International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management

Knowledge generation across allying firms undoubtedly enriches a firm's knowledge base. While there is vast literature on knowledge transfer, i.e. absorption, there is however little research on joint knowledge creation across partners. We address this phenomenon as "co-poiesis", informed by the literature on collective mental models. We identify two distinct managerial antecedents of learning: pre-elaborated and emergent frames of alliance management. We investigate how these styles influence the development of relational knowledge and alliance performance. Our empirical study using SEM analyzes 196 project alliances in the New Media Industry. Findings indicate the need to align management styles to knowledge objectives.

Product development teams sustain the level of ambiguity in product development projects through product configuration and project planning decisions. In this paper, we represent these decisions in terms of earliness, specificity and contingency of front-end activities and test their impact on project performance. We propose that product novelty mediates the impact of configuration and project decisions on performance. Our hypotheses are tested using data from a sample of radical and incremental product development projects. The results support a positive relation between earliness and contingency of front-end activities and development performance for incremental projects. Radical projects benefit from early milestones set during project planning.

As organizations become larger it becomes increasingly difficult to share lessons-learned across their disconnected units allowing individuals to learn vicariously from each other's experiences. This lesson-learned information is often unsolicited by the recipient group or individual and required an individual or group to react to the information to yield benefits for the organization. Data was collected using 39 interviews and 582 survey responses that proved the effects of information usefulness, related human intermediary activities, and an individual's perceived discretion have on the review and subsequent adoption of unsolicited lessons-learned information.

The paper discusses the relationship between learning, innovation and (institutional) reflexivity. It is often held that reflexivity is a crucial factor for learning and innovation processes. However, a rather formalistic approach to reflexivity is predominant. We propose to overcome this limitation and to develop a more meaningful concept of reflexivity which "reflects" the contingent, relational, dynamic and complex character of organizational environments and reality. Based on this broadened understanding it appears that reflexivity is imminently a dialectic category and, under specific circumstances, it can also inhibit innovation. This is especially the case when reflexive tools are abused to push performance only. In order to illustrate our concept and hypotheses we added two case studies which highlight the conflicting counterparts of reflexivity and innovation and pointed us to important cultural "success factors".

This paper investigates the distinctive technology protection strategies of entrepreneurial technology firms. In contrast with much popular opinion, it is reported that intellectual property features more prominently in the business of small entrepreneurial firms than it does in the business of large, established mature firms. The intellectual property portfolios of technology firms of all sizes and ages exhibit a rich array of instruments in addition to patents for protecting technology, including trade secrets, trademarks and copyright, together with licenses to externally sourced technology. The intellectual property profiles of technology firms appear to be influenced by their context, organizational profiles and corporate goals and by the character of their technology.

This paper examines the role of several learning mechanisms for innovation performance, particularly their relevance for different types of innovation. Although the innovation drivers have been extensively discussed in the literature, more evidence is needed to verify that specific innovation outputs rely on specific knowledge sources. Based on the European Innobarometer Survey 2009, the empirical analysis reveals different profiles among innovating firms. Non-technological innovators, in particular firms highly intensive in organizational innovation, show a high propensity to perform knowledge sharing practices, to introduce knowledge management systems and to apply alternative mechanisms to promote creative ideas. The findings also prove a strong connection between product and process innovation, R&D activities and cooperation with scientific partners. The analysis concludes that firms with highest probabilities of engagement in learning mechanisms show the highest innovative performance. Moreover, the most innovative firms are characterized by the combination of different learning initiatives.

Existing, staged models of consumer adoption behavior offer little in the way of theoretical justification, and their empirical validity is in doubt. A qualitative empirical study provides another view by exploring the behavioral decision process by which transportation consumers adopt alternatives to single occupancy vehicles. The study finds that adoption behavior consists of interplay between three conscious, cognitively distinct processes: selecting, evaluating and maintaining. All three processes are characterized in detail in this study. What emerges from the study's data is the first theory to explain the "how" of technology adoption in terms of endogenous mental processes. The study lays the foundation for a more comprehensive causal theory of the adoption process that will provide a step-by-step explanation of how events or life experiences cause a consumer's beliefs about a technology to change over time. It also identifies evaluating, selecting and maintaining as fundamental "microlaws" of innovation: regular rules that describe the generating processes of emergent innovations.

The US financial meltdown has changed companies' situations not just fundamentally but pervasively. Institutions and channels of supply and communication have disappeared or become unreliable; we are literally managing in chaos, and traditional notions of strategy, planning, and implementation must be (temporarily, it is to be hoped) discarded. This presentation draws on classic management theory, newer ideas, and experiences from technology companies to outline principles for managing for survival in times of chaos. It introduces new management cycles as alternatives to Fayol's classic management cycle, and a corresponding taxonomy of organizational situations, including stable, chaos, edge of chaos, and disaster. It aims for a clear synthesis suitable for management education and training.