International Journal of Innovation Management

Digital technologies and connectivity offer unprecedented opportunities for businesses to adapt and reinvent themselves to gain and sustain competitive advantage. Digital transformation and business model innovation have generated a large body of research in recent years due to their great practical importance. This study critically evaluates this extensive literature and aims to capture different understandings of digital business models (DBMs), identify knowledge gaps and highlight perspectives for further research. To achieve this, the literature review deductively filters out the most relevant 626 studies. For this purpose, the literature is clustered into the areas of “definition and terminology”, “classification and taxonomy”, “technology”, “configuration, structures and processes”, “drivers and determinants” and “results and impacts”. The most important scientific results and approaches are discussed and corresponding implications are derived from previous research in order to summarise the most important findings and perspectives for science and practice.

The greater the firm-specific risk, the more valuable are the innovative opportunities underlying the growth options, and the greater the innovation rent. We examine whether firm-specific risk drives the firm’s innovation rent. We find that the firm-specific risk positively moderates the association between firm innovativeness and firm surplus. Innovation rent is the change in firm surplus per unit change in the knowledge capital (accumulated R&D stock). The firm surplus is the excess market value of the firm over shareholder expectations. We further examine whether the growth options embedded in the firm’s assets mediate the association between firm innovativeness and firm surplus. Growth options positively mediate the association between knowledge capital and firm surplus. The firm-specific risk enhances the value of innovative opportunities underlying the firm’s growth options that are exercised such that the firm earns a value surplus. Our results are consistent with the strategic rent model and emerging behavioural theory.

Organisational adaptation is the capacity of an organisation to recognise the need to evolve and grasp possibilities in unpredictable circumstances. To position their organisations for flexibility in a world that is becoming more complicated, leadership needs to focus on change, dispersed, and contextual characteristics. A key idea concerning the conditions necessary for organisational adaptation is the theory of dynamic capabilities. This paper intends to highlight the role that leadership plays in mediating the impact of strategy, technology, and complexity on organisational adaptation. Structural equation modelling is used to test the suggested hypothesis. Professionals at a multinational organisation in India participated in the study. This study has a sample number of 252 and employed a simple random sampling technique. The results show that strategies and complexity impact the adaptability rate of an organisation and leadership mediates the relationship between strategies, technology, and complexity of organisational adaptability. In addition, it indicates that strategic adaption also improves business performance positively and effectively.

This research investigates how and to which extent the social capital inherent in a firm’s external relationships to diverse business partners contributes to the firm’s intellectual capital and in turn fosters its innovativeness. We apply the Social Capital Theory to an inter-organisational context and show how a firm’s social relationships with its various external partners contribute to its intellectual capital, and how these contributions differ between different types of partners (e.g., customers vs. suppliers). In contrast to intra-organisational contexts, we show that the association between social capital and intellectual capital is positive, neutral, or even negative depending on the external partner’s position vis-à-vis a firm’s supply chain and the type of knowledge. Using data from 153 German manufacturing firms, the results of a PLS-based analysis provide important insights into how and through which mechanisms firms can become successful innovators.

Most authors agree that alliance portfolio diversity (APD) has an inverted U-shaped influence on innovation performance and is particularly important for firms with a high absorptive capacity (AC), which moderates this relationship positively. However, the reality of developing countries with weaker national innovation systems (NIS) and firms with lower AC may influence these relationships. To test these hypotheses in such a context, we tested a longitudinal structural model in a sample of 1,237 Colombian manufacturing firms. The results indicated that, in a developing country context, APD at the appropriate level is especially relevant for firms with low AC, even the letter maintaining the positive moderation effect on the inverted U-shaped relationship of the former with innovation. Besides, the longitudinal structural equation modelling (SEM) chosen to conduct the analysis mitigates endogeneity issues presented in more commonly used cross-section analyses.

Purpose: Based on the Dynamic Capabilities View (DCV) and Knowledge-based View (KBV), this study investigates the relationships between intellectual capital (IC) resources and dynamic innovation capabilities in the context of new ventures.

Design/methodology/approach: Data for the study is collected from 311 start-up firms in Turkey and is analysed via Structural Equation Modelling.

Findings: The results indicate that the effects of human capital and social capital on dynamic innovation capability are fully mediated by innovation orientation (IO). Besides, dynamic innovation capability is found to be strongly associated with innovation performance.

Practical implications: In the study, IO is suggested as a useful mechanism for encouraging the deployment of an innovation focus in all functions of a firm for attaining long-term sustained competitiveness. Thereby, the findings are expected to present important implications for start-up founders and policy-makers, by highlighting the importance of knowledge management and investing in human and social capital resources for generating the capability to innovate.

Originality/value: The most significant contribution of the study is the development of a model suggesting IO as a mediating variable between the IC resources and dynamic innovation capability relationship in the context of start-up firms. Furthermore, the findings indicate a positive and significant association between the dynamic innovation capability and innovation performance in these economic units.

As the major business environment changes, there is a growing need for management innovation to strengthen the organisation. Large enterprises such as GE, which promoted Six Sigma, and Toyota, which installed innovative production systems using the Kanban method, have rooted management innovation in their corporate cultures. However, although there are precedent cases limited to some high-tech ventures, the actual state of management innovation in low-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is not well understood. Therefore, we investigated the SMEs in Japan’s relatively low-tech industrial areas using structural equation modelling. This study found that collaboration with customers is an important antecedent factor for management innovation. Moreover, management innovation mediates the relationship between the collaboration with customers and technological innovation activities and between the former and firm performance. The explanatory power of management innovation on firm performance is weak. This paper provides deep insights into the role of management innovation in SMEs.

This study explores the influence of disruptive and sustaining innovation on the technical efficiency of Norwegian firms and its implications for production efficiency. It employs stochastic frontier analysis with unbalanced panel data from manufacturing (7,056 observations) and service firms (6,066 observations). The results show that the individual effects of sustaining and disruptive innovation improve technical efficiency in firms’ production technologies with a superior effect from sustaining innovation. Additionally, it reveals that while hybridisation can be more beneficial for technical efficiency in manufacturing firms, service firms benefit more from sustaining innovation. In summary, it highlights that disruptive and sustaining innovation can optimize firms’ technical efficiency, and the specific effects vary by industry. Furthermore, the results indicate that manufacturing firms may respond to disruption effectively through hybridisation. Thus, the study contributes to the literature on innovation and business performance studies and provides valuable insights for business managers on strategic innovation management with production efficiency implications.

The aim of this paper is to empirically study the impact of the motivation-enhancing practices of performance-based rewards and developmental performance appraisal on radical innovation. The effect of innovative work behaviour (IWB) is also considered as a mediator in this relationship. The paper also considers the effect of performance-based rewards and developmental performance appraisal on affective commitment and whether this mechanism can drive employees’ IWB. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from employees working in the telecommunications, mining, pharmaceutical, banking and technological industries in Jordan. The final sample comprised 270 valid responses. Research hypotheses were tested via structural equation modelling (SEM) using AMOS v28 and PROCESS by Hayes to test the mediating effects. The paper found that IWB mediates the relationship between performance-based rewards, developmental performance appraisal and radical innovation because the subsequent effect of IWB on radical innovation was significant and positive. This is also confirmed by the mediation analysis. Findings showed support for the positive impact of performance-based rewards and developmental performance appraisal on affective commitment. Additionally, the findings confirmed that affective commitment mediates the relationship between performance-based rewards, developmental performance appraisal and IWB.

To enhance competitiveness, organisations should excel in adopting new business processes and ensuring the successful implementation of innovative projects. This study examined the impact of transformational, transactional, and entrepreneurial leadership styles on the innovation process, with a focus on employee innovative behaviour and the climate for innovation as mediating factors. A total of 303 participants from three organisations in the financial services sector (banking and insurance) in Namibia took part in the study.

The findings suggest that employing transactional and entrepreneurial leadership styles proves beneficial for fostering innovation within organisations. Specifically, entrepreneurial leadership demonstrates positive effects on both employees’ innovative behaviour and the establishment of an innovation-friendly climate. The study reveals that a conducive climate for innovation significantly contributes to overall innovation. Moreover, the results indicate that only the climate for innovation serves as a significant mediator in the relationship between transactional leadership and the innovation process, as well as between entrepreneurial leadership and the innovation process.