International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management

Higher education and community partnerships have transitioned from casual relationships to more of a mandate with the advancements in technology and globalization. The result of this large-scale change has led to an increase in these efforts, but the relationships are still emerging. Using survey research and the human resource development (HRD) perspective, we explore higher education and community partnerships, assesses their challenges, and discusses potential contributions of such partnerships in community development. This article contributes to our understanding of how these partnerships interact and what strategies the field of HRD may offer to advance such collaborative efforts.

Technology-based industry convergence brings forth new competence-destroying technologies, increases product complexity and drives companies to enter into collaborative R&D arrangements outside their current business ecosystems. The technology-based convergence context is classified as technology substitution and technology integration convergence types, and requires new collaborative competencies spanning business ecosystems that are not identified in the current literature. This paper explores the critical success factors (CSFs) of inter-company R&D collaboration in different types of convergence projects. The study finds that the convergence types are differentiated by their focal areas: product features, relative product advantage and market need orientation. We further discuss the important CSFs of the convergence types and provide insights for managers in our results.

Service-based differentiation competitive strategy has been hugely adopted by manufacturing firms in both developing and developed countries, which would influence firm performance and resource allocation mode. Against the background of developing countries such as China, this empirical study has two purposes. The first is to investigate the impact of service competition on firm performance. The second is to summarize the resource allocation mode which executives would adopt to implement service competition. Based on service-dominant (SD) logic, resource-based view (RBV) and service marketing theory, this paper constructs a theoretical framework to link the organizational resources (product-related resources and service-related resources), competitive advantage (product quality and service quality) and firm performance (financial performance and non-financial performance), and proposes several hypotheses about the relationships among these constructs. Based on the survey data obtained from manufacturing firms in China in 2006, this paper employs a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach with interaction effect involved to test the hypotheses. Several findings are found through data analysis. First, service competition has positive and significant impact on firm performance, and the contribution of product-related inputs on performance is much larger than that of service-related inputs. This implies that though the impact on performance of service competition is comparatively lower, service can still be the source of product differentiation and act as a positive complement to product-based competition. Second, consistent with our theoretical expectation, the finding indicates that there is a substitutive relationship between service-related resource and product-related resource to a certain degree, though weakly supported by data. This can be explained by the factors such as China's initial resource endowment, low-level stage of the market and the industry, etc. Finally, the paper discusses the theoretical and managerial implications of the research findings, which would provide empirical supports for the implementation of service-based differentiation strategy in manufacturing in developing countries.

Personal computers (PC) have significantly increased demand for mass market software. Computer software has also now become an enabler for all fields of technology; innovation is inevitable for growth of this fast emerging industry. For economic viability for such innovations, there is an increased advocacy for incorporating software as a patentable subject matter forcing countries to make computer software patentable either completely or in limited form. However, patenting of computer software related inventions have not been without its own set of controversies. Not only software patents globally are being protected under vastly divergent legal perspectives, with varying interpretations of trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) agreement, but are also still evolving through continued interventions from policy makers and federal courts. This has led to a very broad boundary between patentable and non-patentable subject matter and has resulted in a large number of trivial inventions being accepted as patents in this area. This paper analyzes these varying perceptions as regards to software patents in different jurisdictions like United States, Europe, Japan and India. Linkage between software patents and innovation has also been attempted by taking into account historical perspectives of technological arts and their effect on promoting innovation.

Although knowledge has been cited as one of the most important strategic assets, the creation and sharing of knowledge at the organizational level is a difficult process that will not proceed without incentives and conscious efforts by management. The complexity of knowledge management (KM) is further compounded by the influence of a wide variety of factors such as leadership, ba, organizational culture, organizational control and individual work styles.

Based on a large dataset gathered from a questionnaire survey of a multi-national Japanese pharmaceutical company and its subsidiary in the US, we compare how the aforementioned organizational factors influence KM, expressed through the SECI model of socialization, externalization, combination and internalization. The results of a structural equation modeling path analysis show that a single model of KM should not be applied unilaterally to both organizations, although part of the same company, and instead may need to be adapted to each stage of KM maturity.

A common view is that organizational slack diminishes firm performance by providing management the opportunity to invest in pet projects or to engage in empire-building. An opposing perspective argues that organizational slack enhances innovation by enabling firms to invest in promising new R&D projects as soon as they are discovered, or to maintain R&D during operating shortfalls. In this paper, we identify empirically a context within which organizational slack enhances firm performance. Recent research indicates that firms that proactively manage their R&D functions by frequently and substantially modifying R&D expenditure over time are superior performers. I find that higher levels of organizational slack increase the positive relationship between R&D expenditure volatility and firm performance. Evidence presented herein suggests that firms with superior access to discretionary funds held as slack use these resources to fund nascent R&D projects and to mitigate uncertainty, thus driving more commercially valuable innovation. This is one of the few studies providing empirical evidence of the practical value of organizational slack.

In this paper, we explicate the details of the management of ambiguity and the balancing of creativity and constraint as it relates to organizations' absorptive capacity. The innovation process is characterized by cycles of expensive (explorative) activity where ambiguity increases, and constrictive (exploitative) activities, where ambiguity decreases. We argue that ambiguity oscillates in the short run and decrease in the long run while learning increases. These fluctuations in the opportunity space are driven by the balancing of creativity and constraint.

Disruptive technology platforms from emerging companies hold great promise for exploiting innovation, but often face legitimacy hurdles due to their liability of newness. Nascent firms must learn new roles with limited precedent, and establish ties with an environment that may not fully understand or value their existence. Using a legitimacy-based lens in the context of the biotechnology industry, we posit a sequential construct — cognitive, regulative, and normative legitimacy — to evaluate emergent technology platforms. Our model of biotechnology platform emergence may provide insights for understanding how breakthroughs achieve legitimacy in the scientific community, mobilize resources and talent, and attain commercial success.

Commitment from all stakeholders is a critical condition for project success, especially for complex and multinational undertakings that involve intricate networks of resource and power sharing. This paper examines the challenges of building and sustaining commitment in culturally diverse global teams. The results of this field study identify (1) the components of commitment in various stakeholder groups, (2) the drivers and barriers to obtaining and sustaining commitment, and (3) the leadership style most conducive to fostering an organizational environment for high levels of project ownership and commitment to established project objectives. The findings provide an insight into the factors which influence team behavior and performance in complex multinational work environments, and a framework for assessing project leadership and managerial effectiveness. The paper concludes with specific suggestions for enhancing commitment within project organizations, its team members and partners.

Korea government initiated the Government's Defense Industrial Policy, "Defense Industry as a New Growth Engine for the Creative Economy", followed by establishing the defense industrial policy objectives and making efforts to reach them. Accordingly, the defense export dragged attention from the defense industry sector and as a result recorded nearly 0.8 billion dollars in 2011 which is doubled amount compared to year 2008. Considering that defense technology valuation is inevitable in defense trade, the defense technology valuation is going to be a key issue for the domestic defense R&D invested equipment including main battle tanks, armored vehicles, air trainers etc. This paper presents the defense R&D technology valuation model with the in-depth analysis of its theories and current status both domestic and abroad. Also, it provides relevant policy issues and directions in the near future. It should contribute to boosting the defense technology valuation fields and to formulating a concrete tool for analyzing defense R&D technology valuation in the near future.

The purpose of this study is to identify and present the key organizational characteristics of innovativeness which will provide an organization a better assessment of their readiness for innovation. An extensive examination of the existing literature was performed to identify the gaps in research on innovativeness, and to generate candidate characteristics for assessing an organization's readiness for innovation. The research employed focus groups with managers and professionals in an exploratory study as the first step in developing a measure for assessing characteristics for organizational innovativeness. A content analysis of the results revealed five underlying characteristics for organizational innovativeness. The most frequently cited characteristics were innovative organizational culture, structure and climate. This was followed by leadership and management style that support innovation, organizational support to innovate and change, creative human capital, and learning orientation and knowledge management respectively. These results are consistent with the existing literature in this area. Our results provide an important contribution to the developing body of innovation literature, and provide implications for organizations interested in assessing their readiness to innovate.

In this paper, we examine the fundamental process and production innovations in the digital business industry through the lens of the six facets model of technology management. The model is applied to process and product innovation at both the firm and industry level for the first time, offering insight into the digital business industry and also into how process and product innovations can be managed in an industry facing high levels of technological change. We use case histories of two digital businesses, one in the US and one in China, to provide greater generalizability of our findings.

Since Taiwan and U.S. integrated circuit (IC) industries cluster in Hsinchu Science Industrial Park (HSIP) and Silicon Valley, respectively, these IC firms can easily imitate any innovation through the interactions among intra-industry firms. The contribution of intra-industry innovation development to firms' technological advancement is defined as the "spillover effect". This paper compares how the innovation characteristics and industrial clustering influence the spillover effects. The results show the research and development (R&D) spillover effects in IC manufacturing, packaging and testing industries appear evidently greater than those in IC design industry, while the patent spillover effect exhibits greater for IC design industry than for the other IC industries. Similar production stages in IC manufacturing, packaging and testing industries enable firms to easily imitate R&D outcomes within the same industry. By contrast, the production process of IC design firms is diversified, so they hardly upgrade their technical skills through the interchange of R&D information within the same industry. Hence, the IC design firms, which focus on product innovation, rely more on patent licensing to develop core technology innovation. Finally, R&D spillover effect is evidently greater in U.S. IC design industry than in Taiwan IC design industry, while patent spillover effect appears greater in Taiwan IC design industry than in U.S. IC design industry. The IC design industry in U.S. free-rides intra-industry R&D outcomes more easily than that in Taiwan. Consequently, Taiwan IC design firms rely on patent spillovers to develop IC elements, which are compatible with the incumbent IC products.