International Journal of Innovation Management

How should intellectual property (IP) be protected and appropriated to gain value for the firm? This study aims to answer this question by examining the impact of the key determinants of IP appropriability, namely organizational resources, IP management practices and organizational learning culture, on innovation performance. The study uses quantitative survey data obtained from the Australian biotechnology, pharmaceutical and ICT industries in order to test several hypotheses. Our results show that exploitation and protection of IP within an organisational learning culture have a significant effect on the firm’s innovation performance. The implication for managers is that IP appropriation is likely to be most successful when trade secrets and profits from innovation are applied simultaneously within an organizational learning culture.

The ability of an organisation to recognise and evaluate technologically relevant information can be impeded by outdated processes, structures and knowledge. Organisations need therefore a capacity for “intended memory loss”, which has been labelled as unlearning. Although a number of scholars have examined unlearning, research is still only beginning to understand unlearning especially in the area of technology identification and evaluation. The goal of this study is therefore to examine unlearning on an organisational and individual level in this context. Unlearning on an organisational level comprises team composition strategies and directives as well as the implementation of unlearning mechanisms. On an individual level, unlearning highlights cognitive prototypes which exert an influence on the perception of technologies and their evaluation. A qualitative approach has been chosen to examine those aspects, in which technological gatekeepers serve as sample subjects. Technological gatekeepers take a crucial role in the technology identification and evaluation as decision makers and due to their influence on organisational structures and processes. The results of this study suggest that unlearning plays currently only a minor role on an organisational and individual level, which is mainly caused by existing rigidities and in the missing understanding of the necessity to unlearn.

What do employees need in order to be innovative? In this paper, we explored how employees with different lengths of tenure within the research and development (R&D) department of a company in the automotive industry answer this question. We found that the needs vary depending on the length of the employee’s tenure. New employees view innovation as an organisational work issue and employees with longer tenure seek the support of management in changing the work situation themselves in a way that will enhance innovation. In contrast, employees who have been with the company over 10 years show signs of resignation and blame management for the problems around innovation that they experience. However, one opinion that all groups of different tenures share is that there is not enough time to engage in innovation activities. To address some of these different needs, we suggest viewing productivity as a cycle of two outcomes: product information and knowledge creation. When one is low, the other peaks, and vice versa. This view of dual value creation in R&D is one way to bypass the productivity dilemma.

This paper distinguishes three types of organisational innovation — those in a firm’s knowledge management, workplace, and external relations — and studies their impact on firms’ technological innovation performance. Special attention is paid to the openness and external orientation of a firm’s R&D activities as factor moderating the relationship between organisational and technological innovation. Drawing on the fourth wave of the German part of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS IV), this study shows that organisational innovation acts as an important facilitator of new process (but not product) development. Organisational innovations furthermore prove to be complements (but in some cases also substitutes) to external knowledge sourcing and open innovation strategies.

This paper studies sectoral differences in technology transfer of 170 Russian Research and Technology Organisations engaged into technology transfer to agriculture, mining and quarrying, high-tech, medium-high-tech, medium-low-tech and low-tech industries. RTOs in these five groups do not overlap by customers’ economic activities and are representative for all Russian regions. Certain factors have in fact opposite effects in different sectors. A customer without a clear vision is perceived as a curse by one sector, but by another one perceived as a blessing. Another such factor is the high economic risk of the application of new technologies. Furthermore, we proved the presence of influence factors which show the same effects with different degrees of intensity depending on the sectors. Thereby, we also provide insights into Russia’s innovation system.

User driven innovation (UDI) is a popular term in policy and corporate circles. However, it is not clear exactly what UDI means and how such practices are used across the spectrum of companies and over the innovation life cycle. The present study compares 58 UDI showcases in Finnish companies in order to analyse the diversity of UDI practices and their evolution over time. We identify five main modes of UDI and show how the ways of using UDI develop over time in individual companies. In almost half of the examined cases, the dominant mode of UDI changes at least once, and in some cases, up to three changes in dominant mode are observed. We then proceed to identify six qualitatively different ways in which companies’ orientation to UDI evolves over time. The study has implications for innovation management and policy: It calls for greater attention to UDI diversity and particularly to the management and support of the continuity of UDI efforts.

Minimisation of time-to-market strategies can provide companies with a competitive advantage in dynamic and competitive environments. Using parallel innovation processes has been emphasised as one strategy to speed up innovation processes and consequently minimise the time-to-market of innovations. Much innovation today takes place in open structures in which networks play an important role. However, little is known about how innovation networks can facilitate parallel innovation processes. This paper discusses how innovation network structures develop and support exploration and exploitation in parallel innovation processes and in this way sustain speedy innovation processes. A case study of an innovation network is carried out by analysing communication structures and the information contents of emails related to a particular innovation process. The analysis shows how certain characteristics of the network facilitate the parallel innovation process but also how such processes place new requirements on such networks and their management.

The concept or paradigm of open innovation has gained more and more attention over the last couple of years. Firms see open innovation nowadays as an important capability to build and maintain innovativeness, even in dynamic global markets. Nevertheless, there is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the question which factors determine successful innovation within the open innovation environment. In this regard, based on the dynamic capabilities view, we hypothesise that a firm’s openness, its absorptive capacity and its flexibility primarily determine innovation success in in-bound open innovation environments. To test these hypotheses, we analyse a large scale survey sample of 496 German manufacturing companies from different industries by applying structural equation modelling. As a main result, we find evidence for a positive association between the three mentioned constructs and innovation success.

This study investigated the effects of interpersonal trust among service workers (i.e., trust in co-workers and supervisors) on innovative behaviour and examined the mediating effect of knowledge sharing on these relationships. A total of 188 personal trainers from 11 fitness clubs participated in this study. The results revealed that both trust in co-workers and trust in supervisors have a positive effect on knowledge sharing. Although the effect of trust in co-workers on innovative behaviour was non-significant, trust in supervisors had a significant effect on innovative behaviour. The effect of employees’ knowledge sharing on innovative behaviour was also found to be significant. Additionally, the results indicated that knowledge sharing has a full mediating effect on the relationship between trust in co-workers and innovative behaviour and a partial mediating effect on the relationship between trust in supervisors and innovative behaviour.

The product concept is crucial in new product development (NPD) because it represents an NPD project’s goal. In this context, most prior studies have regarded product concept development as a linear process but some recent studies have revealed that it also has nonlinear characteristics. The objective of this paper is to explore why this inconsistency has arisen and to develop a model and theory that illustrate both aspects of product concept development. To achieve this, we adopt the perspective of organisational interpretation systems (Daft and Weick (1984). Toward a model of organisations as interpretation systems. Academy of Management Review, 9(2), 289–295) and explore eight product development cases. Consequently, we develop a three-stage model and find that the linearity or nonlinearity of product concept development is determined by each NPD team’s assumption about the environment. We also consider product innovativeness and function equivocality, and establish that these are related to the NPD teams’ assumptions about the environment.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the pattern of knowledge flows as evidenced by the patent citations in three economic areas: USA, Japan and Europe. In each economic area, we exploit information from two international patent offices data, the United States Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO) data and the European Patent Office (EPO) data. In this way, we can investigate the link between the technological proximity and knowledge spillovers for 240 international firms. In particular, the contribution to the existing literature is twofold: First, we use an international sample so that we can compare the empirical results among different economic markets; second, we explore the robustness of results with respect to patent system features. In order to compute the technological proximity, we consider both the symmetrical measure and asymmetrical one. The empirical results indicate that there is a statistically significant correlation between technological proximity and knowledge spillovers measured by patent citations and that these results are robust with respect to patent office data used in the analysis.

The analysis of the importance of supply side and demand side factors with regard to innovative behavior is quite old. In this paper, these two categories are used to distinguish and examine the relevance of several success factors for collaborative innovation projects on the firm level in the German energy sector. The literature emphasizes that solving environmental problems requires extensive technological change. On the other hand, due to higher prices the market push is weaker. Regulatory factors are therefore designed to stimulate environmental innovations. The relative influence of these three categories on project performance is investigated on the basis of a sample of 128 German collaborative energy innovation projects in the development phase using a scale-based approach and structural equation modeling at the firm level. The results confirm the importance of supply side factors followed by demand side factors. In contrast to literary assumptions, R&D subsidies played no significant role.

The paper presents a qualitative multiple case study of three multilateral public–private R&D consortia representing different industrial sectors. Using the practice-based view as a theoretical lens, we explore the interplay between the deliberate and emergent practices of boundary management across the following three dimensions: (1) Boundary bridging focus; (2) boundary crossing arrangements; and (3) collaborative governance arrangements. Drawing on interviews, documentary analysis and observational data, we describe the misalignment between the deliberate and emergent aspects of boundary management, which can be caused by the funders’ reporting requirements, power differentials between collaborators and lack of contextual understanding. These factors, accompanied by path-dependency and confidentiality issues, may result in asymmetrical boundary management, whereby a selective focus on a specific boundary (or set of boundaries) combined with an unequal development of boundary bridges within the collaboration may lead to the crossing of some boundaries being prioritised at the expense of others.

Evaluations of “radicality” of innovations are mostly related to final products and services, however, examination of innovative ideas earlier on has an important implications for future innovations. Organisational members make decisions on whether or not to propose innovative ideas to the agenda. These decisions are often based on their personal judgements and perceptions. In this paper, a categorisation of innovative ideas by low, medium and high degree of radicality is proposed. The objective is to, on one hand, demonstrate the correctness of the categorisation proposed and, on the other hand, retrieve insights on how the level of radicality of products is conceived by practitioners. The results of a quasi-experimental investigation report that radicality of innovation relates to a degree of change in products. Based on perceptions of practitioners, with an increase in degree of radicality of innovative ideas, the value for rewards enhances.

Using a micro-economic perspective, this study explores the type, scale and impact of innovation activities that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) undertake with focus on the sub-national level. Based on a representative sample of 250 independent SMEs, based in the Leeds City Region (LCR) and using quantitative methods, this study provides evidence of the types of innovation that are most likely to result in achieving policy aims associated with for example the development of international markets or growth of employment opportunities. The findings show that there is a need for aligning business support for innovation with human capital (education/training) interventions. Furthermore, the findings provide a strong evidence base, at the local level, to inform the development of innovation policy and illustrate the connections between different types of innovation SMEs’ growth at regional level.