Radical Innovation Challenges

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• About the Editor
• Contents

Innovation is central to all material and social progress, but has become a synonym for all and any types of change, from incremental product extensions and changes to business models, to the development of new vaccines, or missions to Mars. However, each of these innovation challenges is fundamentally different in ambition and outcomes, and so is the way in which innovation needs to be resourced, organized, and managed (Augsdörfer, 2022; Tidd, 2023)…

Incremental innovation has become the norm as the influence of business and management disciplines and functions have come to dominate research and practice—for example, standard processes for product development, design-thinking to improve existing user practices and superficial business model variations. Such incremental approaches to managing innovation have merit, and can result in significant cumulative changes over time. However, the way in which such incremental innovation is resourced, organised and managed is fundamentally different to that for radical innovation, which is critical to address more significant commercial and social challenges. The cases of new product development (NPD) and business model innovation (BMI) are examined to identify the challenges researchers and managers face. We argue that to acquire a deeper understanding of how radical innovation works, more ambitious cross-disciplinary research is needed, rather than the current direction of travel in the literature towards single discipline studies and standard processes that apply primarily to incremental commercial innovations.

This paper poses a critical view on radical innovation (RI) management research and practice. The study investigates how expected RI performance influences firms’ understanding of their RI capability. RI performance is often based on output measures such as market shares or fiscal return. On the contrary, RI capability building advocates for exploration, learning, and accepting uncertainty. Hence, RI capability building often focuses on the processes of the firms, and not the outcome. Thus, it is argued that the RI capability-building and RI performance expectations are based on different managerial orientations. Coupling a discussion of the literature with case findings from four large international firms, this paper identifies a discrepancy between RI capability-building and RI performance within literature and practice. This is regarded to be a major contributing factor to RI program failure. This study presents three misunderstandings related to RI research and practice and discusses implications of these findings.

Radicalness of innovation is often contingent upon access to technologies whose applications exceed their technological definition (technology distinctness (TD)) and sourcing innovation outside a firm’s focal industry (exterior sourcing (ES)). However, going outside one’s focal industry can be expensive and can lead to inconclusive results. We posit that exterior sourcing and technology distinctness, both have inverse U relationship with radicalness. In addition, we argue that exterior sourcing negatively moderates the relationship between technology distinctness and radicalness such that high technology distinctness, and fewer and focused exterior sourcing will have the strongest relationship with radicalness. To test our assertions, we used patent filings between 1996 and 2009 from the information technology (IT) industry from the standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 database. The empirical evidence supported our claims. Findings suggest that there is an optimum recombination of exterior sourcing and technology distinctness in which radicalness is maximised. We conclude the paper by summarising the key findings, discussing implications for theory and practice, and suggesting avenues for future research.

Organisational agility, a specific dynamic capability, constitutes a key success factor in today’s dynamic business environments. However, it is unclear whether and how firms’ knowledge-based capital enables organisational agility. Moreover, mechanisms through which organisational agility translates knowledge-based capital into innovation performance are poorly understood. This study fills these gaps by investigating direct effects of knowledge-based capital (i.e., human, social, and organisational capital) on organisational agility and, in turn, indirect effects on radical and incremental innovation performance. Leveraging survey data from 385 German firms, this study contributes to the organisational agility and the strategic innovation management literature. First, our analysis validates human and social capital as antecedents of organisational agility, yielding evidence for the premises of the knowledge-based view in a novel context. Second, it substantiates the dynamic capability view as a pivotal theoretical lens for explaining the mechanisms underlying the relationships between firms’ knowledge-based capital, organisational agility, and incremental innovation performance.

Innovation is widely recognized as a major driver of long-term corporate growth. Successful innovators who manage to dominate new markets enjoy Schumpeterian rents for their inventions. How then can a firm dominate a new market? Two streams of literature have proposed opposite answers to this question.

The First Mover approach indicates that by setting up a strong differentiation strategy, companies are supposed to create a new area where profits abound. This approach is supported especially by Kim and Mauborgne (2004) who coined the term Blue Ocean to describe it.

The Fast Second approach, defended by Markides and Geroski (2005), contends, on the contrary, that companies should not try to become pioneers, but should target the newly created market in second position, and colonize it.

But neither Blue Ocean nor Fast Second are able to convincingly explain successful market domination. Our study of 24 innovation cases suggests that innovation which leads to market domination is instead achieved by using four kinds of breakthroughs, separately of simultaneously.

Radically new concepts (RNCs) are often killed off early in the new product development (NPD) process because they do not get the required support, such as financial resources from senior managers or input from technical experts. One reason is that the potential value of fledgling RNCs is often difficult for internal audiences to imagine when evaluating them. Our experimental study with 125 RNC evaluators investigates how experience-based simulation may increase their imaginative capability and support for an RNC. It increases imaginative capability in evaluators with positive preconceptions of RNCs (i.e., low cognitive resistance), thus strengthening their support. However, those with negative preconceptions (high cognitive resistance) become less supportive of RNCs in an experience-based simulation than in other settings. We draw from information-processing and construal level theory to explain the positive and negative effects of experience-based simulation. We also provide suggestions for NPD practitioners seeking internal support to progress their RNCs.

The beneficial value of leveraging external networks in the innovation process has sparked widespread attention by open innovation scholars. With the rise of novel digital technologies such as social media, the opportunity space for accessing a multitude of external knowledge outside the organisation has significantly expanded. For instance, social media is currently not only vital in monitoring the COVID-19 outbreak, but also in leveraging knowledge to find a treatment for coronavirus. Nevertheless, theory and empirical evidence on how user integration using novel technologies such as social media affects radical innovation remains scarce and inconclusive. Using data obtained from 269 senior managers in new product development departments, this study reveals that the use of social media tools for new product development positively impacts radical innovation. The positive relationship is further strengthened by higher levels of an organisation’s technology acceptance of social media. However, we also find that routinisation with social media technology weakens the positive relationship, suggesting that frequent social media users may be more vulnerable to the systemic challenges of social media tools. This study advances open innovation research and information systems literature, elevating the controversial and debated impact of customer integration and information technology for radical innovation into the digitisation era.

Established companies often struggle while start-ups gain market share by pursuing radical technological innovations. Research has found that internal organisational barriers can cause this incumbent’s curse, but it has not explored the role of external actors. Drawing on social judgements of organisations theory, we suggest that potential consumers possess firm stereotypes (i.e., warmth and competence perceptions), which affect their expectations about the success of established companies and start-ups in pursuing radical technological innovations. Findings from three experimental studies show that established companies are perceived as more competent but less warm than start-ups. This perception leads to higher success expectations for established companies pursuing radical technological innovations. Yet, these benefits are no longer present after the revelation of information about a fatal error.

This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on values-based approaches to innovation. In particular, we explore the role that core values should have in radical innovation processes and in guiding the ability of organisations in learning and unlearning, i.e., identifying and developing abilities and competences coherent with the values of the organisation. First, the paper provides a conceptual explanation: it clarifies and highlights the characteristics and implications that core values should have when considered within a radical innovation approach, in particular their ability to be embodied in design objects (meaningful to internal individuals and external customers), and their ability to be open to contingency, deriving their strength from their ability to evolve and be reinterpreted. Secondly, based on this, we put forward a design-driven and interpretation-based facilitation method to support organisations in making sense of their past and future core values and illustrate this method by positioning it when compared with other existing methods. An overview of the outputs of the method and their knowledge value for the organisation together with an illustration conclude the paper.

The synonymic use of sustainable innovation types obstructs the impact of increasingly disperse research on sustainable innovation, environmental innovation, eco-innovation, and green innovation. To identify the meaning and contributions of each innovation type over time, we apply co-word analysis as a bibliometric technique to 1,985 papers, analysing the evolution of motor, emergent and basic themes for each type. For environmental innovation, the focus has shifted from environmental regulations and policies to patents and inventions with an environmental impact, while in sustainable innovations the societal impact of technology adoption has become a driver. Green innovation increasingly concerns environmental technology and its management, whereas eco-innovation studies aspects related to efficiency and decision making. Clear distinctions among sustainable innovation types will increase the impact of this expanding body of research and make it more available to managers and policymakers.

Despite the growing pressure to become more sustainable and the availability of managerial practices, organisations still struggle with being innovative without neglecting sustainability concerns. This paper approaches this issue from two perspectives: First, the organisations’ cultural DNA is assumed to explain differences in the sustainability-related innovation performance of firms. Drawing on the competing values framework, this research examines whether certain cultural types predispose some organisations to perform better. Second, the skepticism among managers about the economic benefits of sustainability-related innovation holds organisations back to consider sustainability concern in their innovation activities. Thus, the relationship between sustainability-related innovation performance and economic innovation performance is investigated to clarify whether they represent confiicting goals. Using multiple-respondent data of a cross-sectional firm sample and a comprehensive measure of sustainability-related innovation performance, the empirical data show that clan cultures have a negative infiuence on sustainability-related innovation performance, whereas hierarchy and adhocracy cultures exert positive effects. Furthermore, sustainability-related innovation performance has a moderately positive effect on economic innovation performance.

Sustainability is a key societal challenge and has become an opportunity for innovation. While start-ups are prone to enter such new territories, established companies are more hesitant to leave current trajectories and embrace uncertainty linked to sustainability-oriented exploration. We present a case of a conventional high-tech firm of an owner-manager whose strong values of universalism led him to initialise a sustainability-oriented diversification by exploring renewable energy technologies. Our longitudinal study uncovers how changes in ambidextrous organisational design and represented managerial values ultimately resulted in failed exploration. Our contribution is threefold: First, we link individual-level managerial values of universalism with organisational-level phenomena of sustainability-oriented exploration and diversification. Second, we contribute to bridging hitherto mostly separate bodies of literature on sustainability-oriented innovation and ambidexterity to better understand how conventional firms can deploy their technological capabilities for sustainability. Third, we conceptualise the “separation drift” as fading organisational separation resulting in exploration failure.

Many studies in traditional business model (BM) literature acknowledge that it is hard for incumbent firms to change their business models, a finding echoed in the business model innovation for sustainability (BMIfS) literature. Large incumbent firms often lack or have weak capabilities needed for sustainability-driven business model innovation. This paper addresses how capabilities for such innovation evolve in large incumbent firms. The research builds on a longitudinal case study in the energy utility industry, and on two theoretical frameworks advanced in previous literature: values-based business model innovation, and capability lifecycles. We conceptually propose a stage-based maturity model of BMIfS. Our model highlights three types of research contributions. First, we propose that the capability development underpinning BMIfS is a nonlinear process of distinct maturity stages. Second, the maturity stages have intermediate transformation junctures that the firm must go through. These junctures either change or initiate the conditions for capability development to be able to advance to the next BMIfS maturity level. Third, the shift in societal, regulatory, competitor, and customer expectations and interests triggers strategic decisions and early development of capabilities that start and push the firm into the transformation junctures.

The literature on the impact of R&D collaboration on innovation performance of firms suggests that R&D collaboration is not always beneficial. Therefore, a more detailed analysis of the effects of R&D collaboration is necessary. This paper investigates the relevance of R&D collaboration with different partner types on a firm’s environmental innovation performance. Thereby, product related and process related environmental innovations are distinguished. Firm-level data from 2337 German firms are used in the regression analysis. The results suggest that R&D collaboration with suppliers, customers, universities, governmental research institutes, consultants, and other firms within the same corporate group is positively associated to a firm’s process related environmental innovation performance. R&D collaboration with customers, suppliers, other firms within the same corporate group and consultants is positively associated with the development of environmental friendly products.

Changes in regulation trigger changes in the innovation environments. They may block specific development trajectories, but they may simultaneously inspire and stimulate completely new openings. In this study, we look into regulation that aims to address environmental problems and facilitate creation and diffusion of sustainable technologies and processes as we examine the responses of innovators to the regulation on plastic use and production—specifically, the so-called SUP-directive. A multiple-case study comprising six companies suggests that companies manage (with) the regulation-induced innovation and needs for change by adopting three distinctive strategies: (1) proactive change orientation, (2) reactive opportunity capturing, or (3) reactive survival mode. Acknowledging that sustainability-oriented regulation may push companies with environmentally friendly innovation activities and solutions towards reactive survival mode highlights the need for managerial agility in adjusting the solutions and the ability to adopt parallel innovation strategies. Observing the strategies adopted by innovators also is informative when evaluating whether the regulation meets its profound goals and intended effects.