International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management

The study explores relationship between technological orientations and demographics of bottom of the pyramid (BOP) entrepreneurs in Ghana. The study reviewed literature on the BOP concept. Based on the reviewed literature, hypotheses were developed for testing. Data was collected from 287 micro-entrepreneurs using a structured questionnaire. The data collected was analyzed using the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression analysis. The study found some relationships between technology acceptance, connectivity to networks and entrepreneurial demographics. This provides the information necessary for information communications technology (ICT) and technology companies seeking to expand to these new markets as top of the pyramid markets saturate.

This study explores how new ventures access advice to achieve high growth and sustainable performance. A relational model of three important themes — compliance (regulatory and legal governance), contacts (networks of suppliers, customers, investors), and content (strategic insights) — emerged as critical to any sustainable high-growth effort. Our findings suggest that advisory boards and boards of directors have a significant role in managing and creating value for emerging high-growth firms due to inherently high failure rates, technological complexity, and market risk — all of which requires access to external resources.

This study investigates the role of strategic orientations of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in an emerging market, namely Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. It uses the business-level typology of Miles and Snow (prospector, analyzer, and defender) to examine the effect of strategic orientations on organizational determinants (organizational culture, technology orientation, alliance and cooperation, and market orientation) and their consequences in terms of innovation. Drawing upon data from 189 Dubai SMEs, the findings reveal that there are differences in the organizational determinants with prospector and defender orientations, with analyzer orientations falling in-between. Prospectors place more reliance than defenders on developing organizational culture, technology orientation, alliance and cooperation, and market orientation. Constant changes in the Dubai business and market environments seem to affect SMEs' strategic orientations and smaller SMEs are more likely to be analyzers than the SMEs employing over 100 staff. This study provides useful insights into the role of strategic orientations and organizational determinants of Dubai SMEs to accomplish successful innovation results.

In high-tech projects, which we refer to as technology challenging projects, all or mostly new technologies are used. While an effective project manager may be the source for a project team's spirit, there are other possibilities, like the satisfying nature of the technical challenge of high-tech projects or the opportunity for new learning on the job. In the current case study, we center on the views of partakers' in successful and failed technology challenging projects, and examine the importance of maintaining and managing a project's spirit, regardless of the level of spirit partakers bring to the project, and irrespective of the satisfying level of the technical challenge. The project cases highlight the value of managing employees' emotions, attitudes and behavioral norms that are focused on expected project outcomes, termed spirit, in technology challenging projects. Qualitative findings imply that leaders can be trained to execute behaviors that generate spirit in high-tech projects, which boosts contextual performance behavior and increases success.

How managers take decisions with respect to the acquisition and deployment of technology to promote technological innovation is central to the field of strategic management. The main objective of this research is to explore how technology decisions drive technological innovation in organizations. Technology decisions have been explored through the lens of substance and enactment of technology strategy. The paper reports findings from three Indian Power Distribution Firms that have taken various initiatives to turn around the dilapidated power distribution situation in the country. The study in addition to proposing typologies of technology acquisition and deployment strategies on the basis of patterns discovered also puts forth propositions linking technological innovation to the typologies. A modified model linking the technological innovation process to the substance and enactment of technology strategy has also been proposed.

This paper explores the effects of firm characteristics on the commercialization management and anticipated innovation returns within small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Our results suggest that young and small firms tend to be more innovative and have higher expectation for anticipated returns despite their less systematic management. By contrast, medium-sized firms are more likely to formalize their management, yet they have lower anticipated returns. Small equity-financed firms tend to approach a more systematic management of commercialization and anticipate high returns. Mature firms pursue a less systematic approach and anticipate lower returns. Overall, our findings show that firm characteristics such as size, age, R&D level, type of financing, innovation novelty and protection of intellectual properties play a significant role in the commercialization process. Employing an updated typology, this study provides additional insights into the firms' commercialization management and sheds some light on the owner-managers' anticipated returns from innovation.

This study discusses the role of core and symbolic capabilities during due-diligence processes when investing in companies in turbulent fields such as the biotechnology industry. The results indicate that investors' evaluations are hierarchical and are based on two premises. First, investors look for core capabilities — the characteristics that signal the potential for future success. They then search for symbolic elements, such as reputation, to confirm their decisions. The study expands earlier models of investors' evaluation processes. It also offers new insights for entrepreneurs of biotechnology firms.

A globally competitive technology business environment requires a dual perspective for entrepreneurial change management to secure long-term and short-term vitality in mature organizations. Entrepreneurial organizations should shape the environment-organization relation and pursue entrepreneurial activities in new businesses and in existing businesses to integrate efficiency, innovation and adaptation. The presented concept of a vital entrepreneurial learning organization describes a systematic theoretical framework for firm-level entrepreneurship in dynamic environments. The theoretical constructs developed on theoretical exploration are: nine design elements of holistic intrapreneurship, three entrepreneurial tasks and process model, role model for the entrepreneurial organization, conceptual framework of the business environment, qualitative systems model for entrepreneurial change management, and five organizational learning elements. These theoretical building blocks provide new insights into the nature of holistic intrapreneurship.

Building innovation capability is vital for prosperity and economic growth. The purpose of this study is to determine how innovation and creativity capability can be fostered through partnership between university and industry which is a core component of innovation systems. It compares student and industry perceptions of creativity, with a view to identifying discrepancies that may result in unclear expectations for creative work and hinder efforts to building creative capability. Unlike previous studies that provide a single viewpoint, this study contributes to the innovation and technology management literature by offering a dyadic perspective of both employers and students. Results reflect a shift toward "second generation", contextual views of creativity. Implications are discussed for formulating pedagogical approaches and managing the development of creativity.

This paper documents the relationship between appropriation instruments and the innovation activity in Tunisia. It focuses on the factors that determine the appropriation of innovation activities like the value of sales of the firms, networking, science–industry linkage, competitive pressure and demand pull. To this end, we suggest an econometric analysis of 586 Tunisian firms using simple and bivariate logit regressions. We find significant interaction effects between appropriability and R&D activity. The results confirm that patenting is primarily driven by firm-level factors, not by industry affiliation. Access to external knowledge and firm's specific characteristics are the most linked factors to the innovation protection. Firms that use appropriation instruments have a higher probability of investing in R&D than others. Indeed, the capacity to integrate external knowledge and performing R&D (networking, science–industry linkage, cooperation with other firms, belonging to a group) is related to the use of appropriation instruments. We find that appropriation instruments have a significant effect on product innovation. The effect on process innovation is not significant for Tunisian firms.