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In platform ecosystems, the complementors' product brand management could have significant effects on both the innovation management and evolution of platform ecosystems. By contrast, use of existi...

Accelerators are emerging as important intermediaries in innovation management and new venture creation. Despite a large body of work examining innovation intermediaries, there is still a relativel...

Organizations’ capacity to reconcile innovation, adaptation and exploration with efficiency, productivity gains and exploitation is crucial for their success, yet this constitutes a fundamental and enduring management challenge. Over the past decades, scholars in operations management, strategy and innovation management have proposed divergent conceptual arguments and drawn conflicting empirical conclusions in relation to the impact of process improvement (PI) approaches - such as lean, total quality management (TQM), six sigma, and theory of constraints – on incremental and radical product innovation. For some, PI can lead to both types of innovation; for others, PI inevitably hinders organizations’ capacity to innovate their products, particularly in a radical way. In addition to the heterogeneity of theoretical and empirical arguments that exist in the literature, little is known about how PI interacts with innovation and what mechanisms that companies can use to manage the interplay between PI and incremental and radical product innovation. Therefore, this thesis focuses on exploring this interplay and on identifying the mechanisms that organizations use to manage it. Method This research used a qualitative multiple case study approach. Four companies were purposefully sampled. All of the selected companies are large manufacturing companies based in the United Kingdom. However, they operate in three different industries - automotive, aerospace and pharmaceutical - and vary in their implementation of PI approaches and in the degree of their product innovativeness. Over a 15-month period in 2016-2017, 44 semi-structured interviews with informants from different functional specialisms were conducted, and relevant documents collected. Data were analysed through a multi-stage iterative process. Findings This thesis’ findings depart from previous arguments made in the literature by identifying four different configurations for managing the interplay between PI and product innovation - “strategic and holistic”, “facilitating and empowering”, “operational”, “project-based” – and several associated mechanisms. These configurations comprise of multiple factors including how PI is deployed in the organization (scope and formality), the adaptation of PI to the area that it is used in, and various managerial and structural features in the organization. The interplay between PI and product innovation substantially differs depending on the configuration, as it is managed through “integration” under the “facilitating and empowering” and “strategic and holistic” configurations, and through “separation” under the “operational” and “project-based” ones. Additionally, PI has the potential to enable product innovation (both incremental and radical) if it is loosely integrated with it; however, if it is formally integrated in the innovation processes it might constrain radical innovation. Originality and Contributions This thesis unpacks the interplay between PI and product innovation and posit a configurational view of the interplay. In particular it highlights the importance of PI deployment (formality, scope, adaptability) in shaping the potential innovation outcome. In doing so, research findings provide nuance to the debate on the “productivity dilemma” and question the dichotomic perspective on efficiency and innovation, as articulated in the organizational ambidexterity literature. Indeed, adopting a configurational perspective, productivity and efficiency enhancing activities, such as PI, appear not necessarily as barriers or enablers of innovation, but as having various types of impacts depending on several factors. Additionally, this study re-conceptualizes PI as a bundle of approaches that evolve over time due to different contextual factors, rather than a set of discrete, clearly codified sets of tools and practices. Finally, how and where PI is used in the organization seem to matter more than the types of tools being implemented when considering the impact of PI on product innovation. Keywords: Process improvement, innovation, ambidexterity, configuration

In recent years, real options have gained considerable traction in innovation management research. This is partly because real options has increasingly been used in tandem with other theories, whic...

A central and long-standing question for strategy as for innovation management is where to source technology (e.g., Pisano, 1990). Under which conditions should firms conduct R&D internally, and wh...

The question of how new entrants can displace incumbents has attracted considerable attention in the innovation management literature and practice. Prior research has enhanced our understanding of ...

The premise of this paper is that Design Thinking (DT) is an innovation management approach based on uncertainty reduction rather than risk management. The modern conceptualization of DT comes for ...

This study explores authentic leadership at the strategic level of the organization by examining its relationship with organizational creativity. It also explores the potential mediating role of or...

The article explores the functions, resources and types of individuals spanning multinational corporation (MNC) internal boundaries to better understand the microfoundations of inter-unit interacti...

The article discusses how the innovativeness of organizations is created in the collaborative praxis of organizational actors. It examines the praxis and its discrepancies between innovation management's formal support structures in the front end of innovation. Questions about how the canonical practices of innovation management fail to support the praxis, their decoupling from and their inhibition of the collaborative praxis of organizational actors are addressed. The limitations that formal structures have in relation to supporting help-giving, help-seeking, and reflective reframing activities are examined. The creation of barriers to innovation efforts caused by the use of traditional activity-stage models of innovation is also considered.

The author proposes that firms use the ambidextrous, specialized and diversified implementation models to organize their search activities. The performance consequences derived from applying the models are assessed in consideration of how firms' organizational choices are endogenous variables. Data for manufacturing firms in Spain that were surveyed between 2003 and 2006 are used for the study's empirical design. Previous literature on organizational search are cited that examined tensions arising from the joint adoption of exploration and exploitation, and the courses of action for the mitigation of such tensions.

The author argues that organizational creativity theory and research might benefit from focusing on the pattern rather than the amount of creativity that occurs the generation of ideas. Insights fr...

The article discusses the need for managers to make simultaneous decisions about various aspects related to innovation management, a task that is described as one challenge of managing research and...

The article proposes five hypotheses related to the question of why some people acquire innovative status within organizations. The discussion focuses on the external ties of the organization, the ...

Searching for externally available knowledge has been characterized as a vital part of the innovation process. The availability of such innovation impulses, however, critically depends on the environment a firm is operating in. Little is known on how institutional infrastructures for innovation differ with respect to the munificence in providing innovation impulses. In this paper, we suggest that these differences are particularly pronounced between established market economies and transition economies. We argue that these differences shape a firm's search pattern and that the search pattern subsequently moderates the relationship between innovation inputs and outputs. Based on a sample of more than 4,500 firms from ten European countries we find that search strategies differ considerably between established market and transition economies. Search in transition economies is characterized by much more variety. However, management capacity in these countries is a particularly scarce resource which is why focused search strategies turn out to be most successful.

Relationships between firms are at the heart of how industries are organized, and are central to industry innovation. Despite significant attention focusing on the exchange and endorsement value of...

The article presents the results of a study which investigated the relationship between corporate culture and innovation in Chinese manufacturing firms. Data from companies located in Zhejiang prov...

We develop and test a theoretically-based integrative model of organizational innovation adoption. Confirmatory factor analyses using responses from 134 organizations showed that the hypothesized second-order model was a better fit to the data than the traditional model of independent factors. Furthermore, although not all elements were significant, the hypothesized model fit adoption better than the traditional model.

The article presents management science research considering whether chaos theory can be applied to explain the process of technological innovation and in the management of innovation. The evolution of display panel technology from 1976-2003 is examined. Local Lyapunov Exponents (LLE) are applied to patent statistics on display panel technology from that period to test the hypothesis. Three periods of several years duration within the 1976-2003 frame of the study were found to correlate with chaos theory, in that small initial technological changes instigated large and widespread ones within a short time.

This paper investigates how Chinese SMEs configure marketing, cost-control, and innovation strategies in order to attain better organizational effectiveness. Data collected from 133 small and medium-sized Chinese firms (SMEs) verified our hypotheses that when a strategy configuration was composed of multiple prioritized and related strategies, organizational effectiveness would be improved.

The article presents management science research on the role of social capital regarding knowledge transfers within organizations. Social capital is defined as the resources created by the network of relationships within a social unit. It is hypothesized that knowledge transfer mediates the relationship between social capital, innovative ability within the organization and financial performance. While high degrees of social capital within an organization were found to increase knowledge transfer, this was not found to result in an increase in innovation.

Ambidextrous organizational design and dynamic capabilities are well recognized ways to deal with innovation challenges in turbulent environments. Using an in-depth longitudinal case study, this pa...

Firm decision makers contemplating imitation of a competitor's innovation face a dilemma: Imitate a new, unproven offering, or forgo imitation and perhaps miss out on the “next big thing”? Approach...

Knowledge is a valuable and strategic asset that affects how firms and organizations innovate and compete. This study addresses how uncertain intellectual property right (IPR) conditions impact kno...

We investigate the performance effects and organizational antecedents of ambidexterity defined as the simultaneous pursuit of exploitation and exploration. We argue that ambidexterity (a) is positi...

We pursue what it means to be an 'open innovator' and what conditions this choice. Using the UK Innovation Survey Database 2005, we test different measures of 'openness' across a large data set and...

The article makes the case that management of innovation portfolios is influenced by dynamic risk in a company's competitive environment. The perception of various types of risk are discussed, in t...

Research and development activities need an ambidextrous organization as they are both, explorative and exploitative. Building on multiple case studies, we are able to identify the specific challenges of different organizational forms to support ambidexterity by applying a barriers approach to innovation. We discuss possible underlying reasons for these challenges and suggest solutions based on different roles in innovation management.

The article discusses the supportive role of organizational artifacts in the creative process at a product-design and innovation consultancy. The discussion refers to an ethnographic study of corpo...

This article examines the combinative effects of innovation types on firm and organizational performance. A longitudinal study of a public services, specifically English local government, is presen...

The article discusses the variables involved in replicating knowledge assets which are embedded in the organizational routines of a company, focusing on the optimal level of adaptation of such rout...

A useful level of analysis for the study of innovation may be what we call "knowledge communities" -- intellectually cohesive, organic inter-organizational forms. Formal organizations like firms ar...

The article presents information on modeling the impact of economic and social network configurations on the speed of innovation. A simulation which used agent-based models to study the structure a...

This article presents academic business research. The article examines the taxonomy of small firm technology commercialization strategies. The authors argue that small firms that they have investig...

This article examines how the balancing of attention-to-detail in innovation with outcome-orientation can enhance innovative performance, focusing on radical innovation in manufacturing units and r...

This article examines the impact the act of going public has on the innovations and operating processes of high-technology firms. The author argues that an initial public offering (IPO) influences the direction and quantity of a high-technology firm's rate of innovation and innovation search strategies. Particular focus is given to the advantages and disadvantages of IPOs. An overview of the methods and variables of the study is presented. The article concludes that the overall rates of innovation increase after corporations or high-technology firms go public.

Organizations need to make strategic decisions for innovation, namely, whether they should innovate or not given the status quo. The decision is difficult to make, as innovation is associated with the potential on the one hand and is not without uncertainty on the other in generating competitive advantage. There is always a tradeoff between being innovative to benefit from possible success and staying the same to avoid possible failure and even getting worse. To cope with the uncertainty of innovation, organizations have been found to learn from performance feedback in order to make decisions to innovate or not. However, various learning strategies have been proposed in the past research. This study formulates an agent-based model to explore the performance impacts of different learning strategies in innovation decisions under both technological and market uncertainty. Specifically, we compare the effectiveness of learning from a firm’s own performance (historical learning), learning from other firms’ performance (social learning), learning from the average of a firm’s own performance and other firms’ performance (simultaneous learning), and learning from either a firm’s own performance or other firm’s performance (mixed learning). Simulation experiments generate novel insights.

Recently, corporate governance literature claims that the differences in horizon and power between CEOs and subordinate executives in top management team (TMT) create the incentive for subordinates to monitor CEOs, forcing the firm decision to be long-term oriented. The paper examines this effect of TMT governance on firm innovation. Empirical evidence from large-scale panel data demonstrates that the magnitude of firm innovation increases significantly with two proxies of TMT governance, i.e., the power and horizon of subordinate executives in TMT. Further tests show that other governance mechanisms, such as board size and anti- takeover provisions, play a substitute role in shaping innovation. Examination of cross-sectional variation in firm characteristics such as firm size and analyst coverage also sheds light on the relationship between TMT governance and firm innovation. Taken together, the results indicate that TMT governance matters significantly for firm innovation and unveil the dynamic interaction between TMT and other governance mechanisms in corporate policies.

Of the many success factors for Research and Development activities that have been analyzed, leadership has been frequently highlighted. Many contributions emphasize the importance of leadership with regard to innovation management. However, they predominantly try to identify the superior leadership style, often lack precise definitions of research subjects and lead to equivocal generalizations. Consequently, it is almost impossible to identify unequivocal knowledge and derive directions for future research. The objectives of the paper are to prove the need for a distinct research agenda and to propose promising avenues regarding the research on R&D leadership.

The article discusses a research study done to explain whether organizations introduce cutting-edge products when timing depends solely on their competitors. The two-part hypothesis states that mov...

This research examined how competitive and institutional factors jointly affect young firms f performance. More specifically, the study investigated the relationships among new ventures f different...

The article discusses research pertaining to how legacy firms can introduce both radical and disruptive innovations. The technological opportunism of strategic business units has a positive impact ...

This paper aims to further insight into the process of knowledge productivization within management consultancies. Consultants are often presented as main suppliers and commodifiers of management knowledge. However we argue that current accounts lack a view on the way new knowledge products are developed within consulting firms. By drawing on product innovation literature, this paper shows that the process of 'new concept development' is not simply a matter of constructing a marketable consulting product. Rather, efforts to establish a concept within a consultancy are often accompanied by considerable struggles and unavoidably require various professional skills.

This study investigates how two different aspects of knowledge search -- namely, exploring across technical boundaries and exploring across industry boundaries -- affect the ability of an organization to appropriate the value of their innovations. Analyses of longitudinal data taken from two decades of thermal inkjet printing innovations reveal that the appropriability of innovation value increases as firms cross technical boundaries during their exploratory search activities, but decreases as they instead cross industry boundaries. Furthermore, we find the opposite effects of these two aspects of exploration even more pronounced in technologies that incorporate newer knowledge.

In this paper we report results from an analysis of semi-structured interviews with consultants and clients of consultants. Both groups of interviewees were asked to refer to a recent consultancy p...

In this paper we develop an empirically grounded theory for how large, complex organizations manage their technology flows more effectively than others. Effectively managing technology flows is cen...

This study analyzes how Japanese and U.S. companies develop the capability to mobilize and create knowledge for product innovation. Comparative case studies of Japanese and U.S. companies located i...