Firms,queues, and coffee breaks: a flow model of corporate activity with delays

The multidivisional firm is modeled as a system of interconnected nodes that exchange continuous flows of projects of varying urgency and queue waiting tasks. The main innovation over existing models is that the rate at which waiting projects are taken into processing depends positively on both the availability of resources and the size of the queue, capturing a salient quality of human organizations. A transfer pricing scheme for decentralizing the system is presented, and conditions are given to determine which nodes can be operated autonomously. It is shown that a node can be managed separately from the rest of the system when all of the projects flowing through it are equally urgent.     

Managing the front-end phase of process innovation under conditions of high uncertainty

Using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparison analysis, we identify and examine key conditions for success in early front-end phases of process innovation projects. We focus on the very initial stage of the innovation process—the front-end phase—and a selection of conditions for managing highly uncertain process innovation projects. In high-uncertainty projects coupled with high levels of equivocality, formalizing roles and processes should be consistently avoided; however, idea screening is beneficial. Moreover, in successful innovation projects formalized processes but not formalized roles are beneficial. The findings suggest that formalizing roles and processes, a success factor in prior studies of innovation, does not result in success of process innovation projects.     

The Open2-Innova8ion Tool—A software tool for rating organisational innovation performance

The Open2-Innova8ion Tool is an interactive, multi-media, web-based software tool for rating organisational innovation performance. This tool was designed for organisations to use as an adaptation of the European Commission's work on developing empirical measures of national innovation performance with the Summary Innovation Index (SII). It is designed for users with experience of employment in an organisation, from senior managers to all types of employees, with an interest in rating the innovation performance of their organisation. The Tool is quick and intuitive to use, and provides textual feedback, together with graphic ratings using Google meters. Feedback is based on user perceptions of organisational indicators of Innovation Enablers, Activities, and Outputs to provide an overall rating of innovation performance; this can be compared with a self-rating of innovativeness to allow some interpretation of the congruence between the user and their organisation. This prototype Tool was trialled and evaluated during a workshop on low carbon vehicle innovation, with participants (innovators) representing organisations from the surface transport industry as part of the U-STIR programme with EU Framework 7 funding. This publically available web-tool has applications to education, training, and research http://design.open.ac.uk/itool/.     

Exploring early purchasing involvement in discontinuous innovation: A dynamic capability perspective

This paper aims to address the gap concerning our knowledge about early purchasing's involvement (EPI) in new product development (NPD) projects in contexts characterized by discontinuous innovation. We adopt a dynamic capability perspective to explore how existing sourcing and supplier relationship management capabilities are adapted when purchasing agents become involved in discontinuous innovations projects. We use an embedded case-study approach to study four NPD projects in a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) company. The case studies are based on interviews with managers and staff from the research and development, purchasing, and marketing departments, as well as suppliers involved in the projects. Our empirical findings capture emerging purchasing practices including a “reversed” sourcing process, purchasing-marketing interaction, and the coordination of “a learning atmosphere” between the R&D department and suppliers through proactive innovation meetings and creativity workshops. We derive propositions to conduct further research into the role of the purchasing department in times of discontinuous innovation. We also provide a framework of sourcing and supplier-relationship practices that firms can use when embarking on discontinuous innovation.     

The role of openness in the fuzzy front-end of service innovation

The early stages of innovation involve high levels of uncertainty, leading to it being labelled as the “fuzzy-front end” (FFE). Although openness has been identified as pivotal to innovation performance in the open innovation literature, little effort has been put into exploring its role in the FFE. Specifically, this study examines ‘openness competence’ within the FFE–i.e., the ability of a FFE team to explore, gather and assimilate operant resources from external sources by means of external searches and inter-organisational partnerships. The aim is to investigate the impact of openness competence on front-end uncertainty reduction and service innovation success. Data were obtained from a survey of 122 IT-based service innovation projects implemented by IT service provider firms in Thailand. The results suggest that openness competence positively influences both the degree of uncertainty being reduced during the FFE and the overall success of service innovations. These findings offer several implications for research on open innovation and the FFE as well as encouragement to managers to apply a more open approach to the FFE of their service innovation projects.     

Editorial: Purchasing and innovation: Past,present and future of the field of research

This paper introduces the special topic forum (STF) on purchasing and innovation. Presenting the findings from a systematic literature review, we take stock of the current state of the field, delineating themes, theories and methods, and identifying key trends over time. Our study shows a take-off in research on purchasing and innovation during the last decade. This has predominantly focused on private sector manufacturing firms although a recent expansion into public sector research is evident. Large-scale surveys and case studies are still the dominant research methods where the unit of analysis is typically the ‘firm’ or ‘project’. The findings also show how in the past the field was driven by questions on how purchasing can facilitate different types of innovation projects, seeking to derive practical implications, and rarely making explicit statements regarding theories applied; this still characterises much of the research but we find an increasing focus on theory development. We also see a shift in the type of technological innovation being investigated: past studies tended to focus on the role of purchasing in new product development (NPD) projects, which reflected a relatively low degree of technological uncertainty, but we see a trend towards innovation projects facing technological uncertainty. Research shows how this requires new ways of sourcing innovations and therefore new ways for purchasing to facilitate innovation sourcing. On the basis of the review, we offer our guidance for future research avenues to 1) carry out more research on procurement of innovation in the public sector; 2) consider new theories and research methods, and 3) go beyond firm-level or dyadic analysis to research networks and ecosystems. We conclude by introducing the papers in the STF.     

河北省新能源汽车产业创新路径研究

新能源汽车是目前河北省重点发展的战略性新兴产业之一。河北省新能源汽车产业发展虽然取得了一定成绩,但存在诸多问题阻碍其产业化发展。本文在分析这些问题的基础上,立足于技术创新生命周期的视角,从新能源汽车技术获取路径、示范推广和产业化应用三个层面设计河北省新能源汽车产业发展的创新路径,为河北省新能源汽车产业发展政策的制定提供了决策参考。     

比亚迪新能源汽车开发中的创新方式研究

本案例研究以比亚迪股份有限公司为对象,针对它的新能源汽车市场开发从其较短的历史发展脉络中把握其内在的创新规律,总结其富有特色的创新方式,同时从新能源汽车开发的时代背景和创新平台、创新体系等整体角度,基于主要利益相关者的关系以及新能源汽车的市场可行性,论述比亚迪新能源汽车开放式创新的含义及其特征,在比较世界主要新能源汽车的创新模式和开发方式的基础上,结合开放式创新的有关理论,指出比亚迪汽车的发展前景和面临的挑战。比亚迪的开放式创新赢得了市场,其根本原因在于对自身核心能力的充分把握和对创新的日常化理解与实践,前者使其传统的电池技术优势得以强化和扩展,并因此掌握了未来汽车产业的发展方向,避免了传统汽车制造上的品牌短板,后者则适应了自己的国情和当今的世界竞争态势,使其创新效益最大化。     

Work context and employee behaviour as antecedents for intrapreneurship

Intrapreneurial employees and intrapreneurial projects are considered to be an important driver of innovation and strategic renewal within companies. While many studies addressed the top-down implementation of innovative projects, analyses of employee initiatives in promoting innovation within companies are scarce. This paper therefore takes a bottom-up approach and focuses on employee behaviour and how it can be stimulated towards intrapreneurship. We propose and test a two-step model where formal and informal work context affects employees’ intrapreneurial behaviour, which then provides the basis for bottom-up initiated intrapreneurial projects. Our empirical data consist of questionnaire responses of 176 employees in six Dutch companies. The results of structural equation model estimations indicate that formal organisational factors (horizontal participation, resource availability) affect employees’ intrapreneurial behaviour, but also highlight informal factors such as trust in the direct manager. We also find that innovativeness and personal initiative, but not risk taking, play a role for an effective translation of employees’ behaviour into intrapreneurial projects.     

The more funding the better? The moderating role of knowledge stock on the effects of different government-funded research projects on firm innovation in Chinese cultural and creative industries

Based on prior research, this study attempts to examine how effectively government-funded research projects (GFPs) can facilitate firm innovation in the cultural and creative industry (CCI), as well as the internal organizational contingency associated with the effects of GFPs. Specifically, this paper differentiates two types of GFP -- central-government-funded projects (CGFPs) and local-government-funded research projects (LGFPs) -- and explore how effectively the two types of GFP affect two types of firm innovation, i.e., radical innovation and incremental innovation. Based on an empirical study of the panel data of Chinese innovative firms related to the CCI, this paper finds that CGFPs have an inverted U-shaped effect on both firms’ radical innovation and incremental innovation in the CCI, while LGFPs have an inverted U-shaped effect on firms’ incremental innovation, but they have no significant effects on firms’ radical innovation. The effects of both CGFPs and LGFPs are moderated by firms’ knowledge stock.     

Making new things happen: an interpretation of observed innovation strategies

Innovation although variously defined is a process whereby individuals discover and implement the means for meeting environmental needs. An examination of various innovation projects reveals three overlapping approaches. Provisionally, these approaches have been described as 1. Mission Oriented or Contractual 2. Integrative or Negotiative 3. ParticipativeExamples of mission oriented approaches come from projects with a strong emphasis on technological factors, and are often characterised by well-defined technical targets or objectives. The NASA projects of the 1960s–1970s were large scale examples of the approach. Contract Research laboratories provide many other examples. Integrative approaches seek to reconcile potentially conflicting factors within the change process. Sociotechnical systems do this by integrating technical and social needs. Participative approaches draw heavily from the Action Research paradigm, and achieve innovative change as a process of social learning. Quality Circles, action learning (Revans), Joint Development Activities (John Morris) are well-known examples of the participative approach.The nature of these approaches is discussed and some practical and theoretical problems are looked at. How should advocates of participative approaches deal with requests for “proof” from mission oriented managers and political sponsors, for example? If these distinctions are useful ones, do they co-exist within innovation projects?     

技术创新多阶段风险分析

当前研究技术创新风险大多是从整体上对技术创新的风险因素和风险后果之间的关系进行分析。但是在技术创新进展过程中的不同阶段,风险因素的影响可能不会完全一致。因此,文章对技术创新过程中不同阶段的关键风险因素进行了识别,并对技术创新风险在不同阶段的分布规律进行了分析。     

Technology sourcing decisions in exploratory projects

Drawing on research on innovation as knowledge combination and firm’s organizational boundaries the paper contributes to open the black box of a firm’s sourcing strategy, investigating how the new knowledge a project aims to develop affects sourcing decisions. The fine-grained level of investigation adopted, namely the project level, not only enhances the understanding of the antecedents of sourcing decisions in any single project but provides primary explorative evidence on the concept of a company sourcing strategy as a portfolio of decisions across projects. Our test is implemented on a sample of 60 New Product Development projects carried out by a group of leading Italian firms, operating in the machine tool industry. We identify two knowledge dimensions that are the determinants of sourcing decisions at project level: novelty, new functions that satisfy emergent market needs, and breadth, heterogeneity of technological fields that encompass possible solutions to product problems. Our findings show that in firms choosing sourcing configurations on a project-by-project basis, exploratory projects, which search at the frontiers of either novel product features or heterogeneous technological domains, spur firms to exploit the potential advantages of external sources.     

A formal set of algorithms for project scheduling with critical path scheduling/material requirements planning

A hybrid model combining the critical path method (CPM) with material requirements planning (MRP) has been suggested (Aquilano) as a more robust method for scheduling projects and resources. The primary advantage of this technique is that resource acquisition lead times as well as inventory records are integrated into the process of computing the project schedule. This paper presents a set of formal CPM/MRP algorithms that may be used to compute the early and late start schedules as well as the critical sequence. A number of modifications have been incorporated into the CPM/MRP technique to improve the viability of CPM/MRP as a tool for application to actual project scheduling problems. A simple example project is used to demonstrate the CPM/MRP model.The CPM/MRP technique is designed to overcome a basic shortcoming of previously suggested project scheduling methodologies. CPM was initially designed to schedule projects subject to technological constraints only. Later, additional techniques were introduced to consider constraints upon various aspects of resource availability (Davis). None of the suggested techniques attempted to integrate resource acquisition lead time with the generation of requirements for resources. Obviously such a technique would require the integration of inventory records into the scheduling technique.The combination of CPM and MRP provides a possible vehicle for overcoming this drawback in CPM. Both CPM and MRP are linear models that generate schedules based upon precedence relationships. An integrated approach is useful since activities could be scheduled subject to information about the inventory position. An activity may be scheduled as soon as all resources are on hand. It is only delayed by those resources which must be acquired and activities which proceed it in the project network.CPM/MRP also shows promise as an aid to constrained resource scheduling since computations regarding resource availability are an integrated part of the technique. The effect of resource allocation decisions is immediately evident in the MRP-type time phased records.Results of the tests run on short projects of up to 300 activities and resources have shown that the program does work satisfactorily. Execution time for a 300 item network tested was approximately ten seconds on a CYBER 175.     

机电专业学生工程素质培养与科技创新研究

高等学校素质教育的核心是培养大学生的创新意识和创新能力。理工科专业尤其需要培养学生工程素质和科技创新能力。本文以如何培养学生工程素质方法为主线,如何在工程素质培养过程中提高大学生科技创新的能力为途径,构建机电类学生科技创新活动体系。通过实践经验,对如何处理好课堂教学与科技活动的关系进行了分析,通过一系列大赛提高了学生的工程素质,实际运用此方法达到了教学改革的目的,从教学方式和教学内容改革、科技创新活动体系构建和硬件支撑等方面提出了改革措施。     

Some immediate - but negative - effects of openness on product development performance

This paper charts an unnoticed theme in the current debate on open innovation, namely the foundational question whether increasing openness is beneficial? The paper approaches this question by conceptualising the degree of ‘openness’ and analyses the importance of increasing degrees of openness for NPD performance. Inter-organizational relationships in New Product Development lay the foundation for operationalising openness because these represent important sources of ideas and knowledge in purposive inbound open innovation. This exploratory paper finds that on immediate NPD performance measures the single firm strategy is performing better than the collaborative strategy. However, we also find that the use of internal and external relationships is highly correlated and that these interact with each other. Finally, with increasing degrees of openness the product development projects are slower than the norm in the industry, slower than what is usual for the firm’s projects and had higher cost than the norm in the industry and the firm’s usual projects. These results offer a more critical perspective on openness and NPD performance than the literature on the open innovation paradigm suggests. The paper discusses these results and offers some challenges for management and research of open innovation.     

两种机动车制动性能检测技术对比

机动车制动性能是车辆安全性能检测中的重点项目,其高低对机动车的行车安全及运输效率具有重要影响。本文介绍了机动车制动性能检测装置,重点对两种机动车制动性能检测技术进行对比分析,并阐述了这两种检测技术的可用性和特点,以供参考。     

Strengthening regional innovation through network-based innovation brokering

The primary objective of this paper is to demonstrate how regional innovation system theory may be translated into manageable micro-level methods with the potential for strengthening the productive dynamics of a regional innovation system. The paper meets this objective by presenting network-based innovation brokering (NBIB), a practical method designed using insights from regional innovation system theory and trust theory. Five cases from two Norwegian regional innovation networks show that in addition to knowledge development and diffusion, NBIB strengthened collaborative attitude and trust between members of the regional innovation system. Moreover, it served as an arena for entrepreneurial experimentation, resulting in projects combining two modes of innovation; the Science, Technology and Innovation mode and the Doing, Using and Interaction mode. The method, thus, may be viewed as a useful addition to the inventory of methods used to stimulate innovation in regional innovation systems (RISs). On a more general level, the paper represents a call to the community of innovation researchers and practitioners to give a higher priority to the question of how to better realize the pragmatic potential of RIS-theory.     

技术创新项目风险分析与综合评价

文章分析了企业技术创新项目的风险因素,在此基础上设置了风险评价指标体系,建立了模糊评判模型,对企业技术创新风险进行了科学评价,并能定量地衡量企业关于某个项目的技术创新风险大小,为企业技术创新决策和采取风险控制措施提供了依据。     

Innovation processes: Which process for which project?

The innovation process has traditionally been understood as a predefined sequence of phases: idea generation, selection, development, and launch/diffusion/sales. Drawing upon contingency theory, we argue that innovation process may follow a number of different paths. Our research focuses on a clear theoretical and managerial question, i.e., how does a firm organize and plan resource allocation for those innovation processes that do not easily fit into traditional models. This question, in turn, leads to our research question: Which configuration of innovation processes and resource allocation should be employed in a given situation, and what is the rationale behind the choice? Based on a large-scale study analyzing 132 innovation projects in 72 companies, we propose a taxonomy of eight different innovation processes with specific rationales that depend on a project׳s contingencies.