International Journal of Innovation Management

This study explores and examines the relationship between the success of Research and Development (R&D) consortia and the factors that determine this success. Most studies of R&D consortium success are based on a set of observable variables as antecedents of this success. In our study, we recognise the complexity of the problem and use latent variables as a set of weighted observable variables, rather than classical variables. Empirical insights are provided by applying a second-generation technique, namely the PLS-SEM algorithm, to analyse the data gathered from R&D consortia in Spain. The results demonstrate the existence of constructs (partner attributes, alliance attributes, environment attributes and leadership) that encompass the determinant factors for success, and also show that the attributes of the partners and the characteristics of the project alliances exert a positive influence on the success of the joint R&D project.

Social media and public cloud computing (SM&PC) have emerged as important resources of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), but not all SMEs use SM&PC. The existing research predominantly focuses on the role of either the features of social media and cloud computing in relation to the perceptions of decision makers or the internal capabilities of organization concerning new innovation adoption. By integrating multidisciplinary literature, we, instead, argues that both the perception- and capability-related factors could play an important role in the adoption of new ICT technology, such as SM&PC. Therefore, we empirically investigated the decision maker’s perception-related and SME’s capability-related factors that may influence the adoption of SM&PC in SMEs in Germany. We used quantitative research methods to examine the proposed hypotheses on a sample of 2,404 SMEs from 17 industrial sectors. The results demonstrate that the decisions of German SMEs to engage in social media and cloud computing are not only influenced by the perceptions of SME owners about the usefulness, security aspects, and the implementation costs of SM&PC, but also by the internal capabilities of an SME, namely the innovativeness of an SME. The results and potential contributions of our research are discussed.

Purpose: This paper presents results from an empirical study in the banking sector in Qatar on the impact of high-performance work practices (HPWPs) on employee’s innovative work behaviour (IWB). In particular, the study seeks to examine the impact of HPWP on employees work attitudes of job satisfaction and organisational commitment, and of the possible mediating link of employees’ attitudes (i.e., satisfaction and commitment) on HPWPs and IWB link.

Methodology: Data were collected from employees about their perception of the use of HPWPs in their banks and about their level of satisfaction at work, their perceived commitment, and their innovative work behaviour. The sample included 150 employees working in different banks at Qatar.

Findings: The findings suggest that HPWPs are positively related to job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and IWB. Also, the study provides support for the mediating effect of organisational commitment on the HPWPs and IWB link.

Practical implications: When trying to inspire employees IWB through managerial practices (like HPWPs) in Qatari banks, management needs to pay attention to employees work related attitudes such as job satisfaction and organisational commitment.

Limitations: The unique characteristics of the Qatari banks limits the generalizability of the study findings.

Originality: This is the first study that explores the mediating role of job satisfaction and organisational commitment on HPWPs-IWB link after conducting a comprehensive PLS analysis. Moreover, the study provides evidence of this possible link in what is believed to be unique study setting.

Based on the life cycle, competitive strategy and continuous innovation theory, we empirically examine how life cycle and competitive strategy affect firms’ continuous innovation in China. The results show that declining firms tend to engage in less continuous innovation compared with growing or mature firms, which are more inclined to engage in continuous innovations. Results have also indicated that firms with offensive strategy engage in more continuous innovation compared with those following defensive strategy. Surprisingly, continuous innovation has a significant negative effect on business performance in different dimensions, such as return on assets, operating profit margin and enterprise value. Considering that the effect of continuous innovation on enterprise business performance may not be evident during the same financial period, we further examined the effects of continuous innovation on firms’ assets return ratio, operating profit ratio and enterprise value over 1–5 years ahead. However, we do not find continuous innovation having any positive effects on business performance.

Successfully developing a new product, service or production process for commercial purposes involves complex and dynamic changes, and therefore requires conditions of knowledge management that fosters innovation. In this sense, processes by which knowledge is created and exploited in the firm constitute key competence and source of innovation capabilities. The objective of the study is to examine the relationship between conditions of knowledge management and innovation capability. The sample consists of 102 Colombian new technology-based firms. According to results, conditions of knowledge management has a positive effect on innovation capability, specifically flexible structure, information and communications technology, strategic purpose, and competitive environment. The results help firms, especially those that require a lot of knowledge and carry out their activities in uncertain and dynamic environments, to management and understand how the processes of innovation capability are influenced by the conditions of knowledge management.

The role of complementary products is becoming increasingly important in facilitating innovation and has become a pivotal aspect of an organisation’s technology strategy. To address the lack of a useful framework that captures the different dimensions of product complementarity, this paper proposes a categorization for complementary products centered on user engagement. Based on a sample of 305 make, buy, and ally decisions for 32 primary product firms in the Personal Computing industry, this paper explores the influence of the proposed categorization on its strategy decision for developing complementary products. Results suggest a nuanced categorization of product complementarity adds value to explaining the decision, with the firm’s knowledge capital having a non-trivial influence on it. This paper endeavors to contribute to the literature on platform innovation by examining significance of inter-product relationships on strategy.

In pursuit of product innovation, companies increasingly use crowdsourcing for idea generation. Apart from financial motives, previous studies on the motivation of crowd workers identified intrinsic motivation, such as task meaningfulness, to play a key role. These studies, however, focused on routine tasks such as image labelling, using output quantity as the variable of interest. Since the primary goal for a creative task such as idea generation is not abundance but high quality, we investigate the influence of task meaning on workers’ effort and on output creativity. In a field experiment involving idea generation by an online crowdsourcing platform, we vary the task meaning in two different conditions, and evaluate the quality of the ideas generated. We find that higher task meaning has no positive influence on either the quantity or the creativity of the output, which carries practical implications for both commissioners and crowdsourcing platform designers.

Innovative behaviour and its antecedents attracted research interest recently. To address this need, the researcher draws on State-Trait Curiosity Inventory and self-determination theory to examine the impacts of work-related curiosity (WRC) and employee absorptive capacity on innovative employee behaviour. The mediating variable of employee absorptive capacity (EAC) was examined. Data was collected and analysed from 292 full-time employees who are working within the service sector in Jordan. The outputs from smart partial least square SmartPLS analysis reveal that WRC effects EAC, which consequently affects innovative employee behaviour. Surprisingly, supportive leadership behaviour was found to play a moderating role in the relationship between WRC and EAC, but it has an inverse effect. These findings provide managers knowledge on how to enhance innovative employee behaviours by encouraging employee curiosity and absorptive capacity.

The main aim of the current paper is to analyse how the directors’ characteristics could influence innovation. We study specifically the effect of demographic attributes, such as age, gender, nationality, educational degree and academic background on innovation. Innovation is measured by (1) the firm’s ability to engender innovation in things such as new or improved product/process and the number of patents and (2) innovation expenditures, like, for example, R&D spending on innovative projects and the number of scientists and experts per R&D teams. This study is conducted on the firms listed on SBF120 index between 2002 and 2013. The SBF120 index consists of the 120 largest capitalisations listed on the French Stock Exchange market (SBF: Société des Bourses Françaises). It provides the following results. First, the presence of women on the board positively influences product innovations while the presence of independent directors fosters the number of patents and process innovations. Secondly, highly educated directors can better understand complex decisions and absorb new ideas and technologies, which increase innovative products. Regarding the academic degree, we highlight that business educated directors seem to marginalise innovation investments as they are more likely to focus on activities with short-term financial returns. Then, directors of different ethnic, cultural backgrounds and different nationalities seem to stimulate a firm to improve or develop new products. Moreover, older directors are less risk-tolerant than younger ones: they invest less in risky R&D investments. By looking at the impact of various types of directors’ characteristics on innovation, and by taking into account various types of innovation; this paper brings practical insights to board structures issues. This paper contributes to the debate on the urgent need to increase the firms’ capacity to appoint on board individuals displaying diverse types of knowledge, abilities, skills and networking that could drive more innovations.

The capacity to generate knowledge and disseminate it in a firm is considered a primary strategic competence to attaining competitive gain. Knowledge literature reveals how relevant it is to increase interest in recognising and managing knowledge inherent in workforces and other firms’ dynamic capabilities that allow them to benefit from available knowledge within the milieu. In recognising the importance of employees’ baggage of knowledge, this study uses the Nigerian Innovation Survey for two waves, 2008 and 2010 of 1359 repeated observations of firms in the manufacturing and service sectors to examine the interplay of firms’ dynamic capabilities and innovation optimisation. It uses a recursive bivariate probit and a Tobit model for the estimations. Evidence shows that PhD, BSc, and Diploma associate positively and significantly with the ability of the firms to introduce product innovation. On the moderating estimations, there are mixed results regarding the blend of employees’ qualifications, training and internal R&D. Based on this, while the share of the highly educated workforce supports the introduction of product innovation, it does not, however, substantially increase the probability of firm-level innovativeness regarding process innovation. Although the blend of BSc and HND with R&D supports the propensity to introduce process innovation, it results in a decline with Diploma and R&D. The implication of the results offers management some investment choices on the initiation of formal training and the management of internal R&D through employees’ expertise. This study contributes to the existing literature on the relevance of employees’ different degrees being reinforced by training and internal R&D being boosted by employees’ qualifications in supporting the development of product and process innovation.

Developing and marketing innovations is a major challenge for organisations. Thus, a large body of research has analysed factors influencing innovation adoption and identified passive innovation resistance (PIR) as a crucial inhibitor. However, extant studies failed to examine whether predictors and consequences vary for the two different types of PIR — cognitive and situational PIR. This research strives to address this gap by analysing data of 238 consumers using PLS structural equation modelling. With respect to predictors, corresponding results show that cognitive PIR is strongly enhanced by neuroticism and increases with age, while it is reduced by openness to experience. Situational PIR is reduced by openness to experience and is lower among men. The results also highlight that cognitive and situational PIR substantially differ with respect to consequences. Cognitive PIR represents a strong inhibitor for behavioural innovations, whereas situational PIR is a strong inhibitor of functional innovations.

Employees play a major role in enabling organizations to innovate their processes. While conditions for participation have to be established, barriers have to be lowered and trainings take place, the motives of employees to participate in incremental and discontinuous process innovation are not well understood. One important soft factor not addressed yet sufficiently is psychological ownership of non-managerial employees that can contribute to increase process innovation activities. We apply a multi-time survey design gathering quantitative data which is analysed with structured equation modelling. The findings suggest that psychological ownership is important in fostering innovation behaviour with incremental innovation behaviour being an important mediator for the effect on radical innovation behaviour. We show how psychological ownership is useful in fostering process innovation behaviour with data from the financial services sector. Organisations should invest in establishing psychological ownership on the level of operations to increase process innovation.

The ISO56002 international standard for managing innovation systems was published in 2019. In this paper, we review the rationale, the key features, and the evidence base for this new standard. The primary objective of the standard is to promote the professionalisation of the field by providing a framework for management and organisational practice. The standard was developed by a wide range of stakeholders, including consultants and professional associations, and therefore features most of the elements we would expect from such a high-level, generic approach: strategy, organisation, leadership, planning, support, process, performance evaluation, and improvement. We examine the empirical base for each of these components in this paper. We also identify some critical shortcomings, such as the implicit adoption of a linear model, lack of specific tools to support practice, or any significant variation in application by sector or context. Finally, we recommend how the standard could be improved and implemented in practice.