International Journal of Innovation Management

The objective of this research is to identify critical success factors for governance in innovation ecosystems, through a systematic literature review (SLR). Data collected from the Scopus and Web of Science databases allowed for the observation of various author’s perspective on the topic. The textual corpus enabled the development of bibliometric analyses including an in-depth content analysis of the selected articles. The authors of the selected articles raised key questions about governance in innovation ecosystems, such as understanding how the actors involved influence the success of ecosystems. The findings facilitated the identification of critical factors for the successful implementation of governance in innovation ecosystems, which will guide future research with an emphasis on relevant theoretical contributions.

The number of studies around the business model of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has increased during the last decade in several fields such as entrepreneurship or strategic management. Despite the increasing attention, there are still scarce contributions around the factors that better fit with a specific business model configuration. This research develops two studies to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon. First, multiple qualitative case study research provides insights into the value dimensions of different business model innovation configurations (evolutionary, adaptive, focussed and complex). Second, an extensive quantitative study drawing on 1,328 European SMEs offers valuable findings on the impact of value capture, value creation and value proposition on business model innovation performance for each type of business model considered, from evolutionary to complex business models. The discussions offer recommendations on specific dimensions depending on the type of business model configuration adopted by the firm.

This study reveals that the strength of ties among academic and corporate researchers who are subject to institutional distance depends on the triggers for tie formation through trust. As strong ties are suitable for the exchange of complex knowledge, they are expected to contribute to knowledge transfer and subsequent innovative knowledge creation. With data from 508 researchers in Japan, this study reveals that the most common trigger is meeting at academic conferences, but ties formed through this trigger are weak. In contrast, ties formed during school days or past work are long-lasting strong ties, and introductions by peer researchers form strong ties from the short-term perspective. Interestingly, ties formed through introductions by industry–academia intermediary organisations are found to be strong in the short term but weak in the long term. Based on these results, this study suggests management and policy that contribute to the formation of strong ties.

This study investigates how project-specific factors, the project creator, and campaign signals influence crowdfunding success in France. Analysing 424 projects from the KissKissBankBank platform, the research employs Generalised Linear Models to identify significant success factors. The findings reveal that signals such as publications, geographical location, project category, the creator’s past experience, the number of backers, and the funds raised positively affect campaign success. Contrary to our research hypotheses, signals related to factors such as video, the length of the project description, fundraising duration, and goal amount negatively impact success. Additionally, signals related to factors such as comments, readability of the project description, facial trust, and gender were found to be insignificant. This study provides valuable insights for young entrepreneurs, helping them identify crucial signals for crafting effective crowdfunding strategies, thereby enhancing the likelihood of their campaign success. It also serves as a resource for potential backers, enabling them to make informed investment choices before committing to crowdfunding projects.

This study examines the benefits of network centrality (NC) in creating technological diversity. Given the role of NC in access to external technological knowledge (TK), this study uses network density and R&D resources as moderators to explore the consequences of using TK for technological diversity. The results show that NC alone does not have a positive effect on technological diversity. However, network density and R&D resources, respectively, moderate the positive relationship between NC and technological diversity. Additionally, when influenced by these two moderators simultaneously, the creation of technological diversity heavily depends on the extent to which centrally positioned firms invest in R&D resources. In this study, R&D resources play a stronger complementary role in NC than network density does.

Should the agile approach or the stage-gate approach be used to manage the new product development process in a big data environment? Although the stage-gate approach has been the dominant approach to managing new product development, the agile approach literature suggests that the stage-gate approach experiences difficulties when dealing with response uncertainty. The agile approach facilitates information processing for customer feedback by developing and deploying minimum viable products. Conflicting views on the effectiveness of these two approaches centre on their capabilities of dealing with uncertainty through information processing. The diffusion of digital technologies offers new ways to process information, but not many studies have investigated how the effectiveness of the agile and stage-gate approaches varies with different information-processing capabilities in a data-rich environment. This study categorises information-processing strategies into those that use internal or external big data and explores how these strategies interact with the stage-gate and agile approaches. To verify the research framework, we conducted an on-site survey to collect data. The sample covers 261 new product development projects. We adopted a multivariable linear regression model for the analysis. The regression results show that the agile approach should be integrated with internal rather than external big data utilisation and that the stage-gate approach should be integrated with external rather than internal big data utilisation. This finding deepens our understanding of innovation process management by exploring the integrating effects of the two approaches with the big data utilisation strategy.

Innovation is an essential factor for the survival, growth and competitive advantage of companies and health services. A theoretical model was developed and tested, portraying the interrelationships between entrepreneurial leadership, the leader’s innovative behavior, individual entrepreneurial orientation and innovation. This is a quantitative, descriptive-correlational, and cross-sectional study carried out by applying an online questionnaire to 760 nurses, working in health institutions in Portugal. The results indicate that the leader’s innovative behavior has an impact on innovation in nursing. Innovative behavior strongly influences an individual’s entrepreneurial orientation. Entrepreneurial leadership impacts innovative behavior and individual entrepreneurial orientation, and this last is mediated by the leader’s innovative behavior. The role of individual entrepreneurial orientation in innovation has not been confirmed. This study contributes to the literature on innovation by providing new evidence regarding the benefits of entrepreneurial leadership and the leader’s innovative behavior. It also contributes to the emerging literature on the antecedents of innovation. The results additionally have relevant health management implications.

In empirical studies, firms’ innovation is often measured as the proportion of sales that can be attributed to new products or services. In a review of 20 years of research on innovation, we find this variable to be used in 141 studies providing a useful common ground to compare and contrast findings. We argue that two-part models are attractive when modelling innovation as they separate the decision to innovate from the amount of sales generated by innovation. Our review shows that only a minority of studies employ two-part models, most often in sub-optimal ways. We develop a two-part modelling framework that is suitable for innovation research and different from the conventional methods prevalent in econometrics. Furthermore, we provide a worked example of how it can be implemented. This paper contributes new knowledge about two-part models for innovation research and hopes to lay the ground for new theorising in the future.

Inherent uncertainty in innovation projects is a management challenge for organisations. This study examines the impact of intra-organisational collaboration on reducing uncertainty in innovation projects, along with the role of organisational learning in facilitating this relationship. It draws on empirical data collected from 249 managers of innovation projects and analysed using Structural Equation Modelling. The results confirm that intra-organisational collaboration, with its five dimensions, reduces uncertainty in innovation projects and leads to organisational learning. Our paper provides empirical evidence for the first time that effective organisational practices reduce innovation project uncertainty, providing important insights for practitioners on the importance of investing in enhancing organisational learning and collaborations to increase the success of innovation projects.

Effective leadership plays a pivotal role within an organisation, as inadequate leadership can have adverse effects on both its financial performance and brand reputation. In response to a growing demand for enhanced leadership, this research delves into the impact of different leadership styles, including transformational, laissez-faire, and transactional, on the innovative work behaviour of employees within the healthcare sector of Pakistan. The study also explores how Emotional Intelligence (EI) acts as a mediating factor in this relationship. The research design adopted a cross-sectional approach, collecting data at a single point in time from 417 project managers and healthcare sector employees in Pakistan. The analysis employed Smart PLS 4 software which revealed a positive correlation between transformational leadership and Employee Innovative Work Behaviour (EIWB), while no significant relationships were observed with laissez-faire and transactional leadership styles. However, it is important to note that EI played an indirect but positive role in influencing EIWB.