have positive effects on a firm's innovation. Yet, they have not shown how the collaboration contributes to this process. Higher innovation rates could be a result of revolutionary improvements, evolutionary improvements, or both. We investigated changes in the innovation process. Longitudinal data from 23 top IT firms across 9 years were collected and analyzed. Results suggested that close interfirm collaborations were associated with evolutionary but not revolutionary improvement. Results also suggested that the longer the IT firms had engaged in close interfirm collaboration, the larger the effect on IT innovations.     

The Role of Non‐Technological Innovations in Services: The Case of Food Retailing

A growing proportion of innovation, especially in consumer‐based industries, is linked to both aesthetic and symbolic components, yet there is still wide uncertainty as to how consumers respond to the design of products and whether their product choices are consistent across product categories. We draw attention to instances whereby less technology‐intensive initiatives can convey innovation in services industries. The focus is on the case of Eataly, a food retailer in which, it is argued, non‐technological innovations have shaped the firm's core values and triggered consumer interest towards a supermarket where, besides physical goods, experience has become the object of transaction. By emphasizing the importance for retailers of focusing not only on single products, but also on other dimensions of the firm's organization, we intend to contribute to the literature that explores changing facets of innovation in service industries.     

Information Processing and Firm‐Internal Environment Contingencies: Performance Impact on Global New Product Development

Innovation in its essence is an information processing activity. Thus, a major factor impacting the success of new product development (NPD) programs, especially those responding to global markets, is the firm's ability to access, share and apply NPD information, which is often widely dispersed, functionally, geographically and culturally. To this end, an IT‐communication strength is essential, one that is nested in an internal organizational environment that ensures its effective functioning. Using organizational information processing (OIP) theory as a framework, superior global NPD program performance is shown to result from an effective IT/Communication strength and the commitment components of the firm's internal environment, which are hypothesized to moderate this relationship. IT/Communication strength is identified in this study in terms of two components including the IT/Comm Infrastructure and IT/Comm Capability of the firm, whereas the moderating internal environment of the firm incorporates Resource Commitment and Senior Management Involvement. Data from a major empirical study of international NPD programs (382 SBUs) are used to develop and test this model. Based on a hierarchical regression analysis, the results are substantially supportive, with some unexpected findings. These shed light on the complex relationships of the firm's internal environment, OIP competency, and global NPD program performance.     

Cross‐Divisional Innovation in the Large Corporation: Thoughts and Evidence on Its Value and the Role of the Early Stages of Innovation

Forty‐five years after Ansoff's seminal work on synergies, many multi‐divisional corporations still struggle to create additional value. Therefore, it is surprising that in times of open innovation, little research has been conducted on the impact of cross‐divisional product development. In our paper, we derive conceptual arguments for the relevance of joint initiatives and examine the role of cross‐divisional collaboration in the early stages of the innovation process. Our research model is tested using a quantitative survey in 110 multi‐divisional firms. We find that the extent of collaboration in the early stages of innovation strongly determines the impact of cross‐divisional products on corporate success. To achieve collaboration, our results highlight the relevance of appropriate integration mechanisms and incentives.     

FOCUS: Technology Strategy and Organizational Development

This paper describes the technology strategy and marketing orientation of a Brazilian agrichemicals manufacturing firm.¹ In the company's twenty years of existence five different stages can be identified with key features of its technology strategy. Training and development of its technical personnel, outside expert support and information sourcing, university liaison projects, and an intimate collaboration between research and marketing activities were the methods used for the implementation of a technology strategy aiming to meet the needs of a particular segment better than broadly targeted competitors. This strategy seemed to be fruitful due to key aspects of the environment and internal organization of the firm, such as the entrepreneurs’ innovative posture and risk-taking propensity, the existence of space to innovate, the availability of qualified human resources, and the application of a systemic approach to a growing market. This firm's success may also be linked to a better understanding of user needs, a greater degree of attention to marketing and post-sale technical assistance, and a strong use of outside technology and scientific advice.     

Exploring Factors Influencing Incumbents' Response to Disruptive Innovation

This paper explores how certain incumbent characteristics influence an established firm's response to disruptive innovation. More specifically, it looks at the challenges a middle size, top segment company faced and how this affected its reaction to the disruptive threat. This is done by conducting an in‐depth case study of Hasselblad, a manufacturer of professional cameras. It can be seen in this case study that Hasselblad's limited resources and its niche strategy affected how it managed the transition from analogue to digital camera technology. These characteristics made it difficult to allow experimentation with digital imaging in the main business since the available resources were severely limited and this initially inferior technology could harm the brand image. Instead, Hasselblad pursued collaborations and eventually launched a hybrid camera, which was compatible both with film and digital backs but did not become the expected success. Being close to bankruptcy, the digital resources needed were acquired and the company eventually survived the disruption. In conclusion, this paper argues that the managerial challenges and solutions to the innovator's dilemma depend upon the particular characteristics of incumbents and that this heterogeneity has not been sufficiently captured by previous literature. It also suggests that medium size, top segment firms can survive disruptive innovation through collaboration and acquisitions.     

Open to a Select Few? Matching Partners and Knowledge Content for Open Innovation Performance

The purpose of the paper is to illuminate the costs and benefits of crossing firm boundaries in inbound open innovation (OI) by determining the relationships among partner types, knowledge content and performance. The empirical part of the study is based on a survey of OI collaborations answered by R&D managers in 415 Italian, Finnish and Swedish firms. The results show that the depth of collaboration with different partners (academic/consultants, value chain partners, competitors and firms in other industries) is positively related to innovation performance, whereas the number of different partners and size have negative effects. The main result is that the knowledge content of the collaboration moderates the performance outcomes and the negative impact of having too many different kinds of partners. This illustrates how successful firms use selective collaboration strategies characterized by linking explorative and exploitative knowledge content to specific partners, to leverage the benefits and limit the costs of knowledge boundary crossing processes.     

Analyzing the impact of a firm's capability on outsourcing success: A process perspective

We investigated the effect of a firm's resource capabilities and interaction processes on the success of IT outsourcing. Grounded in available literature on outsourcing relationship and process theory as well as a resource-based view of the IT resource capability, a conceptual model was composed to examine the causal structure of capability, process, and relationship in IT outsourcing. We identified the firm's resource capability factors and, based on the premise that relationship intensity should be affected by the IT outsourcing process, we developed a first-order factor analysis of resource capabilities in the interactions between the outsourcer and provider. Results of empirical testing using responses from 267 IT outsourcing project teams in Korea supported most of our hypotheses. The integration of corporate IT resource and capability theories with social exchange theory distinguishes our research from that of others, who have generally treated these theories separately.     

Performance management of public–private collaboration in innovation

The open innovation literature has highlighted that more focus should be placed on non‐pecuniary sources such as public research institutes (PRIs) and their performance management (PM), while innovation network studies have highlighted the growing importance of universities and PRIs in public‐private research partnerships. Building on PM capability and portfolio management perspectives, this research aims is to examine the relationship between knowledge resources and collaboration outcome in such public‐private collaborations, and the mediating role of senior management team's (SMT) ability to govern project portfolio approval and management processes. Examining 153 innovation commercialization collaboration projects between PRIs and firms in Singapore, our study has made several significant contributions to the existing research on innovation and performance in public‐private partnership. First, we empirically demonstrate that there is a direct positive relationship between PRIs' knowledge resources and collaboration outcome. Second, our findings establish that the PRIs' SMT ability to govern project portfolio processes mediates this positive relationship. Third, this research highlights that the SMT ability to govern project portfolio processes fully mediates the conversion of market knowledge into innovation. Only partial mediation is observed in the case of technological knowledge, which directly creates value by virtue of generating discoveries or breakthroughs.     

Enhancing Innovation Capacity in SMEs through Early Network Relationships

Networks can offer SMEs a number of advantages, especially in terms of providing greater opportunities for knowledge activities that support innovation, but there is little in the literature to suggest how firms develop their innovation capacity through network participation. In this paper, we present an in‐depth longitudinal case study of a small entrepreneurial firm within the mobile‐commerce industry. A principal finding from the study is that network relationships formed during the earliest stages of the firm's life cycle played a critical role in developing the SME's capacity for sustained innovation. Further, the study contributes to network theory by calling into question the weak and strong tie dichotomy, as relationships critical to the SME's innovation capacity possessed characteristics of both types of ties. The paper also contributes to managerial practice by emphasizing the importance of establishing strong relationships in the earliest stages of network formation.     

考虑知识溢出下产业集群创新网络协同知识创造决策分析

协同知识创造对于企业维持和获取竞争优势具有重要作用,但是知识外溢会对企业的竞争力造成威胁,从而使企业在创新网络协同知识创造决策时陷入两难困境.鉴于此,通过构造由一个核心企业和n个从属企业组成的创新网络在协同知识创造过程中知识投入决策Stackelberg博弈模型,引入知识内溢系数、私有知识、知识外溢损失等变量,探讨知识溢出下,网络成员的知识投入决策和知识产出分配问题.研究结果表明:核心企业与从属企业的知识投入比和知识投入总量与协同知识创造绩效和知识内溢收益之和有关,而与私有知识外溢的损失无关;集群创新网络协同知识创造机制得以运行的条件是核心企业的知识创造收益(即知识创造绩效与知识内溢收益之和)足够大;核心企业的知识投入比与其边际收益和知识内溢系数正相关,与从属企业的边际收益和知识内溢系数负相关;协同知识创造过程中从属企业会根据其边际收益和知识内溢系数按比例分配知识的投入比.     

Perceived enablers of 3D virtual environments for virtual team learning and innovation

Virtual teams consist of geographically distributed employees working with a common goal using mostly technology for communication and collaboration. Virtual teams face a number of challenges, discussed in the literature in terms of communication through technology, difficulty in building trust, conveying social cues, and creating awareness, as well as cultural differences. These challenges impact collaboration, but also learning and innovation. This research focuses on how a social medium, the 3D virtual environment, is perceived to enable learning and innovation in virtual teams. We study this through a qualitative study based on interviews of distributed work managers’ perception of VEs. The major findings are that VEs are perceived to create collaborative learning atmospheres for virtual teams in terms of enabling engagement, a shared context awareness, and support in social network building. Another finding is that VEs are perceived to enable team learning, knowledge development, and collaboration through persistence of content, information sharing, learning through role-plays and simulations, and visualization. Furthermore, VEs enable the development of co-created content as well as new ways of working in virtual teams.     

Managing collaboration performance to govern virtual organizations

The ability to collaborate with partners will become an essential core competence that is required from companies when they are going to take up future challenges. Growing complexity of products and services, increasing global competition and accelerated business processes will exceed in many cases the capabilities and capacities of single companies. The involvement of other companies can help to overcome these limitations. However, only what is measured can be managed. Consequently it is necessary to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of how partners work together in joint processes for a common goal. In other word: the collaboration performance has to be measured. But traditional Performance Measurement (PM) methodologies and indicators are designed to assess the performance of single companies or static cooperation like in supply chains. Evaluation and management of collaboration performance as a particular performance perspective in cooperation is not covered by existing approaches so far. Therefore there is still a need for an approach that provides an information basis for the management of collaboration when companies work together in in cooperation. In this paper, which is initially based on a paper presented on the ProVE conference in 2007, different perspectives of collaboration performance are identified and structured. The considerations are based on Virtual Organisations VOs, a particular type of cooperation that requires usually intensive collaborative interactions between the partners.     

High school students' perceptions of affect and collaboration during virtual science inquiry learning

This study examined affect during high school students' face‐to‐face collaborative inquiry learning in science, supported by the web‐based software Virtual Baltic Sea Explorer. Self‐reported affective states during the inquiry process in peer groups were related to evaluations of a group's collaboration and performance in three phases of interdisciplinary science inquiry (biology and chemistry). Results indicate that despite high cognitive demands, positive affect prevailed whereas negative affect was infrequent. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the significance of affect on collaboration and group performance. The relationship between affect, collaboration, and the groups' productive outcome revealed that self‐assurance had a significant effect on collaboration and support, intertwined with scientific understanding and group performance. Furthermore, a cross‐lagged analysis showed a reciprocal relation between positive affect, scientific understanding, collaboration, and support. These outcomes contribute to the scarce literature on the nature and importance of affect in the process of face‐to‐face computer‐supported collaborative inquiry and learning in science.     

Open Innovation and Firm Performance: The Mediating Role of Social Capital

This article examines the role of social relations and networks in open innovation settings. Building on extant open innovation literature as well as on social capital theory, we develop a model that conceptualizes social capital as a mediator between the implementation of open innovation instruments and firm performance. In doing so, this paper adds to the understanding of the role of structure and content of social relations in open innovation contexts as well as of sustainable side‐effects of open innovation. In particular, we argue that apart from a direct effect of open innovation instruments on firm performance, there is also a mediated relationship between these variables. More precisely, we propose that the implementation of open innovation instruments strengthens an organization's social capital, which is, in turn, positively related to firm performance.