International Journal of Innovation Management

Innovation champions have been subject in various innovation management studies which showed that the existence of innovation champions is beneficial for innovation projects in various ways. However, innovation champion theory lacks understanding at what point in various innovation phases different innovation champions promote a project. By taking a dynamic view on the emergence of innovation champions in the inter-organisational innovation process, we show that it is not important that innovation champions exist all the time in an open innovation project, but at the right time. Furthermore, by analysing science-industry R&D collaboration projects, we provide insights in the innovation champion differences between science and industry partners and in the specific contributions these roles make for each partner.

This study examines how a person’s sense of identity (expressed in terms of openness to change vs. conservation) influences the way in which they screen early ideas for innovation projects. To study this, we recruited 20 experts from a leading IT-consultancy firm to individually evaluate and comment on 12 R&D project ideas. This data was then analysed by using a configurational approach (fsQCA) to understand how different experts combine various evaluation dimensions together to make sense of and decide on the goodness of an idea. The findings show that experts who are open to change view ideas as opportunities and approach idea screening as a generative process, while conservative experts are more reserved in their idea screening activities.

Present research on the front-end of innovation mainly examines factors or resources influencing an employee’s creativity, measured by outcomes such as the generated ideas. From the point of articulation, the ideas are more or less easy to handle as they enter a company’s sphere of influence. However, ideas that are held back by employees are not so easy to grasp, although they could provide a large pool of ideas to gain benefits from. This qualitative-empirical study points at demands of employees that have to be met to create an environment, which supports the development of ideas. Employees have great demands during information gathering and idea evaluation. Furthermore, the moment, when employees enter ideas into the idea management system, they are very sensitive to obstacles and feedback.

Information technology (IT) has been acknowledged as a driver of innovation performance and scholars agree that the impact of IT is mediated by additional organisational factors. Among those mediators between IT and innovation performance, a firm’s absorptive capacity and developmental culture received considerable attention. Empirical evidence suggests that both fully mediate the impact of IT on innovation performance; however, research that jointly considers both dimensions is scarce. Thus, we follow the resource-based view to operationalise IT assets, absorptive capacity, and developmental culture in one research model and apply SEM to test it with a sample of 58 firms from the water industry in Germany. We find simultaneous full mediation effects for both mediators. The fact that both mediation effects are significant in the presence of each other indicates that absorptive capacity and developmental culture explain complementary portions of the variance in innovation performance — a finding we relate to sociomateriality theory.

The issue of boundary determination in ecosystems remains problematic which is exaggerated in a dynamic, emerging innovation context, with actors joining and leaving. As part of wider research, on how firms innovate in emerging ecosystems, the boundaries of several early innovation ecosystems were explored.

Using evolutionary approaches, with extensive interviews and mapping, the wider ecosystem was initially researched. Then, five in-depth firm-focussed case studies were undertaken, and specific innovation ecosystem boundaries were mapped as they emerged and evolved.

The findings point to ‘identity’, a common early approach, being limited as the ecosystem evolves. The influence of competence and relationships play an increasing role. It is suggested that as the innovation ecosystem develops through its lifecycle, different approaches aligned to Santos and Eisenhardt’s (2005) four foci can be employed, starting with identity, then competence, then power and finally issues of efficiency.