Knowledge sharing,knowledge leaking and relative innovation performance: An empirical study

External knowledge sharing and knowledge leakage often pose a strategic dilemma when firms conduct innovation activities. In this study, we focus on the positive and negative effects of this phenomenon. In particular, we empirically examine the effects of a firm׳s external knowledge sharing on its relative innovation performance under the contingencies of accidental and intentional leakage of business-critical knowledge. Results based on a survey of 150 Finnish technology-intensive firms show that external knowledge sharing has a positive effect on innovation performance, but high levels of accidental and intentional knowledge leakage by a firm׳s employees negatively moderate this relationship. These results contribute to the understanding of the potentially positive and negative issues related to external knowledge sharing and knowledge leakage, which have thus far remained empirically under-researched.     

Employee mobility,spin‐outs,and knowledge spill‐in: How incumbent firms can learn from new ventures

Research summary: We consider conditions in which incumbent firms are particularly poised to benefit from knowledge spilling in from new ventures that employ individuals previously employed by the focal incumbent firm. We distinguish between inventors who leave their incumbent employers to found spin‐outs and those who become non‐founding employees of existing new ventures. Using a sample of new ventures and incumbent firms in the U.S. information technology (IT) sector, we find that incumbents are more likely to benefit from patented knowledge that spills in from their spin‐outs than from new ventures that employ non‐founding inventors formerly employed by the respective incumbent. Any advantage that parent firms have in reaping such knowledge quickly dissipates, however, when these parents have a history of misappropriating the intellectual property of others. Managerial summary: It has long been acknowledged that new ventures can acquire valuable knowledge from their larger and more established counterparts by hiring away their talented employees. We consider the possibility of a reverse flow of knowledge where established firms learn from those new ventures that have poached employees from them. We find that established information technology (IT) firms are more likely to learn and build on the technology of their spin‐outs (i.e., new ventures founded by their former inventors) than from new ventures that simply employ non‐founding inventors formerly employed by the respective IT firm. Any advantage that these IT firms had in reaping technical know‐how from their spin‐outs quickly dissipated, however, when they had a history of misappropriating the intellectual property of others. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pairwise epistemic conditions for Nash equilibrium

We introduce a framework for modeling pairwise interactive beliefs and provide an epistemic foundation for Nash equilibrium in terms of pairwise epistemic conditions locally imposed on only some pairs of players. Our main result considerably weakens not only the standard sufficient conditions by Aumann and Brandenburger (1995), but also the subsequent generalization by Barelli (2009). Surprisingly, our conditions do not require nor imply mutual belief in rationality.     

Towards Assessing the Knowledge Gap in Medical Tourism

The medical tourism industry is a fast growing global niche market that generated $20 billion in income for destinations around the world. This study suggests and tests a mechanism to assess the medical tourism providers’ perceptions about the tourists’ perceived important product attributes when selecting a medical tourism destination. The results indicate that the various medical tourism providers groups do not vary in their perceptions regarding 24 important attributes of the medical tourism product and that they all agree that tourists perceive the medical variables to be more important than the tourism related variables. Using the Korean market for data collection, the study’s additional contribution is providing insights for Korean government agencies, operators of medical tourism hospitals, policymakers, and marketers.     

Knowledge Management in Supply Chains: The Role of Explicit and Tacit Knowledge

We theorize, building on the knowledge‐based view and the theoretical distinction between explicit and tacit knowledge, that knowledge management capability across the supply chain manifests itself in explicit and tacit knowledge, which in turn effectuates supply chain performance. The model is tested with survey data from 195 small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises reporting on their primary supply chain. The results indicate that the supply chain's knowledge management capability manifests itself in both explicit and tacit knowledge, with the latter being influenced more strongly. Moreover, it was found that while both explicit and tacit knowledge influence supply chain performance, the latter exerts a significantly greater impact than the former. Exploratory post hoc analyses add robustness to these findings and investigate mechanisms inherent to the transformation of tacit into explicit knowledge. Overall, this research contributes to academic theory development in logistics and supply chain management by the dichotomization of knowledge types and the demonstration of their differential magnitude of effects, and to managerial practice by providing important guidance for logistics managers structuring their knowledge management efforts across supply chains.     

Design and development of inventory knowledge discovery system

Inventory management (IM) performance is affected by the forecasting accuracy of both demand and supply. In this paper, an inventory knowledge discovery system (IKDS) is designed and developed to forecast and acquire knowledge among variables for demand forecasting. In IKDS, the TREes PArroting Networks (TREPAN) algorithm is used to extract knowledge from trained networks in the form of decision trees which can be used to understand previously unknown relationships between the input variables so as to improve the forecasting performance for IM. The experimental results show that the forecasting accuracy using TREPAN is superior to traditional methods like moving average and autoregressive integrated moving average. In addition, the knowledge extracted from IKDS is represented in a comprehensible way and can be used to facilitate human decision-making.     

The uncertainty challenge of contingent collaboration

Contingent knowledge workers will play an increasingly important role in organisational success as workers transition in and out of project‐based innovation teams with more frequency. Our research finds that collaborators in the contingent, high‐skill workforce face uncertainty challenges to their work that are unique from the independent, contingent professionals more often studied. The article proposes a theoretical framework of uncertainty to guide us in understanding collaborative contingent knowledge workers’ work experience. Interviews with postdoctoral researchers reveal four findings about the influence of these highly uncertain work environments on collaborative contingent knowledge workers – collaboration isolation, frustrated independence, performance anxiety and internalised blame. Perhaps most concerning is that the workers internalise the negative impacts as personal failings instead of recognising them as consequences of a poorly designed work environment. This study argues for the need to manage and mitigate different sources of uncertainty to avoid creating an unnecessary burden on contingent knowledge workers, and to enable a sustainable, contingent knowledge workforce.     

Enablers for end‐user entrepreneurship: An investigation on Italian food bloggers

This article examines unconventional entrepreneurship (accidental or end‐user entrepreneurs) to determine whether the decision‐making phase of the entrepreneurial process is collective. The analysis identified a virtuous circle that links knowledge, innovation, judgment, and decision making to collective interactions built on passion, experience, and sharing. To study food bloggers as unconventional user entrepreneurs, data were collected and analyzed using netnographic analysis. A supplementary online survey of food bloggers and their followers was also performed. Three groups of food bloggers are identified: amusing, functional, and fervent. Only fervent food bloggers, thanks to the virtuous circle built on passion, experience, and sharing as enablers, can be considered accidental or end‐user entrepreneurs.     

集群企业间知识溢出、研发竞争与集群主导设计形成的关系

考察了产业集群企业间的研发竞争和知识溢出对集群企业采纳潜在主导设计的影响。通过数理分析和实证检验,得到如下结论:集群企业间的研发竞争有利于主导设计的形成;集群企业间的知识溢出对主导设计的形成也有正向影响;企业间的研发竞争正向调节知识溢出与主导设计形成的关系。     

An intelligent service matching method for mechanical equipment condition monitoring using the fibre Bragg grating sensor network

Due to the advantages of being able to function under harsh environmental conditions and serving as a distributed condition information source in a networked monitoring system, the fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensor network has attracted considerable attention for equipment online condition monitoring. To provide an overall conditional view of the mechanical equipment operation, a networked service-oriented condition monitoring framework based on FBG sensing is proposed, together with an intelligent matching method for supporting monitoring service management. In the novel framework, three classes of progressive service matching approaches, including service-chain knowledge database service matching, multi-objective constrained service matching and workflow-driven human-interactive service matching, are developed and integrated with an enhanced particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm as well as a workflow-driven mechanism. Moreover, the manufacturing domain ontology, FBG sensor network structure and monitoring object are considered to facilitate the automatic matching of condition monitoring services to overcome the limitations of traditional service processing methods. The experimental results demonstrate that FBG monitoring services can be selected intelligently, and the developed condition monitoring system can be re-built rapidly as new equipment joins the framework. The effectiveness of the service matching method is also verified by implementing a prototype system together with its performance analysis.