Journal of Enterprising Culture

Innovation literature advocates the transition from a technological orientation to market orientation on the part of innovator and entrepreneur. However, the transition requires a change in mindset on the part of these innovation agents, who may be affected by their national contexts. This paper reports a study is to example factors that account for a different transition from a Technological Orientation (TO) towards a Market Orientation (MO) and the impact of national cultures. To analyse possible intercultural differences, the study involved two independent samples from Germany and the Netherlands.

The study found that the orientation to versus MO of the Dutch engineer is not different from that of the German engineer, probably because of a common professional culture (PC), which is different from an MO. The transition from technological orientation towards market orientation occurred earlier for the Dutch engineers than for the German engineers. However German engineers demonstrated less MO than Dutch firms. A plausible reason for this is that the strong feminine values of Dutch national and corporate culture (NC and CC, Hofstede, 1980a and b and 1991) might lead more easily to a customer orientation (Market Pull) than the more masculine German values keeping a strong technological base. In sum, firms might consider carefully an optimal CC x PC interaction instead of NC-differences to reach effective technological innovation in the global market.

The rapid development of the Chinese economy during the 1990's has intensified research on technological innovation. Recent policy emphasis on innovation as a path to sustainable economic growth will only accelerate work on this important topic. The work by individuals and groups at various research institutes and universities has mainly been published in leading Chinese scholarly journals. In this paper, we develop a framework and do a substantive review of the literature to characterize the state of knowledge about technological innovation in China, with special emphasis on: 1) conceptual contributions, 2) empirical results, and 3) connections between innovation and performance.

This article describes an strategy for local sustainable development based on the establishment of a State System of Innovation (called SPIN), at the State of Pernambuco in the Northeast Region of Brazil. The conceptual underpinnings of this system consider that, to be competitive in the global economy, any local community must be capable of creating world class businesses and enterprises. Therefore, SPIN has the goal structuring the conditions for the flourishing of a world class knowledge base economy. The conceptual model, the elements of a State development policy and the operating agents of this Innovation System are described.

The case of an innovative Czech software company provoked broader research about the pro-innovative environment in a post-communist country. Creative potential and a drive for wealth are present in the nation as well as a few negative factors influencing the current business environment. Necessary changes have already been undertaken from the governmental level to upgrade the National, Corporate and Professional cultures and to foster innovation. However, a bottom-up initiative may be decisive for any future business success. Historical as well as current positive business cases may serve as useful role models.

IT has become a major source of innovation, innovation that is crucial for the competitive strength of enterprises. This applies to large as well as to small enterprises. Small companies that follow technological trends are, however, confronted with a number of specific constraints that impede the application of IT. The aim of this article is to show that there are plenty of opportunities for SMEs to stimulate innovation by the implementation of IT. The second aim is to make clear what are the bottlenecks in the implementation of IT in SMEs, with the ultimate goal to formulate policy recommendations to stimulate the introduction of IT in SMEs. The structure of this article is as follows. First, we will sketch the role of IT in innovation processes. The introduction of IT first of all leads to process innovation (internal and external), followed by product innovation in the sense of more diverse, cheaper and customer specific products. Process innovation can best be described in terms of standardisation, differentiation, specialisation and (vertical and horizontal) integration. Subsequently, we will discuss the empirical results of several reports we made for the Dutch Council for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (RMK). We will make an inventory of the bottlenecks that occur during the innovation processes and the implementation of the required IT. The problem is that small enterprises often lack the necessary knowledge of the innovative possibilities of IT or find it difficult to apply it in practice. The latter is usually the case when there are considerable organisational consequences or when strategic vision is required with respect to the possible uses of IT. Finally, we will make a number of policy related recommendations.