International Journal of Innovation Management

Using a large sample of North American firms, from 1999 to 2016, we investigate the effect of corporate governance structures, specifically ownership, board characteristics, and executive compensation contracts on innovation intensity and output. We consider both R$\&$D expenditures and patents as innovation proxies and evaluate consequences of the economic downturns of 2000 and 2008. We find that R$\&$D investment increases with ownership by institutional blockholders and with the number of institutional owners, confirming the key role institutions play in innovation activities of firms. We observe higher R$\&$D levels for firms with more independent boards, more females board members and more outside directorships held by directors. We report that firms with CEO/chair of the board duality have lower R$\&$D intensity, as do firms with higher ownership by directors and with a higher mean board age. Innovation is negatively related to CEO salary levels, but positively related to the ratio of incentives to total compensation, confirming that incentives contribute to aligning shareholders and management interests, which leads to better long-term decisions. However, those incentives reduce the number of patents. We do not find any systematic changes in R$\&$D for the 2000 recession, however there is an increase for the 2008 financial crisis.

This paper compares the innovation performance of state-owned firms owned by different levels of government, with that of privately owned firms. Analysis of a 116-firm panel dataset for the Chinese solar photovoltaic industry from 1999 to 2015 suggests that government’s financial support increases the quantity of innovation outputs. However, the efficiency in utilising the financial resources is determined by the effectiveness of agency relationships. Applying agency theory to the Chinese politico-economic context indicates that innovation quality depends on length and complexity of agency chains, engagement of monitors, and the tenure of managers. By using forward citations and proportion of patents in active use, two measures of innovation quality that are more valid and reliable than patent counts, our study finds that municipally owned firms are superior in terms of innovation productivity to those under central ownership, and comparable to private firms.

In new product development (NPD) firms increasingly have to rely on external expertise from suppliers. However, results of early supplier integration have been found to be ambiguous. This research empirically tests the hypothesis that the participation of professional purchasing agents early on in the supplier integration process plays a decisive role to distinguish successful projects. Our sample gave evidence that early supply management integration positively moderated supplier involvement’s effect on firm success. Hence, firms may benefit from avoiding supplier integration without professional purchasing management. Still, in many firms the procurement department is not yet integrated in NPD processes early on. Our research identifies four measures those firms applied, in which purchasing got fully embedded in the innovation process: top-management support, structural differentiation, explicit processes, and a collaborative corporate culture. This finding can serve as blue print for implementing purchasing integration and therewith improve the success of supplier integration in NPD.

Purpose: The study aims to examine the causal relationships among knowledge-oriented leadership (KOL), open innovation (OI), knowledge infrastructure capability (KIC) and knowledge process capability (KPC). This study also explored the mediating role of knowledge infrastructure capability (KIC) and knowledge process capability (KPC) in the relationship between knowledge-oriented leadership and open innovation.

Design/methodology/approach: The study collected primary data via a standardized questionnaire comprising a sample of 305 pharmaceutical and health sector employees in Pakistan. Hypotheses were tested through structural equation modeling.

Findings: The results display the significant causal relationships among the variables and knowledge infrastructure and process capability and these significantly mediate the relationship between knowledge-oriented leadership and two-dimensional open innovation. Furthermore, this study found an insignificant effect of KOL on inbound open innovation.

Limitation: The findings of the paper are based on the data collected from the Pakistan pharmaceutical and health sector. In future, to accommodate the issue of generalizability, the framework can be used for samples from other countries.

Practical Implication: This study provides evidence that leadership is one of the most crucial sources that can aid in organizational effectiveness when dealing with knowledge by developing infrastructure and improving processes to enhance innovative outcomes.

The Lean Startup approach and its related Minimum Viable Product thinking is one of the key trends not only in entrepreneurship, but also in more and more established companies. Before this background, this paper experimentally investigates whether and how the Lean Startup approach improves innovation processes in established companies. For this, the overall experiment had 23 participants, the outcome was then matched against a control group and evaluated through a survey with 146 representatives of the target group of the product. The results show that the Lean Startup approach outperforms the traditional approach and that this method improves the success rate of innovation ideas and thus supports the learning philosophy within established companies. Moreover, the experiment revealed a superior performance, especially relating to financial output. Based on these results, implications for research and companies are discussed, as well as limitations and further research suggestions.

Management practices are important drivers of firm productivity (Bloom et al., 2019). While differences in the formalisation and sophistication of management practices are evident in comparisons of foreign multinationals and domestic firms (Bloom et al., 2012, Bloom and Van Reenen, 2007a, Bloom and Van Reenen, 2010), a striking omission from many studies is the failure to distinguish between domestic firms and domestically-owned multinationals (McDonnell et al., 2014). We merge the World Management Survey with the FAME dataset to examine the influence of firm ownership (standalone domestic firms; domestic groups; domestic owned multinationals; foreign owned multinationals) across a broad range of management practices. Foreign owned multinationals exhibit the highest formalisation and sophistication of management practices compared to all other firm types. However, significant asymmetries exist between different management practices across firm ownership. This is important as it raises questions as to whether there is sufficient learning and transfer of practices taking place across firms.

Organisations are spending substantial resources on implementing product and process innovations. It is, therefore, important to evaluate if the implementation of those innovations substantially improves the effectiveness of business operations, meets the organisation’s expectations, and gains a sustainable competitive advantage.

Quantitative data from 250 questionnaires were analysed using structural equation modelling. Respondents were selected from several industries in Colombia. Initial findings suggest that strategies have an indirect impact on operational effectiveness through the success of the organisational learning process. However, the organisations investigated lack the appropriate application of linkages and process innovation to achieve operational effectiveness and, therefore, sustainable competitiveness.

The paper offers useful insights for organisations when implementing innovation initiatives. It also provides information for Colombian Government institutions on developing mechanisms, economic policy strategies, and business support services for enhancing the economic and commercial viability of Colombian companies in the manufacturing and service sectors. The studied organisations need to redefine the role of linkages and process innovation to complement organisational learning, as all the three dimensions together are required to foster operational effectiveness.

The phenomenon of embedded lead userness has gained considerable attention in the past years. This study examines the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and embedded lead userness when mediated by creative bootlegging. After analysing the data collected from 554 employees in 41 Italian and Croatian firms, our study unveils that entrepreneurial self-efficacy exerts a positive impact on embedded lead userness when mediated by creative bootlegging. Consistent with research on identity work, these results suggest that employees who show self-motivation and conviction in entrepreneurial activities tend to commit to unofficial innovation projects, which in turn, makes them act as lead users of the products and services. The study’s contributions and practical implications are also discussed.

We explored the mediating role of innovation capability in the relationship between market orientation and new product success; the moderating role of realised absorptive capacity in the relationship between market orientation and innovation capability; and finally, the moderating role of green brand positioning in the relationship between innovation capability and new product success. Empirical analysis was based on 329 manufacturing firms. Various validity and reliability checks were conducted before the presentation of the actual analysis, which was conducted using the ordinary least squares approach in SPSS (v.20). Findings supported all our three hypotheses for the study, thereby showing innovation capability, realised absorptive capacity and green brand positioning, are very critical in the market orientation-new product success relationship.

This research examines how competitive positioning influences target selection of corporate acquisitions. Nowadays, the technological acquisition is considered as an important method to access to novel technologies to the acquirer. While its effect on firm’s innovative performance has been examined, the factors preceeding of acquisition have been less examined. Therefore, we do not have sufficient understanding of under what conditions, what kind of company is acquired. We introduce the concept of exploration and exploitation to classify the fundamental types of technological acquisitions, and we introduce competitive positioning in strategic management studies as its determinants. Using the 2001–2013 data of semiconductor industry, we examined that a company was likely to acquire the other company for exploitative purpose when it was on the more attractive position, and a company was likely to acquire for explorative purpose when it was in the less attractive positioning.

In search of innovation, incumbent firms are leveraging the creativity, knowledge and capabilities of corporate accelerators and are boosting their innovation engines by collaborating with startups. While this form of collaboration network with its heterogeneous partners is theoretically compelling and growing in popularity practically, the majority of corporate accelerators fails to deliver the desired results. Existing research still lacks an in-depth exploration of corporate accelerators explaining and suggesting how failure and challenges of incumbent firms can be overcome. Twenty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers and innovation experts across industries and within one of Europe’s biggest corporate accelerators. This study contributes to the field of open innovation and collaboration networks by expanding our knowledge about challenges of corporate accelerators and in particular to decode the difficulties that occur during the different phases of accelerator programmes. Based on the findings, guidelines for practitioners are presented to enhance organisational learning and innovation performance for incumbent firms.

Business model innovation (BMI) is a subject that has been much investigated in recent decades. Despite this growing interest, and the general assumption that BMI contributes to business performance (BP), an absence of scale remains as a limitation, and more research is required regarding this correlation. We analysed the correlation of BMI, in terms of value creation, proposition and capture, and BP regarding consumer satisfaction, market effectiveness and current profitability. Our samples consist of 51 companies located in technological parks in Brazil and we used self-reported data to conduct the study. As a result, it was identified that there is a positive correlation regarding BMI and BP as main concepts. Value creation and proposition are also positively correlated, with BP as an aggregated variable and with customer satisfaction. Value capture, market effectiveness and current profitability do not present a positive correlation with the other variables.