Search

The year 2020 will be synonymous with the global threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. R&D Management at a time of crisis: what are we learning from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic? Against this background of the centrality of the R&D Management community in addressing the COVID-19 crisis, sits this call for research papers. [Extracted from the article]

This paper investigates the ecosystem dynamics of the Open‐source [COVID‐19] Medical Supplies network that arose to fill the institutional void revealed by state and private sector failures to stockpile and supply enough personal protective equipment. Theoretically, the paper adds correctives to extant institutional theory accounts of entrepreneurship filling institutional voids, showing that these can be filled rapidly and normatively by digital entrepreneurial ecosystems allied with peer production networks. These were able to transform the boundary conditions of a routinized system, refixing its autopoiesis innovatively. The COVID‐19 epidemic galvanized hundreds of thousands of volunteer "makers" around the world to cooperate to meet urgent demand for medical supplies. A digital entrepreneurial ecosystem arose in response to the problem of critical equipment shortages, connecting global, expert‐curated know‐how with local production equipment. We contribute to the theory of institutional voids by documenting and analyzing how the formation and emergent processes that created and sustained a Digital Peer Production Ecosystem based on self‐organization, expert curation and scalability, successfully catalyzed local initiatives worldwide. Institutional voids are not just barriers to entrepreneurship; they are also opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the eruption of the Covid‐19 pandemic, in response to the global health emergency, governments have focused on designing policies aimed at the development of more innovative products and services. Effective collaboration, communication, and Open Innovation (OI) between government organizations, education and research institutions, and the marketplace have been fundamental to the success of each country's response during the crisis period. Using a comprehensive data set from OECD on innovation policies implemented by governments before and during the Covid‐19 crisis, this paper analyses the extent to which these innovation policies promote OI and how these policy decisions evolve to support an effective response to the pandemic. Through a cluster analysis, we identify four possible government innovation policy strategies (centralizers; conservative OI promoters; collaborative supporters; open collaborators) and analyze how these strategies evolve before and during Covid‐19. Our findings confirm that even though there is an increased use of innovation policies promoting OI during the crisis, there is little evidence of consistency between the policy strategy used pre‐Covid and during the crisis for each country. However, there is an increased use of four types of innovation policy instruments, i.e., those entailing formal consultation with stakeholders and experts; fellowships and postgraduate loans and scholarships; networking and collaborative platforms; and dedicated support to research infrastructures. Although the paper limits the scope of the analysis to the early government reactions in selected OECD countries, it captures an important moment in time (i.e., reaction to a severe shock), which opens avenues for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The novel coronavirus has created one of the biggest social and economic challenges in recent decades. Since a critical issue in overcoming a large‐scale pandemic involves finding effective treatments for the disease, there is typically urgent pressure on the health‐care sector to develop innovations to combat the pandemic. Recently, scholars have argued that repurposing – that is, reusing an existing innovation in a different context – allows for such rapid innovation responses and can reduce costs, as the groundwork has already been laid. In this paper, we compare these benefits with the considerable disadvantages associated with innovation repurposing, including lowered barriers to entry, which can lead to declining average quality and duplicate work. Using data on 2,456 COVID‐19‐related clinical trials initiated between December 2019 and July 2020, we find that merely one‐third of the trials actually investigated drugs or vaccines, whereas the rest focused on diagnostics and crisis management issues. In the trials concerning drug testing, we find that drug repurposing is a predominant innovation strategy, but many trials tested the same (combination of) drugs. This indicates an inefficient use of resources and reductions in the average variety and novelty of clinical trials. Furthermore, the small percentage of biopharmaceutical firms involved in the search for COVID‐19 treatments raises the question of whether firms may have insufficient incentives to redirect innovation efforts to respond to the pandemic. Our paper contributes to crisis management research, the nascent debate on COVID‐19, and the emerging literature on innovation repurposing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid‐19 crisis has hit SMEs particularly hard. Numerous business models (BM) have been limited or rendered downright impossible due to decreased social contact. SMEs can respond to this exogenous crisis via temporary business model innovation (BMI). This empirical study investigates these temporary BMs using a multiple case study approach based on five SMEs in Austria, Germany, and Liechtenstein who within a short period of time applied their core competencies and networks to integrate new BMs, which were in some cases very different from existing ones. These had a positive effect on strategic flexibility, and if desired can also be incorporated into the firm long‐term. The paper contributes to SME crisis management during the Covid‐19 pandemic by pointing out and developing a successful management mechanism that allows to survive a crisis or even improve during this time. Moreover, we contribute to BMI literature by explaining temporary BMI as a new form of BMI. It also makes clear to managers that temporary BMs add value to firms and create new revenue streams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The severity of the COVID‐19 pandemic confronts us with a global grand challenge representing an unprecedented crisis for health, economies, and societies. While digital champions are thriving, a large number of businesses and industries have been facing radical uncertainty, pushing some to the edge of collapse. This emergency calls for new ways to look at organizational ambidexterity and business model innovation. In this paper, we present and discuss a unique case study of a low‐cost airline, AirAsia. With their fleet of aircraft grounded, and unable to pursue any incremental innovation opportunities, AirAsia decided to follow a radical ambidexterity path – focusing on exploration by building an innovation ecosystem. This case not only offers insights on a novel way to create value through open innovation but also extends the body of knowledge on entrepreneurial effectuation by introducing the concept of an ecosystem effectuation. AirAsia's case shows that, in financially distressed times, business model reconfiguration may not be enough, and instead of selecting means to attain goals, the goals may be created upon available means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being a grand challenge of global scale, the COVID‐19 pandemic requires collective and collaborative efforts from a variety of actors to enable the expected scientific advancement and technological progress. To achieve such an open innovation approach, several initiatives have been launched in order to leverage potential distributed knowledge sources that go beyond those available to any single organization. A particular tool that has gained some momentum during COVID‐19 times is hackathons, which have been used to unleash the innovation potential of individuals who voluntarily came together, for a relatively short period of time, with the aim to solve specific problems. In this paper, we describe and analyze the case of the hackathon EUvsVirus, led by the European Innovation Council. EUvs Virus was a 3‐day online hackathon to connect civil society, innovators, partners, and investors across Europe and beyond in order to develop innovative solutions to coronavirus‐related challenges. We have identified four dimensions to explore hackathons as a crowdsourcing tool for practicing effective open innovation in the face of COVID‐19: broad scope, participatory architecture, online setting, and community creation. We discuss how these four elements can play a strategic role in the face of grand challenges, which require, as in the case of the COVID‐19 pandemic, both urgent action and long‐term thinking. Our case analysis also suggests the need to look beyond the 'usual suspects', through knowledge recombination with atypical resources (e.g., retired experts, graduate students, and the general public). On this basis, we call for a broader perspective on open innovation, to be extended beyond openness across organizational boundaries, and to explore the role of openness at societal level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a participatory observation approach, this paper aims at exploring how public and private organizations have collaborated in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. We examine the case of Mechanical Ventilator Milano (MVM), an international project with over 250 contributors and partners; this project aimed to achieve the challenging goal of designing and realizing a mechanical ventilator for mass production in about 6 weeks. The project received the Emergency Use Authorization granted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The MVM ventilator is a reliable, fail‐safe, and easy‐to‐operate mechanical ventilator that can be produced quickly at a large‐scale, based on the readily available parts. The success of the MVM case is unique as it adopts open innovation practices to generate technology innovation, in addition to a lean perspective. Through the MVM project description, this study offers a framework that explains the interplay between open innovation and lean approach, highlighting the different internal and external forces and types of collaborations, and offering fine‐grained insights into the role of universities as platforms of multidisciplinary knowledge. This framework might serve as a basis for future theoretical and empirical research, providing practitioners with new best practices that are essential when facing a severe crisis like COVID‐19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic has been and is currently still affecting organizations of all sizes and in many industries, and research still lacks profound insights into the managerial implications of this phenomenon. In particular, it is unclear how family firms, which are the economic backbone of most of the countries affected by the pandemic, have adapted to COVID‐19. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on a rich body of evidence collected from 90 interviews and secondary data in a longitudinal case study of four German family firms. We develop a framework for understanding how family firms adapt to exogenous shocks such as the COVID‐19 pandemic and find that the exogenous shock further reinforces the family firm's resource constraints and the family's fear of losing their socioemotional wealth. These motivational sources, in turn, trigger behavioral changes in both the firm and the family. In addition to a temporarily induced short‐term orientation, these changes manifest in (pseudo)family cohesion, less rigid mental models, and the utilization of digital technologies. Organizational outcomes such as new alliances, digital platforms, and the adaptive capacity of family firms are the result of these behavioral changes. By providing a comprehensive understanding of how COVID‐19 affects family firms, the insights from our study contribute to innovation research, business practice, and policymaking alike. More broadly, we provide innovation scholars with a theoretical comprehension of how exogenous shocks can challenge our canonical understanding of organizations' (innovative) behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID‐19 pandemic, a huge number of firms had to stop their activities due to the lockdown situation that has been decided in most countries. However, to contribute to the many emergencies caused by the pandemic through purpose‐led actions, many of those firms have reacted with innovative projects and changes in their manufacturing activities. In this paper, we address why and how these efforts have been implemented and how the situation of these firms evolved after the peak of the health crisis. Drawing on the literature about the purpose and R&D/innovation management concerning health emergency, we develop a conceptual framework to understand how different types of purpose‐led actions (i.e., short term and/or long term) and different R&D management strategies (i.e., exploitation or exploration of R&D, innovation, and manufacturing competencies) can characterize firms' rapid response for the benefit of the community in the fight against COVID‐19, for example through the provision of medical equipment or other products and services. We validate the framework using the cases of 21 Italian firms which have taken very fast actions during the peak of the COVID‐19 emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid emergence of the COVID‐19 crisis has challenged both private and public firms, requiring them to reshape their internal processes and external linkages in the fight against the virus, but also to survive the disrupting economic impact of the pandemic on their activities. Academic spinoffs have not been exempted from these dynamics. In this paper, we present and discuss a case study of an academic spinoff, Omnidermal, which has developed a new, efficient and easy‐to‐realize emergency life support machine for use in intensive and sub‐intensive care units. This case, apart from offering information on the best practices of how spinoffs may contribute socially to the fight against COVID‐19 and – more in general – against other exogenous shocks, also provides insights on their stages of development, evolution patterns and ability to define new solutions. The case shows that when the market needs are clear to a firm (as in the case of medical devices during the COVID‐19 crisis), the 'legacy competences and practices' of spinoffs (i.e., technical competences and work practices) can be fully exploited to compress the development time and to realize products demanded by the market. We also identify access to a network as being an essential boundary condition for this process. These results introduce an alternative scope for academic spinoffs. Given the 'legacy competences and practices' they are able to develop, they are ideal candidates to respond to the societal and economic challenges posed by a crisis over short periods of time. On the basis of these insights, we draw a series of implications for practitioners, policy makers and academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID‐19 is an unexpected and brutal pandemic that requires new innovation models to overcome the constraints of this crisis and address its multiple challenges. Open innovation does not replace a traditional closed R&D model; but in the current crisis situation, it can support an ecosystem stakeholders' effort by leveraging several collaborations. Based on the Tunisian experience, this study illustrates how a crisis can spontaneously create these collaborations between the maker's community, the users (public healthcare professionals) and key stakeholders (universities, civil society and the private sector among others). To investigate this research question, we adopted a qualitative approach based on a single embedded case study and collected data through participant observation technique. The case study describes a process of crisis‐driven innovation based on 3D printing technologies in order to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to healthcare professionals. It highlights two distinct phases describing the evolution from a local collaborative model to the creation of a national ecosystem able to design, manufacture and address the growing need of the public healthcare system. Our findings show with empirical evidence the crucial roles played by the makers' community, FabLabs and engineers in the fight against the COVID‐19 pandemic. This study draws lessons on how a large health crisis can trigger national crisis‐driven innovation (CDI) initiatives, which helped structure the makers' network and promote collaboration towards a common national goal. A collaborative framework for CDI initiated by the Tunisian makers' community is proposed in this study and could be adopted in similar crisis contexts, in Global South and North settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social innovation and social entrepreneurship usually follow a bottom‐up pattern. Companies and entrepreneurs decide to focus their business effort on meeting critical and urgent social needs. However, what happens when institutions promote or push top‐down initiatives? The outbreak of COVID‐19 is redefining, for many aspects, entrepreneurial dynamics. By creating a critical shortage of resources and medical supplies, the pandemic drew central and local institutions to push companies to cover the increasing social and medical needs. This study explores how companies reacted to top‐down‐initiated social innovation and social entrepreneurship activities. In doing so, the study focuses on the first heavily hit country, China, and it collects data from companies involved in the production of medical masks and the provision of solutions for nucleic acid tests. Our findings reveal that companies answer to top‐down pushes by implementing two main strategies in a time of crisis. First, the social bricolage by exploiting available and local resources. Second, companies react with agility by re‐thinking their internal innovation, relying on past similar experiences, and making their resource fluid. Our study adds the literature regarding social innovation and entrepreneurship in a crisis time by providing implications for institutions and organizations in setting and responding to strategies for future crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A way forward for innovation management for facing crises: innovation management education, c... Overall, the set of case studies reported in this SI brought forth evidence of approaches that in many ways existed prior to the start of the pandemic. Innovation and R&D management cannot be studied at the firm level, without considering the companies network in which firms operate, the institutional and policy-making actors, the surrounding societal, cultural, political environment. R&D management at a time of crisis: what are we learning from the initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic? One of the practices adopted by those owning IP has been to offer it freely to those who could employ it for fighting the pandemic: Antonelli et al. (2021) studied the Open COVID Pledge, subscribed by companies who pledged '[..] to make [their] intellectual property available free of charge for use in ending the COVID-19 pandemic and minimizing the impact of the disease'[1]. [Extracted from the article]

How firms address pressing societal needs during crises is not well understood. The COVID‐19 pandemic disrupted societies worldwide, and many firms quickly developed new product innovations in personal protective equipment – an area outside of their core businesses and with uncertain profitability but demanded by stakeholders. We conducted inductive case studies of eight firms to understand why firms pivot from shareholder‐ to stakeholder‐oriented innovation of product categories new to the firm and how they satisfy new stakeholder needs during crises. The findings suggest a three‐stage process model that explains how firms (1) internalize information signalling a lack of product supply that leads to urgent innovation needs, which in turn triggers a shift, (2) how the firm's extant resources are understood and (3) thus how the capability assembly of new product innovation is initiated. We theorize that the increase in responsiveness to societal crises is a sensitization process. This process explains how for‐profit product innovation prior to the pandemic led to the crisis‐driven innovation of products new to the firm by temporarily suspending a profit orientation to respond quickly to calls for help. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the standardization process of contact tracing apps during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Due to the epidemiological urgency, and differing from classical examples in the literature, this process is characterized by a compressed timeframe. In this setting, we investigate the role of different standard‐setting modes and their interaction through the lens of multi‐mode standardization. We find that the processes of standard setting through market competition or inclusive multi‐stakeholder committees proved time‐consuming and inefficient in addressing the immediate needs during this major global health crisis. Multi‐mode standardization between committees, market players, and governments equally proved unable to coordinate a standard. Ultimately, a so far neglected actor, namely platform owners, proved to be pivotal in coordinating a widely‐adopted standard. Our research extends multi‐mode standardization with platform owners as a further standardization actor of proliferating importance given the increasing pervasiveness of platforms in numerous contexts. The present article provides implications for the interplay between different modes of standard setting in general, and the setting of technological standards in crises in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID‐19 emergency, several companies have been able to rapidly reconfigure their innovation and production processes to help support health and other services to cope with the shortage of needed supplies. Using the dynamic capability perspective, this work aims to understand which capabilities enable companies to have fast innovation reactions when they are not pursuing a competitive advantage but they are responding to a societal requirement. A multiple case study approach was used and results reveal that the use of internal and external sources is fundamental. In particular, the Italian companies with a fast innovation reaction to COVID‐19 are not the ones that possess all the competencies internally but are rather those able to orchestrate internal and external resources by means of 'fast' and flat management. Internal commitment and a culture of continual renewal are essential to rapidly reach a performing product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic caused severe ventilator shortages in many healthcare systems worldwide. The UK government reacted to this with a three‐pronged approach of importing, up‐scaling existing production and supporting new design projects. The latter two parts – labelled the UK Ventilator Challenge – included over 50 companies from various sectors including the automotive and aerospace industries. Nine multi‐partner consortia and five single‐company projects were initiated with varying approaches. This study explores lessons learned during the setup and management of these medical device designs and manufacturing consortia. A qualitative survey methodology was employed, and 32 semi‐structured stakeholder interviews were conducted. The primary data was triangulated through the collection of 42 secondary data sources such as webinars and radio interviews. Transcription and a three‐step data analysis process of thematic coding identified six lessons learned. The analysis of the data showed that a strong, appealing common goal can enable employee motivation and trust as well as align priorities across all companies involved. This facilitates the involvement and fruitful collaboration of companies with varying sizes and fields of expertise. Furthermore, selecting the most suitable employees with specialist knowledge for high‐priority projects and empowering them to make decisions can have a positive effect on project performance. The findings from the study complement existing literature on new product development and crisis management processes. In addition, the results uncover potential long‐term effects such as more openness for cross‐sector collaborations, which can serve as interesting sources for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study adopts a resilience perspective to explain how companies managed to contribute innovative solutions to fight the COVID‐19 crisis. We studied how five companies operating in different industries (three in automotive, one in printing, and one in rubber and plastic products manufacturing) managed to reorganize activities and employ their R&D and innovation capabilities to enhance their resilience. Simultaneously, they increased the health system's capacity to cope with the outbreak. Through a qualitative inductive study, based on interviews with company managers, we found that the firms mobilized their resources and capabilities to expand their ability to adapt and cope with adversity at the organizational level. In addition, moved by the sensitivity to the extreme context and a perceived sense of urgency, the firms deployed the same endowments to strengthen the community's response to a crisis. Our study shows that an organization can directly and positively foster the broader social system's resilience. This study contributes to the innovation literature by identifying innovation capabilities as fundamental antecedents of resilience building for organizational response, paving the way for strengthening the link between resilience and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this study is to examine knowledge sharing as a boundary condition under which employee innovation can be enhanced in response to the job stress induced by the COVID‐19 pandemic. We argue that when stressed employees share knowledge, they can expand their knowledge base and thereby enhance their innovative potential. Consistent with our hypothesis, multiple regression analysis results based on a sample of 61 R&D employees of UK and US technology‐based firms show that knowledge sharing moderated the relationship between COVID‐19‐induced job stress and employee innovation, such that the relationship was negative when knowledge sharing was lower but became positive when knowledge sharing was higher. These findings highlight the importance of investing in knowledge‐based resources to promote innovation behavior at work during a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key issues in the field of technology analysis and innovation management is how new technologies origin and evolve in the presence of environmental threats. We confront this problem focusing on emerging innovative solutions to cope with unexpected and harmful problems posed by crises and needing a rapid, effective response. We specifically analyze the patterns of critical innovations to cope with new coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) that is generating public health and economic issues worldwide. Accordingly, in the context of the theory of technological exaptation, we adopted a narrative approach examining vital innovations that ended up treating COVID‐19 even though they were originated to treat other diseases (more or less distant from the COVID‐19 domain), as the antiviral drug Remdesivir and the antirheumatoid arthritis drug Tocilizumab. Results reveal that technological exaptation, especially if characterized by a longer exaptive distance, is a potential driving force of innovation to cope with COVID‐19 in the short‐term and other similar issues. On this basis, we provide propositions for a more general crisis model of innovation. This study adds a new perspective that may be helpful to explain the evolution of innovation in the presence of crises, considering technological exaptation in a context of environmental threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crises like the COVID‐19 pandemic affect firms' innovation management and decision making. On the downside, crises lead to detriments like budget constraints, to which firms often respond by reducing their innovation activities. On the upside, crises are opportunities, where some firms exploiting changing market requirements and necessities excel. No matter in which direction, decision makers must react quickly but often rely on ad‐hoc decisions or even gut feeling when drafting their crisis response strategies. Through a series of distinct cases, we demonstrate that innovation management may fill this void through patent analytics. Drawing on biochemical expertise, we particularly describe the functions and effects of COVID‐19. To counter downside detriments, firms may circumvent budget constraints by discerning patents that can be (1) monetized, for example via sales or licensing deals, or (2) abandoned to achieve cost‐savings, allowing firms to maintain their innovation activities. To realize upside opportunities, firms and governments may use patent analytics to detect key biotechnology firms that are likely to successfully develop treatments and vaccinations against pandemics like COVID‐19. Promulgated U.S. interest in relocating foreign firms to the United States is not without technological and commercial reasoning. Herein, the insights of this study contribute to a better understanding of the use of patent information, such as smart patent indicators, harmonized patent data, novel annuity fee measures, and hand‐collected datasets of COVID‐19 and related antibodies' patents to the management of innovation in times of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation systems have seen diverse actors attempting to tame the Covid‐19 crisis, under varying degrees of government direction. Largely neglected in scholarly and public attention, however, are 'bottom‐up' solutions arising from the periphery of innovation systems. Drawing on inductive case research on a fringe doctor who invented the idea of the drive‐through testing system, and two university student teams that developed coronavirus applications, this study examines how peripheral actors generate innovative, bottom‐up solutions at speed in a time of crisis. Our findings reveal that, in a crisis situation, bottom‐up solutions transpire on the basis of three innovation drivers: (a) peripheral status, expediting the commence of innovation activities; (b) interdisciplinary collaboration, enabling access to a greater spectrum of knowledge and perspectives; and (c) prior knowledge, prescribing the direction of solution generation. We also identify that system intermediaries support the innovation activities of peripheral actors, thereby helping bottom‐up solutions to become more customer facing. Such functions of intermediaries include demand articulation, technical assistance, and promulgation of generated solutions. Our findings offer theoretical implications for the literature on innovation in a time of crisis and practical implications for governments and organizations preparing themselves for the potential second wave of coronavirus emergencies, or even a completely new form of future crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic has caused unprecedented public health and economic crises. As a response to face the current emergency, science and innovation communities are realizing a fundamental contribution to tackle the crisis. During the past few months, we have witnessed an impressive number of initiatives to encourage networking opportunities, to foster interactions between the different stakeholders involved (health care, industry, governments, academics, ordinary people), and to develop innovative solutions and collaborative infrastructures in support of the health sector. Adopting an open and collaborative approach and joining forces is essential in the fight against the COVID‐19 crisis. Also, the involvement of crowds as innovation partners can be of great support. Therefore, our work aims to review and classify those initiatives, based on the crowdsourcing model, that have been put into place to face the emergency generated by the novel coronavirus pandemic. We illustrate the 16 crowdsourcing initiatives devoted to the SARS‐CoV‐2 outbreak that we identified, detailing their development and implementation. Then, we propose a classification of them, along two dimensions: type of crowdsourcing configuration and kind of tasks, being able to find a relationship between these two aspects. Evidence from the analyzed projects suggests that across disparate domains, crowdsourcing can be an effective strategy in the response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. To conclude, we suggest some important implications for innovation best practices and lessons that can be learned for the future: crowdsourcing, harnessing the power of crowds and online communities, can help tackle the COVID‐19 pandemic, by providing original, actionable, quick, and low‐cost solutions to the challenges of the current health and economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]