International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management

Synchronization plays an important role in strategic planning, especially for large multi-business firms, in avoiding parallel duplicate efforts and improving synergies. The focus is on (technology) roadmapping as it is a simple, flexible, and popular method that covers three core dimensions relating to synchronization in strategic planning: function (horizontal), system hierarchy (vertical), and time. This research aims to identify the enablers of the synchronization process, and to develop, test and refine a Synchronization Assessment Framework (SAF). The adopted methodology is a process approach, consisting of three phases: development (literature review), improvement (in-dept case study), and validation (case studies). As a result, five groups and 13 enablers or critical factors of synchronization processes were identified, and a SAF was developed, leveraging the identified enablers and the roadmapping structure (know-why, know-what and know-know), leading to practical guidelines for a company.

Early adopters (EAs) represent a crucial group of consumers in the diffusion of innovations. Therefore, reaching potential technological EAs for up-and-coming innovations is of vital importance. However, little is known as to how potential EAs for new technologies use the Internet. Our study examines the Internet usage of EAs in comparison to the general public and gives an overview of 15 different channels. Consequently, we classified EAs and analyzed a vast set of data containing 119829 subjects. The results demonstrate significant differences between EAs and the remaining population and offer marketers new insights into EAs’ Internet usage behavior.

Indian outsourcing industry undeterred by recent plummeting growth of global ICT market is experiencing robust growth. Indian ICT firms, by and large, follow success breed success formula by replicating the strategies adopted by the leaders in the market. Two top Indian ICT outsourcing firms have adopted diversification strategy to expand their presence in multiple industry verticals across geographies by offering a diversified range of services. This study, using an entropy analysis, measures the degree of diversification of the top two and most successful Indian outsourcing firm in five different dimensions. The second part of the study analyzes the overall impact of diversification on the performance of the firm. This study reveals that although overall diversification signifies a positive impact on the firm performance, each dimension leaves a different impact on the different firms’ performance.

To understand the characteristics of ASEAN countries that are conducive to unique innovation, a series of idea generation and selection experiments were conducted in three emerging countries, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, which were compared with one developed country, Japan. The experiments consisted of one-day-workshops held in each of the four countries. Two significant differences were found between emerging and developed countries. First, participants from the ASEAN countries proposed ideas that entailed a lower investment risk than did the Japanese participants. Secondly, the ASEAN participants were more confident in their idea selection than the Japanese participants were. The results suggested new possibilities for the development of strategies encouraging collaboration between emerging and developed countries in innovation management.

The aim of this study was to investigate how combining internal and external knowledge sources (KS) may influence product and process innovation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from developing economies in order to improve their financial performances (FPs). Previous research mostly supported that internal KS influence innovation directly as well as indirectly, moderating the relationship between external KS and innovation performance (IP), with this moderation being more prominent in the case of high-technology firms. These studies also supported that innovation influences FP more strongly in this type of firm. The present study proposes that, in developing countries, the opposite occurs. The moderation relationship of internal KS on the relationship between external KS and IP would be stronger in low-technology firms, as well as the positive effect of innovation on FP. We tested our propositions using a sample of 1551 Brazilian manufacturing SMEs controlling by the technological intensity of the industry and confirmed a good part of the proposed hypotheses.

Increasing digitalization and new technological possibilities also entail substantial changes for working methods in the B2B (business-to-business) environment in banking. In this context, the concept of co-creation is critical. Although this concept and the motivation factors behind it have been thoroughly investigated in the B2C (business-to-consumer) sector, only a few research results exist for the B2B context. This study aims to bridge the current knowledge gap and investigate individuals’ motivation to participate in B2B co-creation. By using a case study and qualitative interviews, this study focuses on two aspects: (a) It reveals how a co-creation measure is used in practice in the B2B environment; and (b) it provides information on the motivation factors and outcome from the point of view of the participants in the B2B co-creation project. The paper concludes with an integrative model of the main motivation factors behind B2B co-creation and their effects.