Beating the odds in the innovation arena: The role of market and technology signals classification and noise

Innovation is a risky business. Notwithstanding the attention in research on the determinants of innovation success, the estimates of the extremely high failure rates (ranging from 40% to 90%) have not come down. As a result, new approaches have to be found to address the issues that prevent organizations from reaching innovation success over a longer period of time. In this study, Signal Detection Theory (SDT) is introduced to show that it may be less important to improve innovation practices in companies, than it is to change the nature of the projects that enter the corporate innovation funnel. In our empirical study of 44 innovation projects in the pharmaceutical and electronics industry, we show that pursuing more noisy signals (uncertain technological and market opportunities) is currently beneficial for innovation success. In general, companies allocate too few resources to noisy innovation opportunities. Interestingly, we find a positive, and not an inverted U-shaped, relationship between noise/signal ratios and innovation success. This indicates that there are almost no companies that take too much risk in the current competitive environment and that many can gain from increasing their noise tolerance. The implications from this study are quite counter-intuitive in a sense that ‘risk’ is not the cause of the innovation problems, but may be a solution.     

Capabilities, innovation and competitive advantage

This special issue was aimed at advancing the literature examining the role of capabilities in innovation-based competitive strategy. Whilst the innovation literature has over the years moved away from its ‘product innovation’ pre-occupation to capture the role of other forms of innovation in value creation, the capability view has progressed from its ‘rigid’ or ‘static’ view to a ‘dynamic’ view in an effort to capture market dynamism. Despite the recent theoretical advancements the dynamic capability view still lacks a strong empirical base. Contributors to the capability literature over the recent years have adopted multiple research methods to capture capabilities that include cross-sectional designs, case studies and longitudinal studies. Within this backdrop, the articles that were selected for this special issue covers both conceptual and empirical approaches to examine the relationship between capabilities and technical and non-technical innovations and performance outcomes. This essay provides a future research agenda to advance this promising research field. It highlights the need for clearer conceptualizations and development of measures of dynamic capabilities, environmental conditions that underpin the development of dynamic capabilities within the firm and research into the much debated relationship between dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage and organizational performance.     

Incremental and Radical Innovation in Coopetition—The Role of Absorptive Capacity and Appropriability

This study examines why some firms are better able than others to reap benefits from collaborating with their competitors in innovation. Whereas on the general level, collaborative innovation has been studied widely, and firm‐specific success factors in collaboration between competitors (i.e., coopetition) have not been exhaustively addressed. Earlier literature describes coopetition as a risky but potentially rewarding relationship in which sharing, learning, and protection of knowledge are recognized as the key issues determining the possible benefits and hazards. This study provides evidence of factors related to this, suggesting that the firm's ability to acquire knowledge from external sources (potential absorptive capacity) and to protect its innovations and core knowledge against imitation (appropriability regime) are relevant in increasing the innovation outcomes of collaborating with its competitors. This study also distinguishes between incremental and radical innovations as an outcome of coopetition, and provides differing implications for the two innovation types. The empirical evidence for the study was gathered from a cross‐industry survey conducted on Finnish markets. The data are analyzed with multivariate multiple regression analysis. The results of the analysis suggest that (1) potential absorptive capacity and appropriability regime of the firm both have a positive effect in the pursuit of incremental innovations in coopetition, and (2) in the case of radical innovations, appropriability regime has a positive effect, while the effect of absorptive capacity is not statistically significant. However, the results also indicate that there is a moderating relationship between these variables, in that the potential absorptive capacity is positively associated with creation of radical innovations within high levels of appropriability regime. These results yield important theoretical and managerial implications. As a whole, the results presented in this study provide new evidence on which types of firms can reap success in the challenging task of collaborative innovation with rivals. In the case of incremental innovation, a firm‐level emphasis on knowledge sharing and learning will positively affect the results of coopetition, as will an emphasis on knowledge protection. Thus, when incremental developments are pursued in coopetition, firms should not only seek to exchange knowledge to create value but also remember to secure the firm‐specific core knowledge within the firm's borders to stay competitive. On the other hand, when the firm is pursuing radical innovation with its rivals, the heaviest emphasis should be on protecting its existing core knowledge and also emerging novel innovations and market opportunities. Capabilities in knowledge acquisition are also beneficial in these cases, but the full benefits of knowledge exchange realize only when the firm's knowledge protection mechanisms are sufficiently strong, allowing for safe knowledge exchange between rivals.     

Where to search for process innovations? The mediating role of absorptive capacity and its impact on process innovation

While the potential of open innovation to develop product-related improvements through the use of external knowledge sources is undeniable, our understanding of how firms become process innovators remains limited. Distinguishing between product and process innovation is important, as insights gleaned from investigating product innovation may not relate directly to the study of process innovation. This study provides new insight into open innovation and absorptive capacity by proposing the mediating role of absorptive capacity – potential and realized – on the relationship between knowledge search from external sources and process-related innovation activities. We test our model using a sample of 171 auto component suppliers in Iran, and find evidence that the learning effects of external scanning increase when a firm learns how to better manage external searches in terms of external absorptive capacity routines. Our results indicate that, while knowledge search from value chain partners is related to process innovation, knowledge search from universities and other research organizations is not, and that potential absorptive capacity mediates the relationship between external knowledge search and process innovation. These findings shed further light on the relationship between a firm’s openness and its process innovation.     

企业社会资本与技术创新：基于吸收能力的实证研究

本文针对我国企业社会资本影响技术创新的机制问题展开分析,从企业社会资本的特征维度出发,引入吸收能力的视角,提出了基于吸收能力的企业社会资本与技术创新绩效的概念模型。在问卷调查的基础上,通过多元线性回归分析和结构方程模型分析,对我国企业社会资本如何影响技术创新的问题进行了实证研究。研究结果表明,在不考虑吸收能力作用的情况下,企业社会资本的结构、关系和认知等三个维度的水平对于我国企业技术创新绩效的提升均具有积极显著的作用;企业社会资本三个特征维度的水平通过提高吸收能力进而正向影响技术创新绩效;其中,认知维度在结构维度和关系维度发挥效应中承担中介变量的作用。为提高企业技术创新绩效,建议以知识的获取和利用为导向,注重企业社会资本三个维度水平的均衡提高。     

The fit between market learning and organizational capabilities for management innovation

This paper examines how market learning (both explorative and exploitative) interacts with organizational capabilities (technological capabilities and marketing capabilities) to affect management innovation. Drawing upon data from a sample of 272 firms each of which contributed two key informants to the study (resulting in a total of 544 respondents), we find that both exploratory and exploitative market learning have a positive effect on management innovation. The effects of exploratory and exploitative market learning on management innovation are contingent on technological and marketing capabilities. Specifically, technological capabilities enhance the positive effect of exploratory market learning and weaken the positive effect of exploitative market learning on management innovation. Marketing capabilities enhance the positive effect of exploitative market learning and weaken the positive effect of exploratory market learning on management innovation. This study contributes to the literature by integrating organizational learning theory with the absorptive capacity perspective to explain management innovation.     

Soaking It Up: Absorptive Capacity in Interorganizational New Product Development Teams

Prior research has acknowledged the importance of an organization's absorptive capacity—the ability to acquire new knowledge and information, assimilate, transform, and exploit it—for innovation purposes. Because innovations are usually developed by project teams, this suggests that absorptive capacity, as a construct, may also be usefully applied at the team level. Consequently, this study developed a measure for team‐level absorptive capacity, investigated the potential influencing factors, and examined its relationship to team effectiveness in terms of product innovativeness in an interorganizational context. Specifically, building on the theory of homophily and information and decision‐making theories, three factors (social‐category similarity, work‐style similarity, and knowledge complementarity between the recipient and the partner organization teams) were identified as likely antecedents of team absorptive capacity. The hypotheses were tested on data from 98 interorganizational new product development teams and included responses from team members, team leaders, and team‐external managers. With regard to the antecedents of team absorptive capacity in interorganizational settings, the results showed a significant positive association with partners' work‐style similarity and an inverted U‐shaped relationship with partners' knowledge complementarity. Social‐category similarity was not significantly associated with team absorptive capacity. We also examined whether team absorptive capacity was related to interorganizational team effectiveness and found a significant positive relationship between team absorptive capacity and product innovativeness. The study demonstrates that absorptive is indeed related to team effectiveness outcomes in an interorganizational context, which underlines the importance of team‐level absorptive capacity for product innovation management and suggests paying more attention to the lower levels of absorptive capacity.     

Determinants of absorptive capacity: contrasting manufacturing vs services enterprises

The purpose of this study is to explore the determinants and the consequent of absorptive capacity from the resource‐capability‐performance framework in the Taiwanese manufacturing and service industries. Structural equation modeling is applied to verify the conceptual model. In both of the Taiwanese manufacturing industry and the Taiwanese service industry, this study verifies that resource commitment and resource flexibility are two antecedents of absorptive capacity, and that new product development performance or service innovation performance is its consequent. Besides, the empirical results show that absorptive capacity plays a partial mediator in the manufacturing industry but a full mediator in the service industry. If companies would like to raise their new product development performance or service innovation performance, they have to enhance their resource commitment, resource flexibility, and absorptive capacity. Moreover, this study finds that the resource commitment of small and medium enterprises is significantly less than that of large enterprises in Taiwanese manufacturing industry. This study also finds that resource flexibility of established companies is significantly higher than that of younger companies in Taiwan.     

Developing network insight

A challenge facing organizations is that of amalgamating possibilities which do not exist in a transparent and concentrated form, but rather as dispersed individual cognitive ‘pictures’ perceived by managers embedded in business networks. Based on our research of business networks involving manufacturers of consumer goods, pharmaceutical companies, producers of semiconductors and telecommunication and utility service providers, we propose the concept of network insight, which does not consist merely of extant pictures held by individual managers, but is grounded in the practice of inter-firm exchange. We argue that developing network insight is a managerial challenge encompassing the amalgamation of dispersed pieces of atomized network pictures through heedful, multilateral interactions. Such a managerial activity transcends the task-specific knowledge base of managerial cognition and leads to objectified organizational learning within a business network. Managers that develop insight in business networks are able to mobilize other actors and create a competitive advantage for their organization that is crucial for innovation and growth.     

How does the partner type in R&D alliances impact technological innovation performance? A study on the Korean biotechnology industry

The number of strategic alliances for R&D activities in the biotechnology industry is sharply increasing. Some studies show that each alliance partner type has different alliance motives, resources and capabilities, organizational structures and cultures, and degrees of competition with partners, which can lead to different performances of strategic alliances. In this regard, this study conducts an empirical analysis of the different impact of each type of alliance partner on technological innovation performance and finds the moderating effect of absorptive capacity and potential competition by categorizing strategic alliances for R&D activities in the biotechnology industry into three types: vertical-downstream alliances, vertical-upstream alliances, and horizontal alliances. This study analyzed 206 Korean biotechnology firms and their strategic alliances for a total of 292 R&D activities. The results of the analysis showed that vertical alliances have a positive impact on technological innovation performance, while horizontal alliances have an inverted U-shaped relationship with technological innovation performance caused by the effect of competition. Additionally, it was confirmed that the R&D intensity of biotechnology firms has a moderating effect of increasing the impact of vertical-upstream alliances on technological innovation performance.     

Impact of funding sources on innovation: evidence from Brazilian software companies

This paper aims to investigate the impacts of different sources of innovation funding on company performances in the context of an emerging economy. Brazilian software companies are selected as a case for this investigation. Data – related to the types of funding support received and eight types of company performances measured in binary scales – was collected through an online survey from 188 companies located across Brazil. A multivariate probit model was estimated to assess the impacts of different funding schemes on company performances – controlling for other confounding effects. The findings confirmed the critical importance of public innovation funding, and revealed that companies that: (1) Used public funds were more likely to become nationally competitive; (2) Used loans from commercial banks were less likely to become nationally and internationally competitive; (3) Reinvested revenues were more likely to gain market share, and help in increasing the number of employees; (4) Not aware of public funding schemes were less likely to invest on research, development, and innovation. The overall findings suggest the positive impacts of innovation funds on company performance. They can serve as a policy guide to develop targeted performance strategy to determine which funding scheme would be effective to foster what outcomes.     

A resource-advantage perspective of product-market strategy performance & strategic capital in high technology firms

Contrary to common misconceptions, firms tend generally to remain constant in their strategic approach to markets and rarely deviate from their prevailing strategic archetype. Consequently, the effectiveness of a firm's product-market strategy is as important as its persistence in achieving overall strategic performance. Adopting a resource-advantage perspective, we examine the extent to which resource bundles differ among firms within a product-market strategy performance typology. Analyzing data generated from high-technology industrial manufacturers, we find that successful strategists are endowed with significantly greater levels of resources-that include ‘strategy championing’, ‘strategy commitment’, ‘implementation support’, ‘implementation effectiveness’, ‘learning’, and ‘memory’-in contrast with unsuccessful strategists, hopeful strategists, and fortunate strategists. Further, important inter-group differences are identified and discussed, along with the implications of this study for researchers and marketing managers.     

Technological capability,strategic flexibility,and product innovation

This paper examines the role of technological capability in product innovation. Building on the absorptive capacity perspective and organizational inertia theory, the authors propose that technological capability has curvilinear and differential effects on exploitative and explorative innovations. The findings support the proposition that though technological capability fosters exploitation at an accelerating rate, it has an inverted U‐shaped relationship with exploration. That is, a high level of technological capability impedes explorative innovation. Strategic flexibility strengthens the positive effects of technological capability on exploration, such that when strategic flexibility is high, greater technological capability is associated with more explorative innovation. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is there a virtuous circle relationship between innovation activities and exports? A comparison of food and agricultural firms

This study examines the existence of an interrelationship between innovation decisions and exports for food and agricultural firms as such a relationship could be the source of competitive advantages. Thus, taking as a theoretical basis the focus provided by the Resource-Based-View, the innovation and export decisions taken from 2006 to 2011 by 165 agricultural firms and 783 food companies operating in Spain (Europe) are examined here. The results of the bivariate probit and matching models used indicate a bi-directional nature of these decisions in the case of food companies and a positive though not bidirectional one in the case of the agricultural firms. Furthermore, a certain persistence is seen in the use of these decisions in both types of firms. For food companies, capital intensity and size are also determinants of innovation and exports. From the viewpoint of the decisions taken by individual firms, the bidirectional relationship could involve significant pressure in terms of the larger volume of both technological and human resources required. Agricultural and food policy decisions should incentivize these decisions given that in order to operate successfully in the global market it is necessary to acquire these competitive advantages, which also favor the growth of the agriculture and food trades.     

Entrepreneurial orientation‐as‐experimentation and firm performance: The enabling role of absorptive capacity

According to the perspective of entrepreneurial orientation‐as‐experimentation, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) increases variability in innovation outcomes. Although increased variability in the innovation portfolio could increase performance, it could also lead to a decline in performance. We propose that absorptive capacity plays a role in both increasing and managing variations in innovation outcomes. Potential absorptive capacity enhances the effects of EO on variability in innovation outcomes, whereas realized absorptive capacity helps transform and exploit variability in innovation outcomes to enhance firm performance. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do Individual Employees' Learning Goal Orientation and Civic Virtue Matter? A Micro‐Foundations Perspective on Firm Absorptive Capacity

Research summary : In this study, we build on the micro‐foundations perspective and investigate how individual characteristics contribute to the development of firm absorptive capacity. In particular, we assess how individual learning goal orientation affects firm potential and realized absorptive capacity. Furthermore, we study how individuals' civic virtue acts as a micro‐level social integration mechanism that moderates the effect from firm realized absorptive capacity to potential absorptive capacity. Using the multilevel structural equation modeling technique and data from 871 core‐knowledge employees nested in 139 high‐technology firms, we find support to our major hypotheses. Together, this study finds support for the micro‐foundations' perspective and generates novel insights on how individual‐level factors could be linked with firm‐level heterogeneity in absorptive capacity. Managerial summary : We study how employees' characteristics contribute to a firm's absorptive capacity, that is, the ability of a firm to identify, assimilate, and exploit knowledge from the environment. Because firms have increasingly tapped into external resources to foster innovation over the past two decades, absorptive capacity is crucial to firm learning and success. Using data from 871 core‐knowledge employees in 139 high‐technology firms, we find that individual employees' learning goal orientation, the tendency to seek improvements in employees' competence and to understand or master new things advances the development of a firm's potential and realized absorptive capacity. More important, individual employees' civic virtue, the discretionary involvement in company issues, serves as a social integration mechanism that reduces the gap between firm potential and realized absorptive capacity. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How international SME's vicarious learning may improve their performance? The role of absorptive capacity,strength of ties with local SMEs,and their prior success experiences

This study investigates whether inter-firm relationships can raise innovation and overall performance during SME internationalization, focusing on how SMEs learn from firms in transnational markets and the nature of such relationships. It contributes to research by proposing the role of vicarious learning from networked firms in the host country to improve their absorptive capacity (ACAP), innovation, and overall performance. In particular, this study proposes the moderating roles of the strength of ties with and prior success experience of SMEs in the host country market for enhancing international SMEs' vicarious learning to improve their ACAP, innovation, and overall performance. Structural equation modeling was applied to a sample of 163 valid responses received from international SMEs operating in various industrial sectors in Saudi Arabia. The obtained results support the significantly positive role of international SMEs' vicarious learning from local firms in developing their ACAP and enhancing their innovation and overall performance. However, international SMEs must have strong ties with local firms and learn from such firms' prior success experiences to derive these benefits fully.     

Explaining the entrepreneurial orientation–performance relationship in emerging economies: The intermediate roles of absorptive capacity and improvisation

Research has established the relevance of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) to firm performance but skepticism remains because of the ambiguity surrounding how EO might improve firm performance. We examine the key concepts of absorptive capacity and improvisation as two alternative learning modes serving as intermediate steps between EO and firm performance. Locating our study within manufacturing SMEs in Malaysia, we find that absorptive capacity enhances the EO–performance relationship, both as a moderator and a mediator. In contrast to expectations, however, improvisation showed no such effects but conferred its own separate benefits instead. We further discuss the different effects of these learning modes on high performance and low performance groups.     

Agricultural technology adoption and poverty reduction: A propensity-score matching analysis for rural Bangladesh

This study aims at shedding some light on the potential impact of agricultural technology adoption on poverty alleviation strategies. It does so through an empirical investigation of the relationship between technological change, of the Green Revolution type, and wellbeing of smallholder farm households in two rural Bangladeshi regions. As technology adoption is not randomly assigned but there is ‘self-selection into treatment’, the paper tackles a methodological issue in assessing the ‘causal’ effect of technology on farm-household wellbeing through the non-parametric ‘p-score matching analysis’. It pursues a targeted evaluation of whether adopting a modern seed technology causes resource-poor farmers to improve their income and decrease the propensity to fall below the poverty line. It finds a robust and positive effect of agricultural technology adoption on farm household wellbeing suggesting that there is a large scope for enhancing the role of agricultural technology in ‘directly’ contributing to poverty alleviation.     

Technological Performance and Alliances Over the Industry Life Cycle: Evidence from the ASIC Industry

Technology development in firms is frequently based on a combination of internal and external technological learning. Consequently, firms need to develop both technological capital (a patent portfolio) and alliance capital (a portfolio of technology alliances). This paper examines the relationship between technological capital, alliance capital, and their joint impact on the technological performance of firms, with an application to the application‐specific integrated circuit industry. We find that positive marginal returns to alliance capital are decreasing at higher levels of alliance capital. Technological capital and alliance capital can either augment or reduce each others' influence on innovation performance depending on the stage of the technology life cycle in the industry. A reinforcing relationship related to absorptive capacity requirements and technological uncertainty is present in early stages, while technology leakage and market competition effects render the combination of high levels of technological and alliance capital counterproductive in later stages of the technology life cycle.