International Journal of Innovation Management

New product development (NPD) has long been regarded as an important issue for the success of business operations. One of the key determinants of NPD is innovation, which is highly related to innovation implementation. Both innovation implementation and NPD success require team sensemaking and trust. The purpose of this study is to examine the antecedents of innovation implementation and its mediating role through which it influences NPD success. A causal model was developed to examine relevant variables for innovation implementation on NPD success. A survey was conducted using the responses from 286 NPD team leaders in the Taiwanese high-tech industry. The results indicated that team sensemaking and trust can influence innovation implementation, which further promotes NPD success. The influences of team sensemaking capability and trust on NPD success can be mediated through the mediating role that innovation implementation plays. This report sheds light on the relevance of innovation implementation in a NPD context.

Any firm must decide to what extent it should remain open to its environment and which internal competencies it should develop to capitalise on externally sourced information. While addressing these key strategic considerations, this project focuses on the joint effect of heterogeneity of external networks and internal culture of innovation. High heterogeneity of external networks should enable a firm to more quickly learn about and address evolving demands of external markets. Nevertheless, to fully capitalise on new incoming information, a firm must also establish an organisational culture that will mandate strong employee engagement and support for the process of internal transformation. Consequently, this study proposes that the joint effect of two factors — heterogeneous networks and culture of innovation — may empower any organisation to successfully react to key environmental changes. The empirical testing of the proposed model was conducted using regression analyses performed on original data collected in the health industry. Contribution to research and practice is discussed.

This paper explores the role of plans, as objects, in the formation of new innovation practice in organisations. A vocabulary for analysis is developed from innovation object theory. First, findings from an ethnographic study in a hospital organisation show that a plan serves several functions depending on its activation for use: a checklist of past practice (tertiary object), an opener for debates over current practice (secondary object) and a trigger for future practice development (primary object). Second, a framework is offered that shows how a plan supports different functionalities (evaluating, debating, further exploring) in a temporal dynamics of practice formation. Third, thus, plans play a significant role not only in planning activities, but also as connectors that shape and patch together pieces of past, present and future into what actually become new organisational practice. Finally, implications for innovation theory and management are drawn from these novel contributions.

This study investigates the role of formal and informal appropriability mechanisms to appropriate revenues from innovation in several sectors. This relationship depends on factors such as sector, type of product or service, firm’s characteristics, etc. The set of appropriability mechanisms used by a firm depends on their availability and on the firm’s appropriability strategy. An empirical test using a sample of 2,122 Portuguese SMEs from four different sectors of the 2012 Community Innovation Survey indicated that for manufacturing; water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities; and wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles; informal appropriability mechanisms, such as lead-time and complexity, are more effective for converting product innovation into financial performance in the short term. On its turn, for extractive sectors (Mining and Quarrying), formal mechanisms (e.g., patents) are better to protect product innovation and informal mechanisms are more effective to protect process innovation.

Platform operators rely on external contributions that complement their own development activities. Although previous research has analysed which conditions are beneficial in attracting developers, only scant research is concerned with the motivation and work behaviour of application developers. The authors survey 395 Apple iOS and Android developers to test a model of perceived platform openness, developer work motivation, and resulting behaviour that builds upon self-determination theory. The findings suggest that future research would benefit from a more thorough consideration of platform openness, as not all paths of the model are equally strong for open vs closed platforms.

Providers of product-service solutions find it challenging to simultaneously manage an increasing need for customised offerings along with internal demands for efficiency. To manage this balance, this paper explores the utilisation of platform strategies in the development of integrated product-service solutions. While platform strategies have been employed for many years in the development of physical products, this paper focuses on platform strategies in the development of solutions that combine both products and services. Based on a case study, we identify different assets that can be shared by these integrated product-service solutions and provide rationales for using platform strategies for solutions. We emphasise the potential of applying platform strategies while acknowledging the need for a holistic perspective on what assets to share among solutions. In particular, we draw attention to knowledge platforms as a basis for development of product-service solutions. The potential from using technology and usage knowledge platforms is highlighted in particular.

This study uses data from a sample of 31,948 European innovating firms to examine the impact that knowledge-related barriers to technological innovation have on the link between the level of such innovation and firm performance, and, to investigate the role of “exploitative” and “explorative” organisational strategies in moderating such impact. Exploitative strategies are measured by the level of organisational innovations, and exploratory strategies are measured by the level of methods for fostering workplace creativity. Using moderated hierarchical regression, the results reveal a negative effect of the interaction between technological innovation and related knowledge constraints on firm performance. They also reveal that the negative interaction effect becomes positive at high levels of organisational innovations and creativity-fostering methods. The study findings thus indicate the need for managers of technologically innovative firms to implement both exploitative and explorative organisational strategies. Doing so could help minimise the negative effects of knowledge-related barriers to technological innovation, and in turn promote innovation-based competitiveness and business success.

Scientific research and innovation management practice have emphasised the important role of individual competencies in meeting the challenges of the digital transformation. However, it still lacks empirical studies that strive to determine how certain competencies of employees might affect the success of the digital transformation itself. In order to empirically determine the individual contribution of specific employee competencies to a successful digital transformation in terms of a high Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) usage performance, a quantitative study among German component manufacturers of the capital goods industry was conducted. Drawing upon a sample of 284 employees, our results reveal that high developed cognitive and processual competencies of individuals promote the digital transformation processes of a firm. Surprisingly, social competencies have only a little influence. Furthermore, our findings also confirmed that a high IIoT usage performance is beneficial for a firm, significantly enhancing divisional success.

This paper examines how innovative small firms achieve innovation within lean environments. Writers taking a resource-based view (RBV) approach to innovation by small firms in lean environments have argued that they are resource-constrained through shortages of skilled labour, finance and social networks. This paper builds on the RBV approach by adopting a dynamic capabilities (DCs) lens to investigate how innovative small firms adopt and acquire DCs to achieve innovation in a lean environment in a small country with an open economy that is distant from major markets. We argue that entrepreneurs will engage in pragmatic solutions to overcome resource constraints. We provide qualitative evidence from a programme of 30 interviews and find that innovative small firms achieve innovation through ingenuity and patience. Our entrepreneurs use methods such as bricolage and bootstrapping and make cooperative arrangements with early adopters to maximise use of their limited resources.

The study findings show that the utilization of open innovation (OI) tools is effective in promoting innovation in small businesses. The study differentiated between OI tools aimed at acquiring knowledge in a unidirectional manner from external open sources of information such as Internet searches for professional information or attending professional conferences, and OI tools aimed at obtaining knowledge by interacting with other factors in the business ecosystem. Interestingly, it was found that utilization of unidirectional OI tools contributes more to the level of product innovation, while utilization of networking and external collaboration contributes more to levels of process and marketing innovation, respectively. In addition, the study clarified that these businesses maintain connections to promote innovation mainly with entities in their closest business environment, based on commercial relationships with their suppliers and customers. The empirical study was conducted through face-to-face interviews on a sample of 202 small businesses in the industry and craft sectors. The theoretical contribution of the research stems from its focus on a group of businesses that has rarely been the focus of studies on innovation. The use of face-to-face interviews as a research tool facilitated the attainment of knowledge that is generally not readily accessible. The study may contribute in a practical manner to assisting small businesses in the development and implementation of appropriate OI tools for promoting innovation and enable them to reach beyond their closest business environment.