International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management

This paper addresses the mechanisms behind the Media Lab innovation infrastructure that help promote technology transfer and innovations. The analyses are based on the integrative lens of the competitive diamond model and the triple helix model. The findings reveal that the “Demo-or-Die” culture, a free-ranging and interdisciplinary approach to research, has effectively linked the Media Lab science fiction to the process of technology transfer. The government should take a less controlling role to engender the process of “innovation to create demand” and thrive high-tech initiatives. The empirical results and lessons of MIT Media Lab provide a model of promoting proliferation of future technological innovations.

The responsibilities of leaders have grown as a result of information technology organizations’ increasing reliance on information and development to carry out their work. It is important for leaders to guide and support organizations as they respond to the challenges of continually generating new innovation and information frameworks. The participative initiative, therefore, is characterized as an authority that draws on part data and part insight to reduce progressive obstructions by including individual hierarchical individuals in the decision-making process. The participative initiative encourages a positive style of leadership in which the leader provides workers with the chance to partake in dynamic and critical thinking through consolation, backing, and impact. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of participative leadership on employee innovative work behavior through the mediating role of employee knowledge-sharing attitude and absorptive capacity, with project risk management as moderator. The non-probability convenience sampling technique was used and data collection occurred over three months from January 2022 to March 2022. As data collection took place in one time period, the design is cross-sectional in nature. The data were collected from 273 workers (i.e. engineering manager, project manager, project leader, team leader, software engineer, advisor, and expert) working in different public and private sector IT companies of Portugal. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both hard and soft copies of surveys were distributed via email. The analysis was performed using Smart PLS version 3.2.8. The results revealed that participative leadership had a direct effect on employee innovative work behavior that was positive and significant. Also, both the knowledge-sharing attitude and absorptive capacity of employees positively and significantly mediate the relationship between participative leadership and employee innovative work behavior. Project risk management, however, only significantly moderates the relationship between absorptive capacity and employee innovative work behavior. Lastly, some theoretical, practical implications, study limitations and future directions were discussed.

The COVID-19 pandemic urges hospitality and tourism businesses to design innovative responses to rapid competition and challenges. This study begins by finding out how innovation-based collaboration, perceived status certainty, and adaptation to digital technology jointly encourage higher levels of innovative business response to the COVID-19 outbreak under complexity aspects. The findings indicate that adaptation to digital technology, perceived status certainty, and innovation-based collaboration have a strong influence on configuring innovative business responses. This paper provides new insights into how the complexity of human-related, environment-related, and technology-related factors predict the innovative response of business providers in the tourism and hospitality industries.

Disruptive neo-broker applications (NBAs) enable users to access financial markets easily and have attracted millions of investors worldwide. As a gamified implementation for financial services, NBAs provide a unique research setting in which to examine the determinants of NBA acceptance among investors, some of whom are wholly inexperienced in financial products. We propose a research model specifically designed to explain the usage intention of NBAs by drawing on established factors from technology acceptance and financial behavior research. We validated the research model empirically with structural equation modeling (N = 653) and found significant drivers of NBA acceptance. Distinct from previous finance technologies, we confirmed consumption-oriented factors, including performance expectancy, hedonic motivation, price value, and habit as antecedents of NBA usage intention. From the financial perspective, initial trust and overconfidence were identified as further drivers, while overconfidence in turn is shaped by risk aversion and subjective financial knowledge, indicating a mediated effect on NBA acceptance. Thereby, we present the first NBA-tailored acceptance model that links technology characteristics and financial behavior. Correspondingly, we provide implications for theory and practice.

Electric vehicle technology is a crucial technology for achieving sustainable energy transformation, which is of great significance to climate change and promotes sustainable development. This paper attempts to study the transnational R&D cooperation of electric vehicles. According to the authorized data of transnational co-patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a social network analysis method is employed, and a detailed study of transnational co-patent networks in electric vehicles is conducted, including the construction of network, the analysis of nationality distribution of co-patent inventors, the analysis of structural characteristics and important nodes of network in different stages from the perspective of inventors and countries. The research results show that the cooperative groups formed by inventors are independent of each other and have not yet formed a large network; the degree of transnational cooperation in developed countries far exceeds that in developing countries; the US and Germany are the dual-core in the transnational co-patent networks; the breadth and intensity of transnational cooperation are strengthening, and the regional borders are less and less restrictive. As for the existing problems, authoritative inventors could organize large international R&D cooperation institutions to gather dispersed inventors together and connect them into a large inventors’ network; developing countries are encouraged to seek partners through the network, actively participate in transnational R&D cooperation, and developed countries are encouraged to hold global technological innovation events.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a substantial challenge for national economies. The survivability and better performance of some companies can serve as lessons for others, and those who learn the said lessons faster will take the lead in the post-COVID world. One of the national economic development drivers is high-growth firms (HGFs), also known as gazelles. High-growth middle-sized firms (HGMFs) have a notable impact on the national economy as significant employers, producers, and tax-payers. This paper aims to find the peculiarities in the reactions of HGMFs to the COVID-19 pandemic based on Russian firms’ data. This research uses the official statistics of middle-sized Russian firms (7944 firms, 238 gazelles). Gazelles are identified based on 2016–2019 data and then compared with normal medium-sized firms (NMFs) using 2020 data. In total, 14 hypotheses are formulated and tested, with those hypotheses focused on five aspects of firms’ performance: the ability to grow, profitability, efficiency, solvency, and employability. The research utilizes a one-way ANOVA test and Z-test for proportions for different types of hypotheses. Hypotheses testing shows that HGFs demonstrate better ability to grow, better efficiency, better solvency, and better employability than normal firms. However, they cannot maintain their higher profitability in 2020, despite higher net income values in comparison with other companies. The research confirms that HGMFs have unique capabilities to overcome these kinds of crises, and that such capabilities can be scaled to other business entities to increase their survivability in times of future crises. The research can be extended to small firms, 2021-year data analysis, and comparative cross-industry or cross-country analysis.

This study analyzes the determinants of road freight companies’ adoption intention regarding the electric road systems (e-roads) on Swedish motorways. A research model was developed based on the technology adoption literature and Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework. Survey data were gathered from 160 Swedish road freight companies, and structural equation modeling was performed to test the model empirically. The results reveal relative advantage, a technology characteristic, as the main determinant of road freight companies’ intention to adopt electric road systems. The study contributes to the TOE framework by reporting on the indirect effects of technological and organizational determinants on organizational intention to adopt technologies.

Purpose : In this age, characterized by the incessant generation of a huge amount of data in social and economic life due to the widespread use of digital devices, it has been well established that big data (BD) technologies can bring about a dramatic change in managerial decision-making. This work addresses the challenges of implementation of big data analytics (BDA) in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM).

Design/methodology : The barriers to the implementation of BDA in SSCM are identified through an extensive literature survey as per PESTEL framework which covers political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal barriers. These barriers are then finalized through experts’ opinion and analyzed using DEMATEL and AHP methods for their relative importance and cause-and-effect relationships.

Findings : A total of 13 barriers are identified out of which the lack of policy support regarding IT, lack of data-driven decision-making culture, compliance with laws related to data security and privacy, inappropriate selection and adoption of BDA technologies, and cost of implementation of BDA are found to be the key barriers that have a causative effect on most of the other barriers.

Research limitations : This work is focused on the Indian manufacturing supply chain (MSC). It may be diversified to other sectors and geographical areas. The addition of missed-out barriers, if any, might enrich the findings. Also, the fuzzy or grey versions of MCDM methods may be used for further fine-tuning of the results.

Practical implications : The analysis presented in this work gives hierarchy of the barriers as per their strength and their cause-and-effect relationships. This information may be useful for decision makers to assess their organizational strengths and weaknesses in the context of the barriers and fix their priorities regarding investment in the BDA project.

Social implications : The research establishes that the successful implementation of BDA through minimizing the effect of critical causative barriers would enhance the environmental performance of the supply chain (SC) which in turn would benefit society.

Originality/value : This is one of the first studies of BDA in SSCM in the Indian manufacturing sector using PESTEL framework.

During the recent health crisis, certain small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) successfully developed and commercialized new products, sometimes outside their usual business sector. What practices were adopted to carry out these product innovations? To answer this question, an exploratory case study was conducted with two SMEs to learn about their motivations, practices and challenges. The results show that they engaged in innovation to survive, using a succinct and flexible innovation process, combining the principles of the stage gate system with certain aspects of the Xpress and Agile versions. During a crisis, SMEs can deploy an innovation process quickly and with agility if resources and skills are accessible and collaborations possible.