International Journal of Innovation Management

This paper examines the roles of external stakeholders in the business model development of new technology-based firms (NTBFs) from the perspective of the founders. Based on a longitudinal study of two Swedish NTBFs, semi-structured interviews, including timeline mapping, were conducted with the founders of each firm over a period of two years, drawing on retrospective data from the first year of founding. The findings reveal that stakeholder interaction is first initiated based on the position the stakeholder has in relation to the firm, whereas what tasks the stakeholder perform in relation to NTBF resource needs has greater consequences for the business model development. The roles of stakeholders further help shape founder perceptions of how to do business, although such influence may be limited over time. The results provide valuable insight into the influence of founders’ perceptions and firms’ business networks on the business configuration of NTBFs, revealing that business model development is both endogenous and exogenous. Specifically, the study provides some original insights around which roles stakeholders play in the early development of the business model and why these roles are necessary at certain points in time.

It has been established in both developed and emerging economies that geographic concentration of firms contributed in no small ways to the growth of country’s economy. However, in developing countries like Nigeria, what constitutes innovation capability needed to transform local innovation system towards indigenisation of ICT products among the ICT clustered firms is not known; and where data are available, they are somewhat outdated. This paper therefore presented empirical evidences on Innovation capability among agglomerated MSMEs in Nigeria. The research adapted the 6th Community Innovation Survey (CIS) on 228 owners of ICT clustered enterprises. It was found that nontechnical innovations were more prevalent in the clusters. It was also discovered that firms with appropriate mix of both internal and external sources of Innovation Capability performed better. The research thus added to the body of knowledge in development literature on the role of capability mix in innovation management.

Decision-makers often struggle to terminate unsuccessful new product development (NPD) projects, so that escalating commitment occurs. Although research shows that rational and intuitive decision-making styles (DMS) as well as a decision-maker’s affective state determines the performance of NPD decisions, little is known about their influences on escalating commitment. By applying the affect infusion model in an experimental study, we investigate how a decision-maker’s affective state influence their escalating commitment by focusing on their use of a rational and an intuitive DMS. Our findings, based on 366 respondents, show that a rational DMS is unable to reduce commitment escalation. Surprisingly, an intuitive DMS is able to reduce a decision-maker’s commitment in the case of a positive affect, whereas a rational DMS increases their commitment in the case of a negative affect. Thus, our interdisciplinary research on affect and decision-making extends and contributes to research into decision-making during the NPD process as well as into escalating commitment.

Enriching the literature on innovation and knowledge management, this paper examines the impact of various types of innovation (product, process, marketing, and organization) on the knowledge sharing of SMEs through transformational leadership. A total of 437 samples were collected from SMEs owners/managers in the service sector of a developing economy through a quantitative method. The data were analyzed using a SMART PLS-SEM. The findings confirmed the hypotheses that innovation have a significant influence on knowledge sharing; whiles as transformational leadership had a non-moderating effect. Besides consolidating the existing theory on the importance of innovation for explaining a variation in knowledge sharing activities, the findings also inform SMEs and policymakers to be cautious of implementing transformational leadership style as it may have a non-moderating impact in today’s entrepreneurial activities. Finally, we believe that this study will provide researchers with some key aspects to explore in this area of study and encourage applications of objective and subjective measures to improve the validity of results.

Product developers are increasingly often faced with the decision of whether or not to adopt new technologies into their own new product development (NPD) processes. Adopting a resource-based perspective, we posit that the adoption of radical technologies into the NPD process, such as remote collaborative design, virtual reality, and simulation systems, can help improve NPD performance. At the same time, these adoptions are likely to slow down product launch. Just as consumers struggle to integrate radical technologies during the short-term, we propose that new product developers will face a similar learning curve. Therefore, we investigate potential moderators that could help product developers quickly integrate radical technologies and lessen their negative influence on product launch timeliness. A wide-ranging survey of 249 product managers sponsored by an international product development organisation is used in this study. The results reveal that while the adoption of radical technologies benefits NPD performance, the adoption tends to slow down the product launch process. However, cross-functional leadership within the organisation helps to lessen this negative influence on launch timeliness. The results from this study offer product managers practical guidelines for successfully adopting radical technologies into the NPD process and mitigating risks.

We study the intricate relationship between business model innovation and the relevant organisational changes that can facilitate the renewal of a traditional business model. To do so, we build on the inductive, longitudinal single case study of an energy utility, describing the mechanisms through which the business model has been innovated over time, and the organisational changes that enabled and fostered such innovation. The innovation itself was a result of the need to face the current digital transformation that is compelling energy utilities to renew their traditional business models and offer customers a new value proposition. This study therefore contributes to the ongoing academic debate on business model innovation and its practical application, adding to the broad discussion on organisational ambidexterity and the analysis of the most relevant organisational changes adopted to implement effective business model innovation.

Intermediaries are an inherent part of value creation in open innovation. They connect organisations seeking external solutions for an innovation-related problem (seekers) with potential solution providers (solvers). To bridge between the innovation problem and external knowledge sources, intermediaries deploy different search strategies. This study compares the cost of using two prevalent approaches: direct versus delegated search. Direct search corresponds to the conventional understanding of search by screening a pre-identified set of solution providers that the intermediary has identified as potentially relevant contributors. Delegated search comprises more indirect search such as problem broadcasting or crowdsourcing. Here, the innovation problem is distributed to a large external network of potential solvers, allowing even unobvious outsiders to contribute to its solution. An empirical study of 53 open innovation intermediaries indicates that delegated search outperforms direct search in terms effectiveness. The lower overall effort for intermediation in delegated search mainly arises from decoupling the effort to coordinate the search process by shifting it towards the solution provider.

The aim of this paper is to better understand whether cooperation, absorptive capacity and public financial support for innovation activities, how they influence the innovative performance of Portuguese enterprise. The literature review focuses the importance of these three factors both drivers as the limiters process of business innovation, influencing the innovative performance of enterprise. Based on a review of the literature, hypotheses are formulated, which are tested with secondary data resources from the Community Innovation Survey 2010. This questionnaire was implemented under the supervision of EUROSTAT. The method used is the logistic regression model. The results obtained confirm that the implementation of cooperation with partners belonging to internal sources of business has a significant influence on the innovations achieved at the level of both products and processes.

Both academics and practitioners are underlining the relevance of business model innovation in unlocking lasting, competitive advantages. To understand how business model innovation is achieved in the team level and which contingency factors drive or inhibit the process, this study scrutinizes the strategic accord and tension of analogous and opposing action strategies, as potential contingency factors controlling and balancing the effects of external and internal tacit knowledge on business model innovation. Using a research sample of 162 team projects, our empirical study supported the research hypotheses regarding how tacit knowledge fuels business model innovation, highlighting differed moderating roles of three open action strategies (team autonomy, team creativity, and team diversity) on the relationship between two transferred knowledge types and business model innovation of technology-intensive companies. This study shed light on how team management strategies, namely manifestations of open action strategies, moderate the effectiveness of tacit knowledge on business model innovation.

Successful new product development is of crucial importance for the survival of enterprises and for creating and securing competitive positions. In R&D performance in new product development is generally affected by interpersonal leadership. Empowering leadership, specifically, is suitable for this context, as the need for autonomy and achievement, as well as the cooperation of the followers, are taken into account through the support of the leader. However, so far no moderating effects of the context have been examined. Therefore, the present study examined the influence of the contextual factors of strategic, structural, and cultural orientation on the relations between empowering leadership and new product development performance in R&D. Additionally, a wide range of leadership behaviors with transformational and transactional leadership is taken into account in this study. Empowering leadership is assumed to have the highest impact on the R&D context. The moderating effects of the context were investigated in a quantitative design with 116 leaders and 371 respective followers from 32 R&D departments of various branches of industrial enterprises. The results confirmed a main effect of empowering leadership on new product development performance. Additionally, moderation analyses showed moderating effects on strategic and cultural orientation, while structural orientation had no moderating effect. It can be concluded that empowering leadership has a positive effect on new product development performance; nevertheless, the context in which leadership is practiced has to be considered.

This paper examines which management strategies public managers may use to enhance innovative behavior among their employees. We focus on the implementation of a politically ambitious innovation strategy in a large Danish municipality. Based on a survey distributed to 1292 employees and 113 managers, we conduct a multi-level analysis focusing on how different management strategies (reported by the managers) and perceived management behavior (reported by the employees) affect the public employees’ perceived idea generation, idea promotion, and idea realization. The results show that knowledge of the innovation strategy, encouraging management, a risk-tolerant culture and autonomy are important management tools, whereas strategic management communication and economic rewards do not correlate with any of the phases in innovative work behavior. We contribute with new evidence on how innovation is supported by public managers in the different phases of the innovation process, and we conclude by discussing the practical implications of the findings.

Organisational innovativeness is known to be affected by employee incentives and motivation, but the evidence is inconclusive regarding the organisational contexts and contingencies where this phenomenon takes place. To examine this issue, we adopt the Competing Value Framework of four types of organisational cultures, and hypothesise differences in the incentives–motivation–innovativeness relationships. Using an empirical study of 425 Finnish firms in technology industries, we found in general that intangible and tangible incentives facilitate both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, but only intrinsic motivation leads to improved organisational innovativeness. Testing our model for subsamples that included clan, adhocracy, market, and hierarchy cultures, we found that results vary considerably between those. First, incentives have different implications to motivation under different organizational cultures. Further, intrinsic motivation leads to innovativeness under adhocracy, clan, and market culture, but not under hierarchy culture, and extrinsic motivation does not lead to innovativeness under any culture.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of organisational and technological readiness on organisational intelligence and the performance of customer relationship management through the knowledge management process. In terms of purpose, this study is an applied research which in respect to data collection is descriptive-causal and a quantitative research. The statistical population of the research was composed of senior managers of knowledge-based and technology-driven companies in Lorestan Province. The number of mentioned companies was 108, so the statistical society was considered to consist of 108 people (director generals). The sample size was estimated by using Cochran formula for specific societies as 85 persons, who were selected randomly. The data gathering tool was a questionnaire of which reliability and validity were confirmed by statistical tests. To analyze the data, descriptive and inferential statistics (normality test, correlation test and Structural Equation Modeling test) were used as well as SPSS and SMART partial least squares (PLS) software programs. The results of the structural equation modelling test showed that technological readiness and organisational readiness have a positive and significant effect on the variable of the knowledge management process, and through this variable, they also indirectly affect the organisational intelligence and the performance of customer relationship management. The knowledge management process has a positive effect on two variables of organisational intelligence and the performance of customer relationship management, and it also indirectly affects the performance of customer relationship management via organisational intelligence. Finally, the results showed that organisational intelligence has a positive and significant effect on the performance of customer relationship management.