International Journal of Innovation Management

Traditionally, the innovation literature has viewed product innovation as the key competitive driver for firms in the market. But as demands for sustainability increase and technology is advancing sustainability-oriented innovation across industries, there is an opportunity to reconsider the role of process innovations. This study follows the market development process of a start-up founded on the principle of sustainability-oriented innovation and explores how the process innovation itself is used to shape the external market. This paper considers the relationship between process innovations and external market development through a longitudinal case study of a vertical farm start-up in Stockholm, Sweden. Findings show that through a number of representational practices, process innovation can also serve external objectives and play a role in external market development for firms incorporating the principles of sustainability-oriented innovation.

A stream of servitisation research has focused on the construction of taxonomies and typologies of product–service system business models (BMs). However, their relevance in the context of increased utilisation of digital technologies may be questioned. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to empirically revisit the existing product–service system BM taxonomies to explore the following research question: How can the BMs of servitised manufacturing firms be categorised in the digital era? The question is addressed through an embedded case study of five servitised firms. We found that the firms’ BMs varied with regard to the degree of the suppliers’ ownership of delivered products, degree of smartness of the services provided and degree of performance orientation of contracts. Based on these findings, we derived a new product–service system BM taxonomy with eight categories, presented in a 2 × 2 × 2 matrix, that significantly extends earlier taxonomies.

Living labs (LLs) are becoming an increasingly popular approach to engage in open innovation. Although applications and influence of LLs have grown rapidly over the last decade, the landscape of LL research remains largely unclear and underexplored. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop a consolidated understanding of this research field and to detect the potential areas of fragmentation and isolation. Through a systematic review of the scholarly literature on LLs, this study applies bibliometric methods on a dataset of 411 journal articles. The results of this study reveal the diverse and fragmented nature of the LL field, with contributions spanning across different disciplines and application domains. Despite such fragmentation, some clusters of scholars and publications are identified as well as influential contributions. Given the nascent state of the literature, the role of special issues in shaping the evolution of the LL debate is prominent. This study provides a map to practitioners to investigate and learn from the application of LLs in diverse fields. This aspect is particularly important in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, which stresses the key role of open and collaborative approaches to innovation, making the use of LLs increasingly relevant for governments, companies, public organisations and individuals.

Prior literature highlights the competing institutional logics corporate venture capital (CVC) units have to face due to their intermediary position between the two environments in which they operate — the VC industry and the corporate firm. By conducting an inductive case study of 20 CVC units, we unravel how novel organisational subunits reconcile the conflicting logics in terms of their organisational structure. We show that, instead of fully aligning with one or the other environment, most units form hybrid organisations incorporating elements of both logics. Our data suggest that CVC units tend to follow the hybridisation strategy of selective coupling rather than apply strategies of compromising or decoupling. The type of structure depends on factors on the intra-, inter-organisational and industry level. We further suggest a specific hybridisation pattern that is especially beneficial in the achievement of a unit’s strategic objectives. Our findings contribute to both institutional theory and CVC literature.

Many companies have created corporate incubators to deal with the increasing pace of innovation and to foster innovation activities beyond their current business. Since these corporate incubators demand considerable resources, the parent companies continuously evaluate the incubators’ performance and then decide on their survival. This decision depends on the balance between incubator’s contributions and the hosting company’s financial investment (top-level), while the incubator’s contributions again depend on the balance between incubator investment and the supported new business contributions (bottom-level). We apply the Barnard–Simon theory of organisational equilibrium to investigate the resource flow balance on both levels and to predict the resulting incubators’ performance, which determines their future survival. The analysis is based on a sample of corporate incubators surveyed in 2019. Results show that incubators with a top-level equilibrium and a bottom-level disequilibrium perform better. These counterintuitive yet insightful results are discussed in detail.

R&D projects between multiple partners have been examined by various disciplines at the macro-, micro- and meso-level. Even though scholars have acknowledged the possibility that both competitive and non-competitive partners participate in such projects, we still lack a holistic perspective on their complex interactions. This paper builds on open innovation and coopetition literature to explore the influence of research partners and clusters on the relationships between competing companies in different project phases of R&D projects. The study is based on insights from five coopetitive R&D projects in mature industries. Findings revealed the need for simultaneous involvement of research partners and clusters when establishing the collaboration in the pre-project phase, while research partners have dominant roles in balancing coopetition in both the pre-project and project implementation phases. Propositions are offered to inform future studies and managerial implications are discussed.