Configurations of social media-enabled strategies for open innovation,firm performance,and their barriers to adoption

The use of social media offers tremendous innovation potential. Yet, while current research emphasizes success stories, little is known about how firms can leverage the full potential of their social media use for open innovation. In this paper, the authors address this gap by conducting a configurational analysis to develop an integrative taxonomy of social media-enabled strategies for open innovation. This analysis stems from the integration of internal and external variables such as social media communication activities, organizational innovation seekers, potential innovation providers, the stages of the open innovation process, and their relationship with different performance outcomes and barriers to social media adoption for open innovation. Through an empirical study of 337 firms based in eight countries, four clusters have been identified that are characterized as distinct strategies: “marketing semi-open innovators,” “cross-department semi-open innovators,” “cross-department full process semi-open innovators” and “broad adopters open innovators.” The findings reveal the trade-offs associated with different strategies for implementing social media for open innovation and provide insights of the use of these strategies. By doing so, they suggest a more nuanced approach that contrasts with the traditionally positive (or even rosy) depiction of the effects of social media on open innovation. Accordingly, managers are encouraged to contemplate their organizational competencies, capabilities, and their strategic intent when drafting social media strategies for open innovation. Selective approaches, along with greater adoption leading to greater benefits, are shown to be more rewarding than a middle way that spreads things too thin. Avenues for further research include qualitative explorations of the trajectories unfolding through implementing social media strategies for innovation activities and the use of objective performance measures rather than subjective perceptions from informants to understand the complex relationships between social media adoption and performance.     

Making Innovation Happen in Organizations: Individual Creativity Mechanisms,Organizational Creativity Mechanisms or Both?

Marketing managers increasingly face a product innovation dilemma. Managers will have to sell more with fewer new products in an environment where new products are providing lower revenue yields. Therefore, understanding what drives successful innovation is of paramount importance. This paper examines the organizational innovation hypothesis that innovation is a function of individual efforts and organizational systems to facilitate creativity. Our model formulates creativity as a property of thought process that can be acquired and improved through instruction and practice. In this context, individual creativity mechanisms refer to activities undertaken by individual employees within an organization to enhance their capability for developing something, which is meaningful and novel within their work environment. Organizational creativity mechanisms refer to the extent to which the organization has instituted formal approaches and tools, and provided resources to encourage meaningfully novel behaviors within the organization. Using data collected from 634 organizations, we find support for this hypothesis. The results suggest that the presence of both individual and organizational creativity mechanisms led to the highest level of innovation performance. The results also suggest that high levels of organizational creativity mechanisms (even in the presence of low levels of individual creativity) led to significantly superior innovation performance than low levels of organizational and individual creativity mechanisms. The paper also presents managerial and academic implications. This study suggests that it is not enough for organizations to hire creative people and expect the innovation performance of the firm to be superior. Similarly, it is not enough for firms to emphasize management practices to enhance creativity and ignore individual mechanisms. Although it is true that doing either will improve innovation performance, doing both should lead to higher innovation levels. Our understanding of what and how creativity influences innovation performance can be greatly enhanced by additional research that integrates the intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of creativity. Research that examines the role of team creativity efforts in enhancing innovation performance is also vital to an overall improved understanding of creativity, learning, and innovation within organizations.     

Aligning Knowledge Assets for Exploitation,Exploration, and Ambidexterity: A Study of Companies in High‐Tech Parks in China

There is little research that has explored the effects of how knowledge assets are aligned with each other in exploitation and exploration innovation strategies. This study uses alignment theory to explore the effects of aligning knowledge assets on facilitating a firm's ability to pursue ambidexterity, which is defined as the simultaneous pursuit of explorative and exploitative innovation strategies. We also explore the relative influence of organizational and human capital in fostering an exploitation innovation strategy on the one hand, and an exploration innovation strategy on the other. Using a primary survey sample of 127 companies in two high‐tech parks in China, we found that greater reliance on relatively more organizational capital versus human capital has a significantly positive impact on the success of an exploitative innovation strategy. The amount of organizational capital relative to the amount of human capital has a stronger positive association with exploratory innovation strategy when social capital is greater. We also found that the combination of organizational, human, and social capital fosters ambidexterity, i.e., the simultaneous pursuit of exploration and exploitation. This study extends alignment theory and examines the effects of aligning these knowledge assets on a firm's ability to foster organizational ambidexterity.     

Firms' heterogeneity,relationship embeddedness,and innovation development in competitive alliances

Few studies have investigated the effects of firms' heterogeneity in the context of competitive alliances' innovation development efforts. Prior research has mainly focused on how relationship embeddedness facilitates innovation development, with little attention to heterogeneity among firms and the role it might play. We addressed this gap by examining the relationships among firms' heterogeneity, relationship embeddedness, and innovation development in competitive alliances. We distinguished three dimensions of firms' heterogeneity and collected data from 481 surveys. We demonstrated that heterogeneity with regard to operational routines and organizational responsiveness, heterogeneity was found to have positive direct effects on innovation development while also undermining relationship embeddedness. By contrast, technological heterogeneity had a positive effect on both innovation development and relationship embeddedness. Competitive-alliance firms are more sensitive to heterogeneity regarding operational routines than to organizational responsiveness. These findings highlight the importance of overcoming the adverse effects of firms' heterogeneity through several means, such as full interpretation, observation, and offsetting incongruence through intermediaries or brokers. This study contributes to the strategic management and embeddedness literature by examining the implications of firms' heterogeneity and identifying how these effects influence relationship embeddedness as antecedent factors.     

Flexibility, Structuration, and Simultaneity in New Product Development

A large body of research has pointed out the need for a contingent approach in the design of new product development processes, highlighting the risk of simply accepting a normative perspective that leads to the identification and diffusion of decontextualized “best practices.” In the literature there are contrasting views regarding the identification of the characteristics of product innovation processes in extremely uncertain and dynamic conditions. Some studies propose a fascinating dichotomy: the contraposition between flexible processes and Stage‐Gate^® processes. They maintain that Stage‐Gate^® processes are characterized by “early and sharp” product definition and clear separation between concept development and implementation (detail design and production ramp‐up), whereas flexible development models seek to delay the concept freeze point and overlap product development stages going beyond concurrent engineering. Other studies have arrived at seemingly conflicting results; the suitability of the early and sharp product definition approach in turbulent environments is debated without supporting the dichotomy between flexible processes and Stage‐Gate^® processes. Moreover, additional reasons for questioning the contraposition between Stage‐Gate^® and flexible processes come from a series of studies on the management of discontinuous innovation. The aim of the present study was to develop a conceptual framework that can overcome this widely accepted but controversial dichotomy. The framework is based on the recognition of the orthogonality among three analytical dimensions: organizational, informational, and temporal. The organizational dimension refers to the structuration of the process. The informational dimension deals with classifying the development activities and investigating the firm's product definition approach (early and sharp mode vs. late freeze mode). The temporal dimension relates to the execution strategies of development tasks. The three‐dimensional framework enables us to better understand the complex relationships between the degree of structuration in process design (organizational dimension), the degree of intersection between problem‐formulation and problem‐solving in product definition (informational dimension), and different types of execution strategies (temporal dimension).     

Legitimacy‐Seeking Mechanisms in Product Innovation: A Qualitative Study*

Product innovation research adopts a rational choice perspective to examine resource allocation decisions for product innovation. This research emphasizes strategic alignment between the innovation and the organization as the key factor shaping these decisions. In contrast, organizational research suggests that to access resources, product innovations have to be perceived as legitimate by corporate sponsors. Legitimacy is rooted in alignment with the prevalent corporate norms, beliefs, and cultural model. Adopting an institutional perspective and relying on an in‐depth case study of three product innovations, this study explores legitimacy‐seeking behavior in product innovation. The findings indicate that the rational perspective emphasized in most product innovation research is complemented by efforts to seek both moral and cognitive legitimacy to resource product innovation. The study clarifies the critical role that the organizational context plays in triggering legitimacy‐seeking behavior. The analysis unpacks legitimacy‐seeking behavior, revealing patterns of legitimating mechanisms (lobbying, relationship building, and gathering feedback) that are deployed as part of legitimacy strategies (conforming, selecting, and manipulating) to achieve a range of legitimacy outcomes (pragmatic, moral, and cognitive). The analysis reveals the existence of a hierarchy of legitimacy outcomes as actors prioritize one type of legitimacy versus another. The study also finds interdependencies between mechanisms and strategies to reinforce particular outcomes as legitimacy‐seeking behavior evolves over time.     

The Gordian Knot of Practicing Digital Transformation: Coping with Emergent Paradoxes in Ambidextrous Organizing Structures*

Despite increasing scholarly attention on digital transformation, there are only limited micro‐level insights into how incumbent firms organize and manage their digital transformation efforts on a daily basis. Through a longitudinal, exploratory qualitative case study of a large firm, this article investigates how organizational members respond to an ambidextrous organizing model designed to accelerate digital innovations. The firm relied on a hybrid model of separation and integration to organize and manage its digital transformation efforts. This study unfolds the implications and consequences of such a model at the micro‐level. By applying a paradox lens, it shows how the coping actions of organizational members affected the digital transformation. The article illustrates how the hybrid organizing model led to the emergence of three paradoxes at the organizational level (paradoxes of organizing, attention, and knowledge sharing) that organizational members had to cope with. It shows how organizational members, through their coping with these paradoxes, indirectly affected the organizing model by altering its original design; and how the management, influenced by these learnings, subsequently adapted the model to enable a better sustainability over time. Overall, the findings show and explain why organizing for digital transformation is a particularly complex and paradoxical endeavor. They also provide important insights to managers and organizational developers, helping them to become aware of possible tensions in their organizing efforts as well as of coping strategies and practices to tackle these tensions. Finally, the article suggests different paths for further research in digital transformation and digital innovation from a micro‐level perspective.     

Digital Transformation and Innovation Management: A Synthesis of Existing Research and an Agenda for Future Studies

Management and organizational scholars have paid increasing attention to the interconnections between digital transformation and innovation management in the last decade. However, a highly fragmented understanding of this topic is what we are left with so far. In this editorial, we suggest an approach to open up the black box of the interplay between digital transformation and innovation management by providing a framework that identifies three levels of analyisis (i.e., macro, meso, and micro) along which existing and future research on the topic can be organized. This model encourages scholars to conduct theoretical and empirical studies on how digital transformation affects ecosystems’ structure and governance, how industries and firms compete and organize for innovation in a digitalized world, how the processes for developing new products and services change under the effect of digital technologies, and the implications of digital transformation on managing people and teams involved in the innovation process, among the other topics. We also provide a synthesis of the eight papers published in the Special Issue that this editorial introduces and develop an agenda for future research that will hopefully contribute to encourage and shape future scholarly efforts into this field.     

Sustaining the Flow of External Ideas: The Role of Dual Social Identity across Communities and Organizations

Firm‐hosted online communities are increasingly a part of innovation efforts that seek to provide a flow of external ideas into organizations. However, many online communities do not gain traction or die out over time. One possible but underresearched driver of sustained engagement by members of firm‐hosted communities is a social identity that makes community members feel like they are part of the firm. We sought to empirically derive the organizational practices that support community members having a dual social identity with both communities and organizations. We completed extensive field work and over 90 interviews regarding two firms that had a history of sustained engagement by members of their communities: T‐shirt firm Threadless and automotive firm Local Motors. We identified eight organizational practices that supported dual social identity. Four of these practices made members perceive a porous boundary between firm and community, including an “open house” policy and hiring from the community. Another four practices made members feel supported in community efforts, including promoting community projects and having top management active in the community. We describe the practices in detail and the implications for firms using online communities as one component of their portfolio of innovation efforts.     

Managing Knowledge for Innovation: The Case of Business‐to‐Business Services*

The present study builds a typology of organizational knowledge in business services and empirically examines the effects of knowledge on innovation performance. It is suggested that firms differ with respect to their knowledge creation approaches and that these approaches have implications for firms' innovation activities. A conceptual framework of knowledge assets with degrees of tacitness and collectiveness as the principal axes is used to ground the empirical analysis. The organizational knowledge framework is empirically operationalized using survey data from 167 business service firms and supplementary case study evidence from 16 other firms. It is found that business service improvements and new service introductions are significantly associated with collectively held knowledge, such as codified service solutions or team‐based competences and procedures. In contrast, relying solely on tacit knowledge held by individuals may hamper innovation. The results also suggest that tacit collective knowledge is more closely associated with new service introductions, whereas explicit collective knowledge is associated with service improvements. Tacit collective knowledge is thus conducive. A managerial implication is that new service introductions necessitate team competences and routines, whereas incremental service improvements are more likely if procedures are in place to codify services into explicit solutions or technologies. Thus, the knowledge management approach should depend on the strategic orientation of the service firm toward continuous improvement of existing services or development of completely new services.     

Platforms,systems competition,and innovation: Reassessing the foundations of communications policy

Focusing on the effects of policy on investment and innovation this paper examines whether the conceptual foundations of sector regulation are aligned with the current technological and economic conditions of advanced communications. One conclusion is that the prevailing theories and practices are only adequate if the policy challenge can be reasonably approximated as a static or steady-state problem but they may have serious shortcomings if this is not possible. The article proceeds with a review and critical examination of two approaches that could augment or possibly replace the traditional approach under conditions of dynamic competition—the theory of platform markets and systems approaches. Both frameworks model aspects of competition in interconnected systems in more detail and offer novel insights to inform communications policy in an era of continuous change. Nonetheless, important theoretical and implementation gaps remain that will require additional efforts by researchers and practitioners.     

From Invention to Innovation: Toward Developing an Integrated Innovation Model for Biotech Firms*

A review of extant literature reveals various theories on innovation, including technology push, market pull, and an organizational approach. All of these theories have been criticized for their lack of integration and inapplicability to today's competitive environment. An integrated view of innovation has emerged that synthesizes the variables in previous approaches. However, the application of this view has been restricted to investigating the innovation processes within the computer and manufacturing industries, whereas the biotechnology industry has been ignored. This is despite biotech managers' well‐acknowledged thirst for innovation and the ability of biotech to shape the way we live. The present article contributes to the literature by applying an integrated approach to the biotech industry, thereby extending understanding of innovation management beyond the traditional field of inquiry. An integrated approach is of particular relevance to biotech companies, given the complexities of managing the industry's long development cycle and intense collaborative activities. In‐depth interviews with eight organizations in Maryland formed the basis for an investigation into the challenges of managing the innovation process in biotechnology firms. The findings revealed that biotech entrepreneurs are ill prepared to lead their organizations through several transformations necessary along the product life cycle because of their fixation on a technology‐push approach and lack of an understanding of integrated innovation. These leaders also lack the commercialization knowledge necessary to push products to markets, resulting in avoidable delays and loss of productivity. The existing research has dispelled myths associated with biotech. Specifically, it suggests biotech entrepreneurs cannot rely solely on inventions but must invest in a timely application of knowledge to organizational and market forces to take full advantage of the innovation potential associated with the industry. This article presents a conceptual framework for applying the integrated innovation model to biotech firms and makes the case for incorporating market‐oriented mechanisms, building and using appropriate organizational capabilities, developing effective collaborations, and creating parallel interactions as major elements in a general strategy toward the success and improved efficiency of biotech companies. The limitations of current research are discussed, and avenues are highlighted for much‐needed future research into the biotech industry.     

Challenges of open innovation: the paradox of firm investment in open-source software

Open innovation is a powerful framework encompassing the generation, capture, and employment of intellectual property at the firm level. We identify three fundamental challenges for firms in applying the concept of open innovation: finding creative ways to exploit internal innovation, incorporating external innovation into internal development, and motivating outsiders to supply an ongoing stream of external innovations. This latter challenge involves a paradox, why would firms spend money on R&D efforts if the results of these efforts are available to rival firms? To explore these challenges, we examine the activity of firms in open‐source software to support their innovation strategies. Firms involved in open‐source software often make investments that will be shared with real and potential rivals. We identify four strategies firms employ – pooled R&D/product development, spinouts, selling complements and attracting donated complements – and discuss how they address the three key challenges of open innovation. We conclude with suggestions for how similar strategies may apply in other industries and offer some possible avenues for future research on open innovation.     

Moving from basic offerings to value-added solutions: Strategies, barriers and alignment

Commoditization erodes the competitive differentiation of companies and often leads to a profit squeeze. Existing literature recommends the transition from basic product offerings to service-based value concepts in order to regain competitiveness in such a context. This paper explores the concrete efforts of suppliers in the commoditized electro-technical industry to create new non-price-based customer value. In this paper, a taxonomy of efforts is developed which builds on the competitive strategy and strategic marketing literature. Our research identifies barriers to the market introduction of these new value concepts. Observations in this industry lead to a framework that (1) proposes alternative step-by-step strategies for making the transition from basic products to service-based solutions, and (2) offers alignment suggestions for overcoming identified barriers. Migration paths to introducing new service-based value concepts are incremental rather than radical, and managers should complement their market approach with (a) value chain actions to create multilevel industry support and (b) an organizational alignment approach.     

Models with graphical representation for innovation management: a literature review

In the last decades, the management of innovation has achieved increasing importance in both academic and business environments. For the companies, an effective engagement in innovation efforts involves the adoption of management models to guide the definition of organizational processes to conduct innovation opportunities throughout the organization. In this context, graphical representations can strongly communicate the central propositions of each model, accelerating the diffusion and influence of such models in both academic and business environments. Based on an academic database search, and snowball procedure, models were selected considering the unique characteristics of their graphical representation. This article contributes to the knowledge in the field by proposing a typology of innovation management models, highlighting model's biases, gaps, strengths and weaknesses, and by identifying important tensions among models that spillover to the innovation management field in both research and practice. This article discusses conflicts regarding the limits of the innovation process (events that start and end the process and complementary approaches), the limits of focusing on processes, the differentiation of research and development and new product development activities. In the end, the article addresses emerging approaches related to radical innovation, design thinking and startups, and stresses contributions for research and practice.     

The Interplay of Customer and Product Innovation Dynamics: An Exploratory Study

The challenges of successfully developing radical or really new products have received considerable attention from a variety of marketing, strategic, and organizational perspectives. Previous research has stressed the importance of a market‐driven customer orientation, the resolution of market and technological uncertainty, and organizational processes such as cross‐functional teams and organizational learning. However, several fundamental issues have not been addressed. From a customer's perspective, a more innovative product tends to have uncertain benefits and requires customers to learn new behaviors. Customer preferences can, therefore, change as product experience and learning increase. From a firm's perspective, it is unclear how to be customer‐oriented under such dynamic preferences, and product strategies using evolving technologies will tend to interact with how customers learn about an innovation. This research focuses on identifying unresolved issues about these customer and product innovation dynamics. A conceptual framework and series of propositions are presented that relate both changing technology and customer learning to a firm's strategic decisions in developing and launching really new products. The framework is based on in‐depth interviews with high‐tech product managers across several sectors, focusing on the business‐to‐business context. The propositions resulting from the framework highlight the need to consider relevant customer dynamics as integral to a firm's product innovation process. Successful innovation strategies and future research challenges are discussed, and applications to better understanding customer needs and theories of disruptive innovation are examined. Several key insights for innovation success hinge on a broad, downstream orientation to customer needs and product innovation dynamics. To be effective innovators, firms must know their customers' customers and competitors as well as or better than their immediate customers do. Market research must extend downstream for a comprehensive understanding of customer needs dynamics. In the context of disruptive innovation, new dimensions of customer needs may become more valuable based on perceived downstream customer trends. Firms may also innovate on secondary needs because mainstream customers do not always give firms the design freedom to radically innovate on primary features. Understanding customer commitments and how they develop under evolving needs can help firms focus resources on innovative efforts more likely to be accepted by customers.     

Sources, characteristics and effects of emerging technologies: Research opportunities in innovation

Diverse technological developments across information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and satellite communications technology are dramatically altering industry landscapes, with important economic and policy implications. Not surprisingly, therefore, managers are challenged to develop strategies to cope with the threats posed by emerging technologies and leverage the opportunities posed by them. Indeed, there is growing anecdotal evidence that firms' inabilities to cope with emerging technologies have produced high product and firm failure rates.From an academic perspective, I argue that emerging technologies have important distinctive features that have not been examined in current theory in marketing, and specifically, in organizational innovation. In this article, I identify several research questions that emerge from the sources, characteristics and effects of emergent technologies in the area of organizational innovation. Insights generated from such a line of inquiry have the potential to broaden the canvas of innovation theory and provide valuable insights to managers who confront these onerous challenges on a daily basis.     

Bricoleurs and boundary riders: managing basic research and innovation knowledge networks

A major focus of national and institutional research policies during the 1990s has been on improving linkages between publicly funded research activities and industry for the purpose of advancing economic and other national objectives. The transfer of scientific knowledge, however, within and between public research institutions, universities and other innovative organizations is taking place within rapidly changing organizational environments. The emergence of new organizational structures that transcend institutional boundaries, scientific disciplines and the boundaries between basic and applied research are all contributing to as well as responding to changes in the ways science intersects with industrial innovation.
Recent international evidence suggests that innovative organizations during the next decade will depend more on their ability to maintain quite complex organizational research linkages than on their internal organizational research capabilities. Case studies of the organizational approach adopted by companies and commercial-research agency consortia in China and Australia lead to a discussion of a typology of academic-industry alliances. The typology provides insights into different collaborative R&D management strategies associated with different forms of science-industry alliance.     

Radical Product Innovation Capability: Literature Review,Synthesis, and Illustrative Research Propositions

Product innovation is a key to organizational renewal and success. Relative to other forms of innovation, radical product innovations offer unprecedented customer benefits, substantial cost reductions, or the ability to create new businesses, any of which should lead to superior organizational performance. In other words, a radical product innovation capability is a dynamic capability, one that enables the organization to maintain alignment with rapidly evolving customer needs in high‐velocity environments. Extensive research has been conducted on the antecedents to an incremental/general product innovation capability, and meta‐analyses have been conducted to integrate the results from the various studies. However, whether and how a radical product innovation capability differs from an incremental product innovation capability is also critical. The purpose of this work is to develop a testable model of the antecedents to radical product innovation success. Based on an extensive literature review, a comprehensive set of organizational components that comprise a firm's radical product innovation capability is identified. These organizational components include senior leadership, organizational culture, organizational architecture, the radical product innovation development process, and the product launch strategy. Of course, each of these components has subcomponents that provide even more texture. This review highlights how the components of a radical innovation capability function differently from those for an incremental capability. In addition, this review strongly suggests that the direct effects models that dominate this literature underestimate the complexity of the interplay of components that comprise a radical product innovation capability. Thus, a model to demonstrate this interplay of these organizational components is provided. Illustrative research propositions are offered to provide guidance to researchers. Suggestions for executives and managers who are involved in the product development process and for scholars who seek to advance the state of knowledge in this area are offered in the conclusion.     

Can All Brands Innovate in the Same Way? A Typology of Brand Position and Innovation Effort*

Product innovation is vital to ongoing brand equity and has been responsible for revitalizing many brands, including Apple, Dunlop Volley, Mini, and Gucci. While several scholars have noted the relationship between a brand's position and the form of innovation available to a firm, surprisingly no study has sought to bridge this gap. This study aims to address this issue by, first, building a typology of the innovation practices underpinning differently positioned brands and, second, exploring the strategic and tactical implications of different brand‐related innovation efforts. In so doing, this study addresses a critical question: How do differently positioned brands organize their innovation efforts? A multiple case‐study approach was used in this paper. Cases were sampled from a number of industries and across a range of different countries with a focus on business‐to‐consumer brands. Thirty‐five interviews were conducted across 12 cases. The brands studied differed in their approach to innovation (incremental vs. radical) and in their relationship to the marketplace (market‐driven and driving markets). These two dimensions result in four alternative ways of organizing the innovation effort to effectively reinforce the brand: (1) incremental and market driven (follower brands); (2) radical and market driven (category leader brands); (3) incremental and driving market (craft‐design‐driven brands); and (4) radical and driving markets (product leader brands). For follower brands, new product success is contingent upon the quality of the firm's marketing information systems and speed to market. Category leaders seek to dominate and appeal to the mass market with bold product initiatives. Craft‐designer‐driven brands aim to maintain an aura of authenticity, downplaying the commercial realities of their innovation efforts, while product leader brands seek to reaffirm their status as industry pioneers. This research contributes to the branding and new product development literature in several ways. It illustrates that differently positioned brands require the deployment of different firm capabilities and resources and a unique organizational philosophy to achieve new product success. The findings also enrich the brand extension literature through an examination of alternate bases, beyond that of product category, by which brand fit can be established. Finally, this research demonstrates how brand positioning can pose limitations on an industry leader's ability to respond to disruptive technologies. This study identifies that failed new products or brand extensions are driven by a mismatch between desired strategy and the capabilities necessary for achieving success (suggesting brand extensions are not as low risk as previously thought). As such, managers should carefully attend to brand perceptions when developing innovation strategies, particularly in relation to brand extensions.