International Journal of Innovation Management

Incumbent companies sometimes innovate and attempt to revitalise old technology-based products, in decline after technological change, by improvements of their technical performance and/or extensions of their lifetime into the market. The name of this innovation approach is "sailing ship effect," the acceleration of innovation in the old technology in response to the threat from the new. However, in theory firms could achieve revitalisation even by an alternative innovation approach based on the development of completely new products. The article reports an illustrative case study: the innovation approach of some of the main incumbent organisations in photography industry after the emergence of digital cameras. In this case, incumbent companies developed and launched film scanners, new technology-based products aimed at supporting users of old analog cameras after the rise of digital imaging. The article contributes to the extant literature about innovation approaches for old products' revitalisation by analysing how established firms can achieve this goal with completely new technological products. The approach of technology reverse is proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically study challenges faced by product and service providers when innovating openly with customers in business-to-business (B-to-B) markets. The study aims to fill the research gap of how the challenges vary in different types of customer involvement in innovation. The work applied the qualitative methodology of multiple case studies, and the material was collected in semi-structured interviews with management personnel at 48 companies in Finland and in the Netherlands that are practicing open innovation with their customers in one form or another. For the analysis of challenges identified from the empirical data, a typology of open innovation with customers was built, resulting in four distinct types to categorise product and service providers through their dominant business and innovation logics and related customer involvement. The typology gave the context in which strategic and operational challenges of open innovation with customers were explored. Each of the four types seems to have specific and characteristic challenges of open innovation. The findings of the study will help managers of product and service providers in guiding their open innovation practices with customers in B-to-B markets.

Service innovativeness has been hailed as a key success factor in being able to differentiate a new service from its competing offerings. In spite of a number of literatures suggesting the impact that a service business model can have on service innovativeness, no comprehensive and empirical study has examined the relationship between the distinctive design themes of a service business model and service innovativeness. This paper fills the research gap by conducting a series of pilot tests and then the subsequent questionnaire survey on top service firms in Taiwan. Results based on 211 responding service firms indicate that the novelty-centred business model has a U-shaped effect on service innovativeness, while the efficiency-centred business model has an inverted U-shaped effect on service innovativeness. Theoretical and managerial implications of these key findings are discussed.

Informed by recent theoretical developments concerning absorptive capacity and cognitive representations, we argue that local search positively influences subsequent performance in exploratory innovation. Our empirical analyses of a unique data set on new pharmaceutical development frequency, as well as on official assessments of these pharmaceuticals' valuableness support our argument by showing that knowledge gained as a result of local search increases subsequent performance in exploratory innovation both in terms of its frequency and valuableness. Specifically, local search is shown to be positively associated with the frequency of subsequent exploratory new pharmaceutical developments. We also show that local search is curvilinearly (inverted U-shape) associated with the degree of valuableness of subsequent exploratory new pharmaceuticals. Our empirical findings contribute to the theory of organisational learning and innovation by extending the theory of local search through uncovering more nuanced relationships between local search and subsequent exploratory innovation than those identified by prior works.

This paper addresses the problem of survival and growth of incumbent telecommunication operators. In particular, this paper investigates the extent to which the platform-based approach is appropriate for the internationalisation strategy (platform leadership) of incumbent telecommunications operators in the context of the transition to the Next Generation Network (NGN). It examines the case of BT in the UK, as a large-scale first mover in this transition, exploring the major transformation project BT 21st Century Network (BT21CN). The case demonstrates how the platform-based approach can be used to promote business transformation of an incumbent telecom operator in a turbulent environment. The platform architecture integrates two main features that are usually treated in different contexts and time frames in the literature: (i) the reusability of components and sub-systems (typically in the automotive industry); and (ii) the openness of the platform to external actors in order to drive innovation in the industry (typically in the ICT industry). BT21CN emerged as an industry platform, made possible by the maturation of the Internet Protocol (IP) as a "common technology" able to transport not only data, but also real time voice and video, with an acceptable quality of service (QoS). Reusability can help reducing costs and decreasing time-to-market for new products and services. However, openness of the platform to external actors has still limited impact due to the limited success of BT (and incumbent telecom operators in general) in their process of internationalisation. Thus, in the context of BT (and of potentially other incumbent telecom operators), the limitations in their process of internationalisation have a negative impact on the evolutionary dynamics of the platform-based approach.

The study combines the research domains of strategic management and corporate innovation by examining the impact of strategic management practices on entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Recognising the importance of internal business processes that enable firm entrepreneurial behaviour, it is hypothesised that higher levels of EO are positively associated with the strategic management practices of (1) locus of planning, (2) scanning intensity, (3) planning flexibility, (4) planning horizon, and (5) strategy and financial control attributes. Empirical testing takes place in an under-researched emerging market context on a sample of 219 financial and business services firms. The results provide support for the positive impact that the different strategic management practices have on EO. A practical consideration is for managers to leverage the strategic management practices so that the firm's position on the conservative-entrepreneurial continuum is increased by its propensity to be innovative, proactive, and be willing to take risks when confronted by uncertainty.

In this paper we have used structural equation modelling to examine the inter-relationships among specific intangible resources — product, operations, and marketing sources of ideas — as they relate to innovation and firm performance. Prior studies founded upon the Resource Based View (RBV) of the firm, have focused on the relationship between innovation and firm performance or resources and firm performance, but have not examined both simultaneously. Our study reveals how the sources of ideas, as valuable strategic firm resources, directly, and/or indirectly via innovation activities, contribute to firm performance. We find that marketing sources of ideas directly influences firm performance and that product and operations sources of ideas do not. Indirectly, however, all three sources of idea resources (marketing, operational, and product) contribute to firm performance via the innovation construct. Thus, ideas, and where they come from, are crucial to understanding innovation and firm performance. Innovation is a key component in the structural model because it partially mediates the marketing idea sources-performance relationship. It also provides the basis for interaction effects among operations and product resources and firm performance. Therefore, including innovation in the conceptual model improves the model specification as it increases insight into the resource-performance relationship.

The aim of this paper is to base organisational change on the firm's business model, an approach that research has only recently start to address. This study adopts a process-based perspective on business models and insights from a variety of theories as the basis for the development of ideas on the design of business model change. This paper offers a new, process-based strategic analytical artefact for the design of business model change, consisting of three main phases. Designing business model change as suggested in this paper allows ex ante analysis of alternative scenarios of change in a structured and comprehensive way. Such a tool is useful for obtaining an overall view of the working logic of the firm and to facilitate innovation through change. The main contribution of this paper is to transform management theories into an instrument that can be helpful for companies to develop their capacity to change in a more focused and structured way.

This paper postulates that corporate core-rigidities affect an established firm's adaptation to technological innovation. This manuscript further clarifies that when the implementation of new activities is sacrificed at the cost of an established firm's core-rigidities, the firm may find it difficult to (incrementally or radically) incorporate new technological innovations into their operations. To analyze these issues in greater detail, this paper evaluates the Toyota Motor Company as a case study for an organization's struggle to simultaneously adapt two innovations. Interviews at the Chinese production base for Toyota served as the methodology for this case study.