Narrow Results

The purpose of this study is to examine the importance of social ties in encouraging innovative behaviour. There is limited empirical evidence of the interrelation between these two constructs in current academic literature. This research hypothesizes such relationship in higher academic institutions. To enhance innovativeness of academic staff within universities or R&D institutions, we examined the role of social ties in fostering innovativeness as a main factor in entrepreneurial activities. A survey was sent via a hyperlink to the target sample, facilitated by empirical analysis using correlation and regression analysis. It can be concluded that there is a significant relationship between spending time with social contacts and innovativeness. Limitations and further research are cited to enhance the understanding of the interrelation of the constructs.

Increasing number of small- and medium-scale software companies (SMSCs) has remarkably pressurised them to deliver good quality software products on time at minimum cost. This study attempted to prove that knowledge management initiatives can bestow business opportunities of small- and medium-scale software companies to improve productivity, product quality, flexibility, inter-employee relationships, effective knowledge creation and knowledge utilisation while achieving their cost, quality and time targets. Thus SMSC can gain competitive advantage to sustain their business. We first identified some significant facets which benefit knowledge management initiatives in SMSCs and based on the results of a survey of SMSCs, we proved that knowledge management initiatives have a significant influence on gaining competitive advantage of SMSCs. Therefore, we confirmed that organisation preparedness towards knowledge management initiatives, knowledge management tools and processes, knowledge management education and training and knowledge creation and transformation contribute SMSCs to gain competitive advantage.

Leveraging intellectual capital has become imperative to facilitate individuals’ innovativeness. However, little is known about the process of knowledge nurturing reflexivity where newborn ideas and newfound knowledge, which may be incomplete or ineffective in their infancy, are further developed instead of being criticised or discarded. Without proper nurturing, they may be abandoned prematurely and never be transformed into innovativeness. To fill the research gap, this study explores knowledge nurturing reflexivity drawn upon the theory of the internal conversation. Data collected from 368 knowledge workers were used to test the research framework. Empirical results show that sociability and solidarity are conducive to absorptive capacity that in turn influences knowledge nurture. In addition, innovativeness is significantly affected by knowledge nurture. This study contributes to overcoming the weakness of reflexivity modelling in the knowledge management (KM) literature. This study also provides important insights about the essential role of the internal conversation in building knowledge nurturing reflexivity.

The relationships among effective knowledge management (KM), organisational innovativeness (OI), market orientation (MO) and organisational performance (OP) have been explored in the literature. These constructs are generally analysed in pairs, such as the influence of KM on OI, or KM on OP, and other combinations, but the relationships among the full set of constructs in question are not fully understood yet. In the extant literature, the relationships among them are analysed for the most part with covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM). Partial least-squares (PLS) path modelling is a component-based approach to SEM that is not as widely used as CB-SEM, but it has the potential to allow increased flexibility in handling various modelling problems in comparison with CB models, particularly for predictive and exploratory purposes. This paper aims to verify whether the PLS method could confirm or reject the results of the more restrictive covariance-based method in modelling the relationships among KM, OI, MO and OP. The results indicate that both methods yielded convergent and discriminant validity for the constructs, displaying stability across model analysis and depuration. The PLS model revealed the influence of KM on MO, OI and OP. It also shows that OI is the main driving factor for OP. KM seems to have a direct effect on OP, which is greatly magnified when mediated by OI. The sample size, although borderline adequate for the CB method, was more than adequate for PLS, yielding excellent model stability.

This paper addresses the ongoing discussion in the literature on innovation typologies, taxonomies, terms, and measurement. It also put forth a proposal for a novel concept and typology for radical innovations based on a holistic and dynamic innovativeness understanding on the level of the individual innovation project with respect to different context levels and process stages. By differentiating between the degrees of innovativeness at the stages of concept, realization, and impact, the so-far neglected process dimension of innovation is now considered in the proposed radicalness typology called "Total Project-Radicalness Matrix". In order to illustrate this approach, the case of the "ROBIN" innovation project was analyzed, which later became the nucleus of the new "Toll Collect System" for electronic road pricing in Germany. This novel approach tries to support managers and researchers alike in enhancing the categorization, monitoring and measurement of innovation projects during the innovation process.

Recent research suggests that existing conceptualizations of firm-level entrepreneurship may not be sufficient in fully explaining the construct. The primary purpose of this study is to explore the fundamental dimensions underlying firm-level entrepreneurship and to empirically test a model depicting the hierarchical relationship between these various dimensions. It is argued that proactiveness, innovativeness and strategic renewal represent the primary dimensions of firm-level entrepreneurship. Three hypotheses are developed, specifying the role each of these three dimensions plays in the creation and exploitation of environmental opportunities. Utilizing data collected from 250 small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in South Korea, the empirical results suggest proactiveness positively impacts firms' perceptions of environmental opportunities, and these organizations then utilize innovativeness and strategic renewal in an effort to capture these perceived opportunities. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of our study for managerial practice and theory building.

The benefits of female leaders in economic organizations increasingly are being reported. A large body of empirical studies focuses on the differences between female and male leaders regarding their personality characteristics, social skills and leadership styles. The existing literature pays insufficient attention to the institutional, cultural and organizational contexts that predetermine the mechanisms of shaping the leadership-performance linkage. By analyzing a national sample of Chinese private companies, we offer evidence for female CEOs’ heightened innovativeness compared to male CEOs. We suggest that organizational bias in selecting leadership and discrimination practices compel female CEOs to develop and utilize innovative capacities. A firm’s institutional environment moderates the positive role of female CEOs on firm innovativeness. The positive effects of female CEOs in promoting firm innovativeness are more potent in regions with lower GDP levels and less government support, where discriminations against women are more pervasive and deep-seated.

This study explores relationships between Corporate Frugality (CF), Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) and Crisis Preparedness (CP). CP was proposed as the surrogate measure for firm performance during actual crises. EO is also examined as a potential mediator in the CF-CP association. The hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling with data collected from randomly selected small businesses operating in the Tripolitania region of northwestern Libya during the current economic instability caused by civil unrest. Further, COVID-19 pandemic cases had significantly risen among the population at the time of the study. The findings show that CF can be instrumental in responding to market crisis requirements, while innovativeness only results in better CP and partially mediates the CF-CP association. These findings validate the CF construct, but entrepreneurs must cautiously proceed when exercising EO in response to crises. Furthermore, the study casts new light on how the association between EO dimensions and performance can differ across contexts. Building on the resource-based view and pecking order theory and integrating them with contingency theory, this study is the first to explore the effect of EO and its dimensions as the mediator between CF and CP.

This study explores how certain institutional dimensions influence entrepreneurial allocations in Nigeria and its sectorial heterogeneity. We apply unconditional fixed-effect Tobit regression estimators on a combined dataset extracted from various sources over the period 2011-2015. Our findings suggest that property rights and oil rents strongly encourage young entrepreneurs to be innovative, while a number of business procedures and the rule of law discourage them from being innovative. The findings suggest that some of the institutions are complementary to one another in improving entrepreneurial innovativeness. Interactions between them are positive and significant. Sectorial results reveal that property rights, government effectiveness and oil rents significantly enhance entrepreneurial innovativeness, whereas government size reduces innovativeness among young entrepreneurs in the manufacturing sector. In the IT sector, property rights, control of corruption, regulatory quality and government effectiveness increase entrepreneurial innovativeness. Government size, business procedures and the rule of law reduce innovativeness. Overall, the institutions appear to have stronger and bigger effects in the IT sector than they do in the manufacturing sector. Policy implications include the need for institutional reforms targeting productive entrepreneurship to focus more on making business regulation and procedures more competition-friendly and less cumbersome and strengthening the quality of anti-graft and property right institutions.

It is unclear how entrepreneurial firms should engage in risk taking and innovativeness in highly competitive environments. Using a sample of 167 New Zealand firms, we provide new insight to identify a significant three-way interaction effect between risk taking, innovativeness and competitive rivalry towards firm performance. We found high risk taking and innovativeness to be linked to higher firm performance, irrespective of the extent of competitive rivalry. Low innovativeness was found to be associated with differing levels of firm performance depending on the level of rivalry. These results have important implications for future research and for practitioners where competitive rivalry can influence dimensions of performance in entrepreneurial firms in ways that have not been previously recognized.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into how the successors of family-owned manufacturing SMEs view and manage innovativeness. Research into company takeovers mainly focuses on large companies and little is known about innovativeness in research on family-owned businesses, often SMEs. This paper presents findings from ten company successions, five of which describe family successions and five external ones. The paper points to that there is little difference in how various types of successor view and manage innovativeness. A successor is chosen with care and this also influences the view and management of innovativeness; other criteria seem to apply in the succession and radical changes can only be introduced if a number of contextual factors are managed properly. The paper also indicates that while financial constraints may limit innovations, a strong financial situation is not an antecedent for innovativeness.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of interpersonal networks on the innovativeness of inventors. A significant amount of literature has been devoted to the analysis of network effects in the economic and managerial sciences. The main research works in this field have emphasized the strong relation between interpersonal networks and cooperation. Cooperation is the best way to succeed in complex and innovative projects. We make here the hypothesis that repeated collaborations in a network of inventors have an influence on their innovativeness, i.e., on their dynamic innovative capacity. On the one hand, we propose some theoretical clarifications regarding interpersonal networks and innovativeness, and we summarize the main conclusions of the more important empirical work connected with this subject. On the other hand, we run an empirical study involving 1,157 French prolific inventors who obtained 30,477 patents for the period 1975–2002. Logistic regressions results underline the significant impact of extended collaborations on the innovativeness of inventors.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of factors of environmental uncertainty on the innovativeness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Innovativeness is widely accepted as an important characteristic for firm competitiveness and it has been studied by both researchers as well as business managers. Environmental uncertainty is a measure of the complexity of changing external forces faced by an organisation and it crucially impacts the responses of organisations in order to stay competitive. Based on approaches in existing literature, this study conceptualises environmental uncertainty comprised three separate dimensions — competitive intensity, market/demand turbulence, technological turbulence. Data for the study were collected from 156 SMEs in Turkey. SMEs are regarded as an important ingredient in the economic growth of nations and especially so in developing nations such as Turkey. The findings of the study reveal that market/demand turbulence and technological turbulence have a positive effect on the innovativeness of SMEs. Interestingly and contrary to popular belief, competitive intensity was not found to have significant effect on an SME's innovativeness. The implication of the results from this research is that the degree of organisational innovativeness for SMEs tends to increase and therefore should be supported in environments with greater technological and market/demand turbulence. This research makes an important contribution to the developing body of innovation literature and provides directions for managers and researchers in influencing innovativeness of firms.

A growing body of research acknowledges that inter-organizational networks greatly influence a firm's innovation performance. This study extends our understanding of this relationship by considering the effect of inter-organizational networks on innovation in small, knowledge-intensive companies. Based on a literature review, we formulate four propositions regarding the moderating effects of firm size and knowledge intensity on the relationship between inter-organizational networks and innovation, as well as the influence of these factors on the development of the inter-organizational networks themselves.

Instead of profiting from an innovation premium at the capital market, many companies suffer from a gap between their actual innovativeness and its perception. Hence, this explorative study elaborates how to manage financial analysts' perception and valuation through strategic innovation communication. By following a holistic research design, six best practicing companies are examined by means of case studies in order to investigate how they successfully address analysts. Additionally, the perspective and information demands of 18 analysts are explored in an online survey. Based on the idea of addressing the cognitive structures that guide analysts' innovation perception, we identified success factors of innovation communication for financial analysts and the capital market which are an integrated content approach regarding innovation input, process and outcome as well as an instrument mix. Surprisingly, the analyst's innovation perception is also driven by comprehensive innovation demonstrations and stories highlighting the necessity of strategic innovation communication for the capital market.

This paper examines the effects of innovativeness, creative climate and learning on high growth. We study how fast-growing SMEs, known as gazelles, differ from other SMEs. A survey of 345 Norwegian gazelles and 135 non-gazelles supports the idea that innovativeness is an important factor in whether a company becomes a gazelle. Creative climate, learning and innovativeness were conceptualized and analyzed as first-order constructs using confirmatory factor analysis, OLS and Probit regression. Learning and creative climate were found to have a positive impact on growth through innovativeness. Based on the data, it seems that younger companies are more likely to be innovative and grow quickly.

Despite the extensive studies in the field of diffusion, the role of innovativeness in diffusion models has not reached a consensus and the literature has dedicated little effort to modelling customers' heterogeneous opinion leadership. These gaps could be some of the key limits for the further exploration of the diffusion phenomena. This study proposes that the use of innovativeness in diffusion models can be seen as a filter for potential customers and as an indicator for customers' opinion leadership. We analyse the respective roles of innovativeness and opinion leadership in diffusion based on the suggested model. We also show the model's potential to identify and predict the opinion leaders of a diffusion system. We implement the proposed model in the case of a 3G mobile phone technology. The results demonstrate good fitting and forecasting performance of the model. We hope the insights offered by this study can benefit both innovation academics and practitioners.

The recent global recession has focused efforts towards better understanding of both firm response and the outcome of that response to recession, or decline. Past research suggests that firms either respond by being conservative, reducing costs, etc., or, they proactively try to innovate out of the decline. This work examines the various responses to decline with respect to firm innovativeness. Using data from US manufacturing firms, it is shown that innovativeness has important performance implications even in dire economic times. However, increasing innovativeness levels during decline is not shown to be superior to maintaining innovativeness. Findings provide limited evidence that decreasing innovativeness is not a desirable downturn strategy. Potential, practical, and theoretical implications of the findings are presented.

The purpose of this study is to identify informational elements used in customers' perceptions of a service organisation's innovativeness, specifically in the context of higher education. With data collected from 445 university students, the results show that the information is related to service offering and contact personnel. Essentially, it is possible to say that core service (curriculum) goes along with main staff responsible for providing core service (faculty members). These two inseparable elements exert a predominant effect on customers' perception of innovativeness. For a higher education institution, it is obvious that the key role of the training provided should be highlighted in the institution's strategy to influence or modify the decisions of various groups. Support staff responsible for providing peripheral services should not be neglected in this strategy because of their inherent role in the process of core service delivery. The limitations and research implications of the reported study are also discussed.

As innovation is often created in networks, a company's business partners influence its innovative outcome. Although many studies investigate innovation networks as a means to explore and exploit external knowledge, virtually no research has focused on the characteristics of external partners — in particular their innovativeness. This study considers axial and lateral corporate partners and investigates the differential impact of the partners' innovativeness on a company's knowledge stocks (market, technological, organisational, process, and product knowledge).

Drawing on the literature on inter-organisational networks and using survey data from the manufacturing industry, the results extend theory by revealing that not only relationships with partners but also their properties — partner innovativeness — are important for a company's knowledge stock. In essence our results suggest that the innovativeness of a firm's axial and lateral partners positively yet diversely influences its various knowledge stocks.