International Journal of Innovation Management

Basing on risk propensity and cognitive evaluation theory, this study explores the relationship between stock options and new product launch. A study based on archival data of 273 group affiliated Indian firms for 3 years demonstrates that the rate of new product introduction is a function of stock options provided to employees. Furthermore, ownership concentration of business groups and financial slack moderate this relationship.

In this paper, we advance our understanding of the relationship between slack and innovation in two ways. We distinguish between different slack types on the organisational level, and hypothesise and empirically test how they influence innovative work behaviour (IWB) of both employees and top managers on the individual level. Applying a multigroup analysis in PLS-SEM, we test our model with a sample of 403 individuals, 155 top managers and 248 employees, from the German real estate industry. We find support for our central argument that the influence of organisational slack on individuals’ IWB differs according to the type of slack and the organisational role of the individual.

This paper examines the association between university–industry collaboration and firm innovation performance, and the effect of informal mechanisms of knowledge transfer on such an association, using data from a survey of 245 firms in Ghana and employing partial least squares structural equation modelling. The results are of significant relevance to the business community and policy-makers in Ghana and West African. We find that while university–industry collaboration is positively related to innovation performance in firms, informal mechanisms of university knowledge transfer do not and negatively moderate the positive association between university–industry collaboration and innovation performance in firms. It is also found that to facilitate innovation outcomes, formal, legal binding contracts are required. The study recommends that university knowledge generation and innovation policies in Ghana encourage formal collaboration between knowledge exchange actors. It is also suggested that improvements need to be made to the efficacy of intellectual property legislation in Ghana.

It is widely accepted that CEOs with a transformational leadership style can promote innovation in the organisations they lead, but the specific ways in which they influence followers and shape the organisational context to increase innovation remain largely unexplored. Improvement of our understanding of this relationship requires identifying and explaining the mechanisms that allow transformational CEOs to mobilise employees towards an active support of innovation. We argue that top managers who portray a transformational leadership style have a positive effect on organisational innovation by improving how the firm exchanges and communicates information and knowledge, that is, by increasing employees’ participation and social capital. Data from a sample of 194 executives from 97 Ecuadorian small- and medium-sized firms provide support for our hypotheses.

In innovation systems, venture firms, incubators and science parks may interact with universities to achieve commercialisable output. These various parties are connected to different guiding performance metrics — measures on each party’s performance — that influence their behaviours. This paper illustrates and discusses the role of performance metrics among various parties in innovation systems connected with early research ideas from universities. The empirical part of the paper is based on interviews with 20 researchers and 10 representatives of various innovation system organisations in an EU-based research project. The paper points out how parties in the innovation process saw different reasons to participate which were strongly connected with how each party was evaluated and which caused sub-optimisation in behaviours. Previous research on innovation systems has not focused on the rationales and behaviours of parties. The focus on metrics targets an important point for understanding innovation processes involving several parties and specifically doing so for support organisations that cannot be measured on revenues or profits.

The rising use of crowdfunding makes it important for project initiators to know how they can increase the likelihood of success of their crowdfunding campaign. The effects of using social media, although relatively easy to do via most crowdfunding platforms, have not yet been analysed in greater detail in scientific research. We address this research gap by investigating the effects of social media reach and utilisation on measures of reward-based crowdfunding success, based on an analysis of 230 projects from the crowdfunding platform wemakeit. Our results show that social media reach via the number of social media accounts that belong to the project and the number of accounts that belong to the project initiator increases the number of investors and the percentage of the funding goal that is obtained. Furthermore, social media reach via the size of the projects’ and the individuals’ social networks has not been found to be important for crowdfunding success. Social media utilisation in regard to the amount of content shared is found to be positively associated with crowdfunding success.

U.S. Corporations spend millions of dollars on innovating new technologies. This despite the fact that such capital expenditure outlay runs the risk of possible failure and loss of investments. This paper investigates what factors drive a corporation to innovate. In addition to firm-specific factors, we examine board governance and industry concentration. This study examines the association of firm, governance and industry characteristics that may influence a firm to innovate. Results from logit regression seem to suggest that firm size, capital expenditure growth, and industry concentration are more likely to influence firm’s innovation efforts. Estimates also indicate that younger CEOs are more prone to innovation than older CEOs. These findings stand up to greater scrutiny when we perform a battery of robustness checks.

This study looks at the role of champions in the early stages of the product development process, when employees try to secure initial funding for project proposals. Project proposals that fail to receive funding never become part of the firm’s project pipeline; hence, it is critical to understand the champion’s role early on. Existing research on corporate champions is mostly focused on the later stages of the new product development process and has generally identified corporate champions as key to projects likely to face organisational resistance. However, several recent studies suggest that champions may prefer projects less likely to face organisational resistance. Using data from project proposals of executive MBA students across 78 large organisations, we find that champion support for the team is weaker for project proposals likely to evoke resistance and that such lower champion support further reduces the likelihood of high-resistance early-stage proposals to receive initial funding.

This paper theorises about the behaviour of firms engaged in complex product systems innovation and engineering under the lean startup/minimum viable product process. In doing so, it fills a gap in the literature at the intersection of innovation management and behavioural economics. By deconstructing the concept of commercial value, we assemble, define and structure the relationships among seven values that innovation teams encounter along the path of innovation. Then, we demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed framework by applying it to the case of algorithmic financial systems. The model of capability developed for this domain may have broader applicability. For innovations where performance is probabilistic and achieves a steady state, capability can define what counts as “good enough” commercial value.

The study of value co-creation for marketing innovation in the small–medium enterprise (SME) community is still overlooked despite its contribution to economic development. This study offers a platform of value co-creation model for marketing innovation and compares its application to the green and business-as-usual SME communities. Structural equation modelling is conducted to test the hypotheses of both model applications. Key persons in the community were interviewed to enrich the quantitative results. The result shows the relationships between collaborative networks and dynamic interactions with resource integration as well as their impact on marketing innovation. Collaborative networks and dynamic interactions demonstrate significantly positive influences on marketing innovation in the business-as-usual SME community, whereas the green SME community only engages in internal dynamic interactions to build internal value co-creation. Policymakers may adopt this model to evaluate SMEs’ business performance by measuring the value co-creation effect on the community’s capacity development.

This paper uses Transactional Management Theory to examine the extent to which an organisational culture is apt to encourage organisational innovation by using reward mechanisms. We gathered responses from 208 middle managers in the United States and Mexico where firms acquire varying blends of organisational orientations and leadership styles. We found performance orientation, modesty, humane orientation and power distance to be significantly related to reward mechanisms, but not all positively. We also found that the practice of rewarding innovation creates value in such a practice.

Innovation is a collaborative act. Thus, a lot of attention has been paid to teamwork as the prevalent approach for innovation in companies. However, teams also present limits, due to conflicts and compromises when converging. This study, which focuses on the development of innovative directions, explores the nature of collaboration by looking at the purest unit of collaboration: the pair. We isolate the case of pair collaboration and investigate, through empirical investigations, the sensemaking process people accomplish and how it is affected by those tensions that affect teams when innovating. We observe how innovation unfolds when people move from creating individually, in pair and finally in team. Findings suggest that the pair creates an intimate environment where innovative thinking, alignment and engagement flourish and that it is a good intermediate step towards teamwork. This paper acknowledges an underestimated dynamic of innovation, pair collaboration, which has real potential to address one of organisations’ most problematic challenges: people engagement and convergence towards an innovative direction.

In this research, we examine the effect of workgroup interpersonal justice (WIJ) (defined as the extent to which employees are treated with dignity and respect by their co-workers) on innovative work behaviours (IWB). Specifically, we first test the mediating role of group identification (GI) in this relationship. Next, we examine the moderating role of reflexivity of the group on this mediation effect. Based on 204 employees, our results showed that the indirect effect of the WIJ on IWB, through GI, is moderated by the reflexivity of the group. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.