Bridging and bonding forms of social capital in a regional strategic network

Research on networks emphasizes the importance of bonds between actors. Social reciprocity strengthens network bonds, which is assumed to have positive effects on business relationships between firms. However, the importance of weak ties is also stressed in network research. An important policy issue is therefore if more attention should be devoted to the creation of bridges to other social groups and loosening bonds between network actors. The difficulty in doing so is described and analyzed in this article focusing on a regional strategic network, which is viewed in three network perspectives. Interview data were collected from all participating managers in a regional strategic network in 2004 and 2010. The findings shed light upon the paradox of using a regional strategic network to counteract over-embeddedness and freeing the involved actors from existing network lock-ins instead of further strengthening such social institutions.     

Managing in conflict: How actors distribute conflict in an industrial network

IMP researchers have examined conflict as a threat to established business relationships and commercial exchanges, drawing on theories and concepts developed in organization studies. We examine cases of conflict in relationships from the oil and gas industry's service sector, focusing on conflicts of interest and resources, and conflict as experienced by actors. Through a comparative case study design, we propose an explanation of how actors manage conflict and manage in conflict given that they tend to value and maintain relationships beyond episodes of exchange. We consider conflicts in relationships from a network perspective, showing that actors experienced these while adapting to changes in their business setting, modifying their roles in that network. By identifying conflict with the organizing forms of relationship and network, we show how actors formulate conflict through pursuing and combining a number of strategies, distributing the conflict across an enlarged network.     

How marketing capabilities and current performance drive strategic intentions in international markets

Drawing from two strategic views of the firm—the capability-based view and performance-feedback theory—this study examines the role of both marketing capabilities and current market performance as potential influencers of two key aspects of the intended future competitive strategy of firms operating in international markets: efficiency and marketing differentiation. Hypotheses are developed and tested in a survey of a sample of British exporting manufacturers. The findings are supportive of a more prominent role of marketing capabilities over recent market performance on future strategic intentions in export markets. Additional analyses of firms with an already established market position reveal a clear effect of informational capability on marketing differentiation and of product development capability and current market performance on efficiency intentions. We also find that target international market competitive intensity is a direct driver of efficiency-related but not differentiation-related strategic intentions.     

Applying multiple perspectives to the design of a commercialization process

Most commercialization models begin by taking an idea through some sort of stage‐gate product development process. There is much talk about building market thinking into this process, but this paper argues that much more is required. The research identified three perspectives required to be present at all stages of product development. The first is labelled ‘technical and operational’, the second ‘strategic’ and the third ‘commercial’. The paper argues that each perspective is required at every stage to drive the right activities that lead to successful commercialization. The science, idea and opportunity stage leads onto the technology and feasibility stage, which in turn leads onto the product and market readiness stage. The research applied the grounded theory methodology to categorize and represent data obtained from interviews and desk research. The resulting model was introduced to a New Zealand Crown Research Institute during a consulting assignment in 2004. Three external experts were selected based on their particular perspectives and experience in the area of product development. Each perspective was built into the commercialization process. Applying multiple perspectives has led to a more robust approach to product development and a greater awareness of how multiple tools work together to create a holistic product development process. Each perspective of the commercialization process can be broken down into detailed stages. The technical and operational perspective addresses areas such as opportunity creation, proof of concept and market readiness. The strategic perspective addresses areas such as strategic fit, strategic analysis/choice and pathways to market. Finally, the commercial perspective addresses areas such as opportunity assessment, feasibility study/business planning and launch.After being in place for 18 months, the challenges faced in implementation were discussed with the current commercialization manager and the model was adapted to another institute wishing to develop a design‐led commercialization process. A key finding of the research was the common understanding of language and meaning across three distinct disciplines and the involvement of each discipline in the decision‐making process. All parties accepted the value of each other's contribution once the different perspectives were understood and accepted. The paper provides useful insights for those involved in the design of commercialization processes and establishes a multi‐dimensional framework that assists in facilitating the different perspectives required for successful commercialization.     

Uncertain prospects for ISDN : A Spanish view

Operators of telecommunications networks, network systems manufacturers and policy markers have placed their hopes on ISDN for a stable and brilliant telecommunications future. However, non-voice service providers, customer premises equipment manufacturers and large users fear that the envisaged network approach will not serve their future requirements. Telecommunications networks will have a strategic importance in national economic development. It is important not to constrain that development by tying them to an inappropriate and inflexible network structure. In this article the uncertainties of the ISDN network are reviewed, questions are raised and the evolution of the network is examined, from the perspective of the actors involved in the sector: large users, equipment manufacturers, policy makers and service providers.     

Software innovativeness: outcomes on project performance, knowledge enhancement, and external linkages

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between product innovativeness and groups of outcomes flowing from the computer software product development process and the associated knowledge acquisition process. Data from interviews of managers in 94 software projects are analysed, and three groups of outcomes are measured: project performance, knowledge enhancement, and the strengthening of linkages to external actors/sources. The high innovative products show higher project performance for all measures of project performance compared with low innovative products. Similar results were found for all measures of personnel knowledge enhancement outcomes. Changes in the importance of linkages to nine different external sources of knowledge used by the firms during the knowledge acquisition process, also show some positive outcomes with respect to rising innovativeness levels. Strengthening of external linkages is found for 66% of the investigated linkages between one or two innovativeness levels. Of these, the linkages to hardware manufacturers, co-operation partners, and universities and other research institutions show strengthening when high innovativeness products are compared with low-level products. As the project performance and knowledge enhancement outcomes are due, in part, to knowledge gained within linkages to external actors/sources, managers could consider whether giving special attention to managing these linkages would be a winning innovation strategy for their particular firm.     

The role of power and trust in spreading sustainability initiatives across supply networks: A case study in the bio-chemical industry

This paper investigates how sustainability spreads across supply networks. Adopting an Industrial Marketing & Purchasing (IMP) Interaction Approach (Håkansson, 1982), we seek to understand sustainability spread as a change process that affects different supply network actors and the impact of power and trust on the spreading process. The paper reports on an in-depth case study of the development of a sustainability initiative in the bio-chemical industry, based on data collection with multiple supply network actors across several tiers, providing unique and rich insights into understanding sustainability spread in a supply network and the perceptions of multiple supply network actors on the role of power and trust on the spreading process. Data collection comprised 20 semi-structured interviews spanning eight supply network actors, supported by secondary data such as archival records. The case study indicates that both coercive and non-coercive power as well as trust, significantly impact the actors' engagement in sustainability initiatives and its wider spread in supply networks. The paper contributes to the literature on sustainable supply chain management and IMP research on sustainability spread and, in particular, provides insights on the impact of power and trust on the process of sustainability spread across dyadic relationships into the wider supply network.     

Measuring product development performance in manufacturing organisations

Effectively managing and measuring the product development process is widely seen as a means of ensuring business survival through reduced time to market, increased quality and reduced costs. Research carried out at the University of Nottingham over the last three years has led to the development of the performance measurement for product development (PMPD) methodology to guide managers in the use of performance measures to improve decision-making during the product development process. This paper focuses on the results from two international surveys of academics and industrialists that indicate current practice and future intentions in this area. Follow up cases and a longitudinal case study are also described.     

Service network value co-creation: Defining the roles of the generic actor

The traditional goods dominant logic lexicon assumes pre-specified and static roles of market participants. Fixed roles such as ‘supplier’ and ‘customer’ imply that value creation occurs between two parties (the dyad) and occurs in a specified direction (i.e., from a supplier to a customer). In contrast, service dominant logic suggests that markets are comprised of generic actors engaged in bilateral actor-to-actor exchanges. However, the generic actor concept is not well developed in existing literature. We contribute to the literature by providing a typology of generic actor roles and identifying multiple types of value that may be co-created in a network. To empirically ground the concepts and generate propositions, we follow the development and deployment of a self-service technology, the Green Fingerprint, in the Swedish commercial real estate industry. Within a service network we find that generic actors assume several roles simultaneously, and may perceive multiple forms of co-created value. Theoretically, this paper offers a basis for further study of the generic actor and types of value, as well as an understanding of how network value co-creation emerges and evolves. Managerially, it offers insights into the existing value and co-creation potential of all actors, even those who are currently passive or reject a value proposition.     

Communication and co-operation in product development: a case study of a European car producer

Continuous innovations in product and process technology, coupled with time-to-market pressure, have made rapid product development a key strategic objective of manufacturing firms. Consequently, many firms have started to define the ways in which products are designed, developed and produced, so as to reduce the time from conception to manufacture. The strategies employed to achieve this goal vary, and include the integration of functions through selective use of concurrent engineering, the formation of strategic project teams, and technological connections by CAD/CAM systems. The research reported in this paper, co-ordinated by the WZB Institute of Berlin, is aimed examining organizational, technological and human resources practices that enhance quality in R&D by improving communication and co-operation C&C) between the actors. Although the research was carried out in four countries(Germany, Italy, Japan and the USA) and in three sectors (car, personal computer and machine tools) this paper analyses the evidence provided by a set of face to face interviews of the managers, engineers and designers of a European car producer.     

Knowledge sharing and strategic fit in integrated product development proejcts: An empirical study

While product strategy has been approached from a variety of perspectives, the role of strategic fit as a critical linkage of knowledge sharing practices and new product development outcomes have not been adequately explored. This paper discusses how strategic fit is instrumental for cross-functional teams to integrate product development outcomes. This paper identifies critical knowledge sharing components that enhances the extent of strategic fit that in turn improves the success of product development efforts. Strategic fit or alignment requires knowledge sharing practices of the product development team. Teams with a shared knowledge base are more capable of thinking strategically, adapting their actions to their project environment and accordingly engaging in innovative problem-solving while ultimately achieving project goals of time, cost and value. This paper presents and tests a research model using a sample of 285 product development projects of firms from USA, Canada and Spain. The results suggest that strategic fit is associated with greater knowledge sharing and enhance product development outcomes in both small and large firms as well as diverse regions (i.e., USA, Canada and Spain).     

The Moderating Roles of Prior Experience and Behavioral Importance in the Predictive Validity of New Product Concept Testing

Concept testing has long been recognized as an important new product development (NPD) activity. As one of the widely used concept testing techniques, the method of intentions surveys relies on the purchase intentions of the potential buyers of new products and helps firms assess the viabilities of their new products before making major financial and nonfinancial commitments to their development. Despite the importance of intentions‐based new product concept testing and its widespread use by firms, the correspondence between initial behavioral intentions and subsequent purchase behaviors has been relatively low and heterogeneous, making it very difficult for firms to draw any useful conclusions from intentions surveys. Focusing on the predictive validity of intentions‐based new product concept testing and addressing several calls for future research to identify specific conditions making it more effective, this paper tests the moderating roles of prior experience and behavioral importance in the predictive validity of intentions‐based new product concept testing. It also tests whether people who state a positive intention and people who state a negative intention are equally accurate in their intentions. Finally, it tests the relative moderating roles of prior experience and behavioral importance in the intentions–behavior relationship. The results based on two longitudinal surveys first suggested that people's prior experience moderates the relationship between behavioral intentions and actual behaviors in a way that the relationship is stronger when prior experience is high as opposed to when it is low. Second, they showed that the level of importance that people attach to a behavior also moderates the relationship between behavioral intentions and actual behaviors such that the relationship is stronger when behavioral importance is high as opposed to when it is low. Third, they indicated that the behavioral intentions of people who state that they will not perform a behavior are more accurate than are those of people who state that they will perform it. Finally, the results suggested that the impact of behavioral importance is greater than that of prior experience. This study offers several implications. Most notably, the results can help firms better understand different factors affecting the predictive validity of intentions‐based new product concept testing and hence make more accurate new product decisions.     

The Role of Product Originality,Usefulness and Motivated Consumer Innovativeness in New Product Adoption Intentions

Prior research has posited that product attributes are primary drivers of success that a firm must consider to develop a competitive advantage. Two product attributes, originality and usefulness, have been identified in the literature as significant dimensions of new product success. Customer demands differ, and more purchase intentions toward a new product depend on how consumers connect the product attributes to their own individual characteristics. Studying motivated consumer innovativeness as a personality trait may improve our understanding of the motivations for adopting innovations; however, questions remain regarding whether the effects of originality and usefulness on consumers' intentions to adopt are different when levels of these attributes are matching or dissimilar and what the relationship is between these effects and motivated consumer innovativeness. This study seeks to empirically investigate these effects and their relations by collecting data from 560 potential consumers in China. This paper uses hierarchical regression analysis to test hypotheses in four product domains as representative of higher or lower levels of usefulness and originality. The research shows that new product originality affects consumers' intentions to adopt new products only if it matches the level of new product usefulness. The results also reveal that motivated consumer innovativeness has a positive moderating role on the relationship between new product originality and consumers' new product adoption intentions when both attributes are at a lower level. The theoretical and practical implications for new product development and marketing communications are discussed.     

Managing Conflict in Software Development Teams: A Multilevel Analysis

For a new product development (NPD) organization, a little conflict can be a good thing. Healthy disagreements can push project team members or different functional groups in an organization to pursue more in-depth, insightful analysis. This type of creative tension can help to engender an environment that encourages innovation and thus keeps NPD efforts free from the business-as-usual doldrums. However, management must ensure that conflict remains on a healthy level. David H. Gobeli, Harold F. Koenig, and Iris Bechinger note that conflict must be managed not only to increase the satisfaction of project team members, but also to achieve strategic project success. To provide better understanding of the important issues in conflict management, they examine the effects of three conflict factors on software development project success: context, conflict intensity, and conflict management style. Using survey responses from 117 software professionals and managers, they develop a multi-level framework of success versus conflict for team-based, software development projects. Within this framework, they examine context, conflict intensity, and conflict management approaches at the team and organization levels. For the participants in this study, unresolved conflict has a strong, negative effect on overall software product success and customer satisfaction. Project team member satisfaction decreases substantially with higher intensity conflict at the organization level, and even more strongly at the project level. For the respondents to this study, the combined effects of conflict intensity and conflict management style on project success are significant, but they are not as great as the combined effects of such context variables as company goals, group dynamics, and management support. Two conflict management styles—confronting and give and take—have beneficial effects on success at the organization level for the firms in this study. Smoothing, withdrawal, and forcing all have negative effects, although only forcing has a statistically significant negative effect. In general terms, the results suggest that management should guard against frequent use of the dysfunctional management styles—withdrawal, smoothing, and forcing. The results suggest that emphasis on confrontation—that is, true problem solving—is essential at the project level, even if a give-and-take style is better tolerated at the organization level.     

A framework for understanding strategic network performance: Exploring efficiency and effectiveness at the network level

There are currently limits in our understanding of strategic network performance due to the complexity of the underlying processes involved. Improving our understanding of performance is critical if we are to improve network functioning, an important managerial problem. This paper addresses a research gap in strategic network performance by investigating: efficiency and effectiveness at the network level of analysis. A multiple case study methodology is used to investigate two Australian agri-business strategic networks. The cases suggest that processes relating to building actor webs and collective sensemaking are crucial for improving strategic network effectiveness, whereas network efficiency is influenced by developing activity patterns and utilizing resource constellations. The cases also highlight potential trade-offs between network effectiveness and efficiency in relation to performance at the network level. The paper contributes an empirically informed theoretical framework for understanding how network level processes influence network performance.     

The strategic dilemmas of innovative enterprises: proposals for high‐technology sectors

High levels of research and development (R&D) expenditure, pressure for innovation and the creation of new knowledge are features that distinguish high‐technology (high‐tech) enterprises from other, less technologically advanced, firms. Confronted with multiple contemporary approaches to strategy and turbulence in their environment, these enterprises make strategic choices continuously and dynamically. This paper proposes a model and matrix for the classification of high‐tech enterprises’ development strategies (with regard to their specific features), which are then verified. Qualitative research was conducted in 61 medium and large high‐tech companies based in Poland that operate either in Poland or in the global marketplace. The results show that high‐tech firms have the fundamental goal of developing R&D activity as a resource (and its redundancy) rather than product/market goals. The studied firms strive above all for leadership in innovation, creating new technologies based on their own R&D resources, while also using outside sources and mostly applying the personalisation approach in knowledge management. However, they choose different paths for product and market development, depending on the opportunities presented by the environment, and the firm's ability to identify and take advantage of these.     

Interpartner legitimacy in regional strategic networks

Our aim is to add to the knowledge on a network level, focusing on if, and how, interpartner legitimacy affects the success or failure of network formation and development processes. Existing network theories and research tend to focus on resource exchange rather than on how actors perceive each other in terms of being legitimate or not. The purpose of the article is to analyze the interpartner legitimacy's influence on the formation and development processes of regional strategic networks (RSNs) from a network level. Two Swedish cases are discussed in terms of pragmatic, moral and cognitive interpartner legitimacy. The cases and the following discussion illuminate that interpartner legitimacy is important to incorporate into the analytical model if we wish to understand the processes of negotiations on the rules and norms which set the possibilities for survival of multi-actor interactions.     

Managing strategic system-building networks in emerging business fields: A case study of the Dutch smart grid sector

Companies that wish to launch innovative sustainability technologies can collaborate in strategic networks of actors from industry, government and research institutes to pro-actively build a business ecosystem around their new technology. This is called collective system building. In this paper, we examine how to effectively manage networks for collective system building. Based on a review of the literature, we identify the key factors of effective network management and we propose a conceptual framework for network management at the network level. Subsequently, we conduct a multiple-case study in the Dutch smart grid sector to examine how these key factors are implemented by system-building networks. We find differences with the existing network management literature regarding network composition, network management structure, governance modes, decision-making processes, project management, the free-rider problem and trust-building mechanisms. Our study contributes to a better understanding of effective management of system-building networks, which in turn can lead to greater success in establishing new business fields. We contribute to the literature on strategic business networks, specifically on emerging business networks building new business fields.     

Strategic orientations and new product commercialization: mediator,moderator, and interplay

Why are some firms more successful at commercializing new products than others in emerging economies? It is possible that the strategic orientations, which firms adopt as a type of business strategy, lead at least partially to the superior performance of the new products they introduce to the market. Strategic orientations facilitate a match between firm strategy and resource endowment, on the one hand, and the adaptation to market conditions, on the other. In this paper, we empirically test whether four major types of strategic orientations (market orientation, technology orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, and networking orientation) are simultaneously related to new product commercialization performance using data collected from China. We find that strategic orientations are positively related to three aspects of new product commercialization, namely new product advantage, new product newness, and number of new products introduced to the market. Interestingly, we find that pairs of strategic orientations support each other in exerting their impacts on new product commercialization performance. In addition, we find that organizational learning mediates the effects of strategic orientations on new product commercialization and that environmental dynamism moderates the effect of strategic orientations on new product commercialization. We obtain the valuable insight that a firm's successful commercialization of new products hinges upon the development of critical yet complementary sets of strategic orientations, especially in a dynamic business environment.     

Identifying and prioritizing critical success factors for conflict management in collaborative new product development

Conflict management is crucial to the success of client-supplier collaborative new product development (NPD). This paper examines the critical success factors of conflict management in collaborative NPD. Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the importance of 4 categories of success factors, namely relationship management, conflict handling system, new product development process management and communication, totally 13 factors, are prioritized. The results show that communication management, trust and commitment to the collaboration are the most important factors. Based on the factors identified, a hierarchy model of conflict management is proposed, with which clients and suppliers can formulate action plans for better conflict management.