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The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is considering the adoption of e-sports (i.e., organised competitive video gaming), which could be considered a radical innovation as it deviates in many areas from traditional sports (e.g., online game play format, lack of high physical exertion, complicated intellectual property rights for each game, etc.). However, collaboration with firms familiar with the innovation (e.g., National Association of Collegiate eSports - NACE) might mitigate risks surrounding the radical innovation. Thus, the purpose of this paper was to investigate whether a potential association between the NCAA and NACE would be advantageous to both organisations. Through a deductive qualitative content analysis underpinned by Rogers's (2003) innovation characteristics (e.g., complexity, compatibility and relative advantage), several themes emerged: physical exertion, e-sports structure, amateurism, eligibility, compensation, profitability, and diversity and gender equity. These themes are discussed while identifying the benefits and issues surrounding a NCAA/NACE collegiate e-sports adoption and collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge, or intellectual capital, and innovation continue to be key areas subject to rapid change in the current environment. The complexity of the relationship between knowledge and innovation leads to the in-depth study of more specific linkages. Intellectual capital is divided into human, organisational and social capital. This paper attempts to provide empirical evidence relating to the relationship between human capital and radical innovation, along with social networks. Using data collected via a questionnaire, our hypotheses were tested empirically in a sample of 251 Spanish technology-intensive manufacturing firms. The paper provides new, empirically-based insights into the study of radical innovation by adopting a research framework which is built upon the intellectual capital-based view of the firm, based on the multidimensionality of human capital. The main results show the positive and statistically significant role of human assets in radical innovation, and, regarding a moderating role, indicate the existence of a substitution effect between one of the human capital components - experience and abilities - and social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the practices and techniques that can be used at the front end of innovation to search for radical or discontinuous new product ideas. It addresses a gap in the literature by using empirical data to identify the dimensions of a firm's capability to search for new ideas for potential radical innovation. A review of the literature on the front end of innovation was conducted and used to develop an understanding of the practices applied by firms to search for radical new product ideas. From this a questionnaire was developed to collect data for an exploratory factor analysis of a sample of firms and subsequently a confirmatory factor analysis of a separate sample firms. The results from both samples are consistent and identify five dimensions of the search capability that can be used to search for radical new product ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation research tends to deem marketing management does not occupy salient place of strategic significance in innovation policy formulation. More recently, strategic marketing scholars have begun to highlight marketing capabilities as an integral part to general dynamic capabilities to facilitate radical innovation commercialisation. However, comprehensive frameworks are still required in substantiating the strategic conduciveness of specific dynamic marketing capabilities to radical innovation commercialisation in the international technology-intensive sector. The current study develops and validates the radical innovation commercialisation model that reconfigures relevant theoretical conceptualisations and empirical verifications to narrow this gap. As the model reveals, innovative corporate culture drives radical innovation commercialisation of international technology-intensive firms directly as well as through the mediation of dynamic marketing capabilities. Most noteworthy, the mediated impact is proven almost equivalent to the direct impact, illustrative of the strategic role of dynamic marketing capabilities in facilitating radical innovation commercialisation for international technology-intensive firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical technological innovations have transformed competition in high-tech markets. One result of innovation is technological convergence, whereby different technologies are integrated and businesses become more complex, thus blurring industry boundaries. We examine the evolution of firms' strategic positions under technological convergence. Specifically, we analyse the printed electronics industry using patent-centric network indexes and reveal technological intensity using firm-based networks of patent citations. We labelled firms that own core-functional (ink) technology core functional leaders in the patent network of the printed electronics industry. Additionally, we labelled firms that own control-related (device) technology technology integrators and those involved in application-related (electronics) technology application pioneers. Furthermore, we constructed a strategic quadrant framework that categorises firms according to their strategic positioning and evolutionary patterns. We also identified the idiosyncratic patterns of firms' strategic behaviours in each dimension in relation to industrial leadership and regime changes in technological convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation is key to company growth, but hinges on timely access to new knowledge. Individual companies have difficulty pursuing innovation and acquiring the knowledge they need on their own. Companies therefore resort to various governance modes (licensing-in, collaborations, mergers and acquisitions, etc.) that suit the preferred innovation trajectories. We expect governance modes directed at knowledge exploration to generate long-term, radical innovations, and governance modes aimed at knowledge exploitation to generate short-term, incremental innovations. Employing data from two Dutch community innovation surveys, we indeed discovered that companies that license in technology tend to produce more incremental innovations. We also found a strong positive correlation between inter-organisational collaboration and both long-term and short-term innovation. Finally, we concluded that M&As have a major impact on the production of long-term radical innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market orientation and innovation are important for economic growth. We examine market orientation, innovation radicalness, and propensity towards risk-taking in the unique context of China's transitional economy. Analysis of 235 responses from Chinese new ventures, created during the past eight years, suggests that innovation radicalness is affected by both responsive and proactive market orientation. Propensity towards risk-taking also positively affects innovation radicalness. Our results on responsive market orientation are counter to findings in Western contexts. Implications of the findings are useful to improve our understanding of innovation and entrepreneurship in transitional economies, particularly in the Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most practitioners working with innovation agree that business modelling is imperative for their organisations' survival. Nonetheless, the same practitioners still spend the majority of the time devoted for innovation on their product/process, and only limited time - if any - on exploring new or complementing business models. This myopic 'product/process' focus is no longer enough for organisations to create new radical breakthroughs in the market(s). Thus, to assist practitioners in changing this behaviour, our paper prescribes a directly implementable method named the vertical innovation process (VIP) framework. The VIP framework can be used to create different alternatives and variations of business models (pretotypes) when practitioners find themselves between the discovery of a breakthrough and the commercialisation of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study widens the current state-of-the-art for improving teamwork in practice by enhancing personal and interpersonal learning competencies. The foundation for the study is obtained by conducting eight months of action research at five Lithuanian SMEs who followed Brix and Jakobsen's (2013) radical innovation method the 'Creative Idea Solution (CIS) framework'. As part of the authors' intervention, Lauridsen's (2012) updated version of the building excellence (BE) learning styles model (Dunn and Rundle, 2007) was implemented in the five innovation teams. The results represent important implications for organisations and teams in practice as well as they represent new insight to the innovation management literature and organisation science. Here, focus on improving organisational practice is starting to sprout and a scientific contribution is no longer the only imperative (Huber, 2011). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents implications imperative to the industry on increasing the success of working with innovation in practice. As a compliment to this, knowledge is claimed to the under-represented individual level of aggregation in the innovation management literature, where a bold setup for claiming knowledge via action research is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing variability and turbulence of the external environment have brought more uncertainty to enterprises' survival and development. To enhance the capability of adapting to the external environment, enterprises have to constantly improve their organisational flexibility. Organisational unlearning has positive effects on organisational flexibility since it can eliminate the internal factors that conflict with the external environment. In this paper, a conceptual model is established and examined based on the data of 248 questionnaires from Chinese enterprises to reveal the relationships among organisational unlearning, organisational flexibility and organisational innovation capability. Our research results reveal that organisational unlearning has significant effects on both incremental innovation and radical innovation. Furthermore, we also find that organisational flexibility partly mediates the relationship between organisational unlearning and incremental innovation, and fully mediates the relationship between organisational unlearning and radical innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the prospective interactions between technological trajectories and levels of environmental improvements that provide long-term sustainability issues. It is best illustrated by certain sectors of Brazilian subsidiaries of Swedish multinational corporations (MNCs) as organisational units with ability to generate positive technological externalities in host countries. Technological trajectories are observable as: 1) successive incremental innovations for environmental optimisation of product; 2) a sequence of steps towards radical innovation, associated with new products to redefine the market leading to a socio-environmental structural change. The aim of the paper is enlarge the understanding of technological pathways towards this issue based on newly industrialised countries (NICs) and to give foresight in identifying long-term trends in sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The open innovation paradigm represents one of the most debated topics in technology and innovation management research in the last decade. Concurrently, different modes of collaboration involve different strategic trade-offs. Scholars operating in the technology management field have investigated the distinction between brokers who provide knowledge and mediators who provide contacts with other actors. While the former exploit their network position to connect separated worlds, the latter introduce disconnected organisations and facilitate their coordination. This paper explores the differences between technology brokers and mediators to provide guidelines that can orient managers to identify the appropriate bridge strategy towards radical innovation. Specifically, this paper leverages the rich literature about brokers. From an empirical point of view, the research relies on a multiple case study that focuses on two collaborative projects undertaken by Material ConneXion with BMW and PUMA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the practices and techniques that can be used at the front end of innovation to search for radical or discontinuous new product ideas. It addresses a gap in the literature by using empirical, survey data to identify the dimensions of a firm's capability to search for new ideas for radical or discontinuous innovation. To do this, a review of the literature on the front end of innovation was conducted and used to develop an understanding of how to search for radical new product ideas. From this, a questionnaire was developed for the assessment of practices adopted by firms when dealing with the challenges of the search phase of radical innovation. However, there has to date been no thorough attempt to investigate its factorial solution. The purpose of the present study is therefore to investigate the factorial solution, that is, to reduce multiple items to a lesser number of underlying factors that represent the dimensions of searching for radical new ideas. The results from Irish and Italian samples identify five dimensions of the search capability that can be used to search for radical new product ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely acknowledged that suppliers contribute positively to innovation in New Product Development (NPD). However, it remains rather unclear what suppliers actually contribute to innovation. Based on a literature review focusing on 80 articles and a focus group meeting with strategic purchasing managers, a conceptual framework is developed categorising different supplier inputs to innovation. This model is formulated by characterising supplier inputs on a component level and an architectural level, related to knowledge extension and knowledge reconfiguration, respectively. Further, supplier inputs can be incremental or radical in nature, resulting in either a dependence on the supplier's process knowledge or the supplier's technology knowledge. These situations imply different conditions for knowledge integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a framework for how tacit knowing can be managed by an innovation manager in the process of radical innovation. The tacit knowing perspective is discussed in terms of dynamic knowledge aspects such as proposition, skill and familiarity. Tacit knowing is compared with two other influential views of knowledge in relation to innovation management: the positivistic and externalised perspectives. In light of the tacit knowing perspective an instrumental case study of Steve Jobs as an innovation manager for the Mac project is presented. The instrumental case suggests that focus on potentially dynamic and artful execution of knowledge aspects may be of importance in the management of radical innovation. This can also be considered a challenge to the positivistic ideal of knowledge, and questions the dichotomised tacit-explicit dimension of knowledge in management research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The open innovation paradigm emphasises the importance of alliances for improving the innovation performance of firms. However, existing empirical research on innovation performance implications of alliances is dominated by cross-sectional studies. As a result, we do not know how the time frame of alliances might influence innovation performance. In this study, we therefore examine the impact of different time frames of alliance strategies on innovation performance. In order to do so, we collected panel data on 217 Flemish startup firms. The results show a positive association between 'discontinuous alliance strategies' with suppliers, customers and competitors and 'incremental' innovation performance. In addition, we find a positive impact of 'continuous alliance strategies' with suppliers, competitors and universities and other research institutes on 'radical' innovation performance. These findings encourage startup firms to balance their alliance portfolio not only in terms of different kinds of partners but also in terms of different kinds of time frames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates which risks characterise radical innovation projects. In-dept case studies were carried out via interviews and a questionnaire. The risk concept applied in this study includes three dimensions: certainty, controllability and impact. Three structural or unambiguous risks were found: new product performance according to specification, reliability of suppliers and new product adoption by consumers. The incidental or ambiguous risks that were found relate to: internal organisation and project management. These results can provide guidance for project teams and innovation managers regarding issues they must seek to tick off early and issues that continuously require team and management attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most contributions in the fields of strategic management, operations strategy, organisation and innovation theory, do not provide knowledge on how to pursue the combination of exploration and exploitation excellence. This paper investigates the impact of change initiatives in high performance companies, and the effects of organisational formalisation and centralisation on the time and timeliness performance of new product development projects. We analyse data collected through two multinational surveys of manufacturing companies and case studies of two manufacturing companies. The findings indicate that companies with a high degree of improvement in exploitation and exploration performance differ from low performers in terms of the width and depth of the implementation of improvement activities. Furthermore, high performers are actively aware of configurational effects. Formalisation does not only lead to a longer lead-time of radical innovation but also, contrary to what theory suggests, of incremental innovations. Centralisation only affects the timeliness of NPD projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research adopts an experimental, 'probe and learn', approach to innovation management and organisational development in a medium sized mature engineering company. It deploys a grounded participative methodology, within a 'live' new product development team to surface nine antecedents of a radical innovation culture. These emerging themes were triangulated using the established Organization Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) and the KEYS Creative Climate Assessment Tool. The aggregated data is discussed in terms of the different aspects of organisational culture and the distinct continuous and discontinuous cultural archetype forms. Finally 16 actionable management interventions were identified to promote radicalness. These were reviewed in the context of previous empirical case research and in dialogue within a UK Government Department of Trade and Industry forum to promote discontinuous innovation. The outcomes divulge a plan for change to assist the company's transition, through purposeful experimentation, between cultural archetypes and embed a radical innovation culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the literature is increasingly recognising the importance of radical innovation for firms and for markets, our academic understanding of the phenomenon is not complete. We are challenged that firms are moving quickly to improve their management of radical innovation activities. The study reported on in this paper is a longitudinal study conducted over a period of 3.5 years time horizon, in which twelve US large established companies' radical innovation-capability-building initiatives were followed. This qualitative study contributes to our understanding of dynamic capabilities development in situations, where the capability itself is antithetical to the mainstream culture and processes. We provide observations regarding organisations' approaches to building a radical innovation dynamic capability over a lengthy observation period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research, based on four in-depth case studies, probes an overlooked unit of analysis in innovation management literature, namely, management action and cognition, and offers a new qualitative contribution into resource allocation approaches that support radical innovation. The interpretivist approach revealed that a management team's resource and path dependencies and prevailing mental models underpin resource allocation routines, which prevent managers from pursuing radical innovations. Of particular interest were the innovations that disrupt and re-shape the existing terms of economic engagement in established industries. It was found that managers with restrictive mental models will adopt up to five disruptive innovation rejection strategies: rewarding incrementalism; ignoring the positive aspects of disruptive innovations; focusing on historical perceptions of success; creating perceptions of success with high effort; and holding beliefs in the face of disconfirming information. Initial longitudinal data suggests that rejection strategies can be overcome with holistic portfolio approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how established firms create new (radical) technologies by re-deploying existing knowledge into other domains than those in which that knowledge was originally accumulated. Drawing from the strategy and the innovation research, the analysis focuses on some of the mechanisms firms can use in developing a new technology. More specifically, we study the following mechanisms: the role of internal vs. collaborative R&D; the breadth of firm's search behaviour; the scope of this firm's R&D activity; the importance of individual inventors relative to the teams of inventors in new technology developments. We trace Corning's invention and the development of fibre optics over the period of 1970-1995 using multiple sources of data and information. The analysis shows that Corning developed fibre optics mostly in-house by leveraging its stock of knowledge into a new application domain, i.e., long-distance telecommunications. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teams developing innovations work in a context ripe with uncertainty, and handling this uncertainty places special demands on the leaders of such teams. We empirically tested the role of leader personality in the success of two different types of New Product Development (NPD) teams: radical and incremental. Using the five-factor model of personality as a framework, results based on a sample of 116 NPD teams suggest that for NPD leaders, conscientiousness and emotional stability are important variables for NPD success. Additionally, depending upon the type of innovation, specific personality variables may be more important. Strong support was found for our proposal that NPD teams working on radical innovations would benefit from a more open leader. Radical NPD teams operate under conditions of market and technical uncertainty. More open leaders should be more easily able to encourage and handle new ideas that are necessary for managing radical innovations. Implications for selection and training of individuals to lead radical NPD teams are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through interactive learning activities of technology based entrepreneurs and their potential customers, novel combinations of technology components are developed into vehicles of customer values. This study treats technological possibilities and customers' latent needs as the dimensions of an inter organisational Garbage-Can space, inside of which learning agents from the demand and supply sides interact. It simulates an ongoing Schumpeterian process ('creative destruction') to investigate the influences of social network, boundary-spanning organisations and demand-side innovativeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early stages of the innovation process, the so-called 'fuzzy front-end' of innovations, are of particular relevance for the success of innovation projects. Empirical studies were so far only conducted on these stages with respect to incremental innovations. However, both literature and practitioners call for a deeper understanding of radical innovations because of their fundamental need to be managed in a different way than incremental innovations. This contribution presents the results of in-depth case studies of the early stages of the radical innovation process in eight technology-based companies. First, we present the reasons for the increased interest of the companies studied in radical innovations and particularly their early phases. Second, we differentiate between three types of companies in managing the early phases of the radical innovation process: the process-oriented, the culture-oriented and the need-oriented companies. Third, we develop a process model of the early phases of the radical innovation process and discuss the three types and their differences along the model. Finally, we derive managerial implications for the early phases of the radical innovation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abstract of the study "Acquisitions as a means of innovation sourcing by incumbents and growth of technology-oriented ventures" by Marcus Wagner is presented.

New Technology Based Ventures (NTBVs) should start to develop radical innovations early if they want to stay in the market longer than the life-cycle of their initial innovation lasts. However, there might be barriers to the development of such innovations. This paper seeks to identify and discuss these barriers. Using a qualitative approach, we found that NTBV indeed favour incremental over radical innovation. Risk aversion, a focus on current customers and an informal new product development process emerged as potential causes for this phenomenon. These barriers could be issues in for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study focuses on the question of what kinds of users are able to actively contribute to the development of radical innovations and what firms can learn from them to improve their innovative capability. A multiple case study analysis was conducted in the field of medical technology. The case study analysis reveals that users with a unique set of characteristics can contribute substantially to the development of radical innovations. By interacting with these users, firms learned on the product innovation dimension, process dimension and technology dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the abstract of the research "How to Transfer Discontinuous Technology Into Radical Innovation: Some Evidence From Three Nanotech Cases," by Gaston Trauffler, Cornelius Herstatt and Hugo Tschirky. It investigated three case studies on how companies proceeded with discontinuous technology and radical innovation ideas in strategy formulation. The propositions from the studies were transformed into a visualised process model.