Managing the Exploitation/Exploration Paradox: The Role of a Learning Capability and Innovation Ambidexterity

Some researchers have proposed that practices facilitating learning and knowledge transfer are particularly important to innovation. Some of the practices that researchers have studied include how organizations collaborate with other organizations, how organizations promote learning, and how an organization's culture facilitates knowledge transfer and learning. And while some have proposed the importance of combining practices, there has been a distinct lack of empirical studies that have explored how these practices work together to facilitate learning and knowledge transfer that leads to the simultaneous achievement of incremental and radical innovation, what we refer to as innovation ambidexterity (IA). Yet, a firm's ability to combine these practices into a learning capability is an important means of enabling them to foster innovation ambidexterity. In this study, learning capability is defined as the combination of practices that promote intraorganizational learning among employees, partnerships with other organizations that enable the spread of learning, and an open culture within the organization that promotes and maintains sharing of knowledge. This paper examines the impact of this learning capability on innovation ambidexterity and innovation ambidexterity's effect on business performance. The resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm is used to develop a conceptual foundation for combining these practices. This study empirically examines whether these practices constitute a learning capability by analyzing primary data gathered from 214 Taiwanese owned strategic business unit (SBUs) drawn from several industries where innovation is important. The results of this study make four important contributions. First, they demonstrate that the combination of these practices has a greater impact on innovation ambidexterity than any one practice individually or when only two practices are combined. Second, the results demonstrate a relationship between innovation ambidexterity and business performance in the form of revenues, profits, and productivity growth relative to competitors. Third, the results suggest that innovation ambidexterity plays a mediating role between learning capability and business performance. That is, learning capability has an indirect impact on business performance by facilitating innovation ambidexterity that in turn fosters business performance. This study also contributes to our understanding of ambidexterity literature in a non‐Western context, i.e., Taiwan.     

Managing External Information in Manufacturing Firms: The Impact on Innovation Performance*

Drawing upon a sample of 206 medium‐sized manufacturing firms, this article investigates the extent to which management of external information is associated with innovation performance. The overall purpose of the article is to examine whether or not those organizations that are better at managing external information are also those that are the better innovators. The research strategy used was a survey, and data were collected by means of mail questionnaires (with a 62.4% response rate). A multiple regression analysis was used for hypothesis testing. The results show that scanning the technological sector of the environment was positively associated with innovation performance, while scanning customers, suppliers, and competitors proved to be negatively correlated with innovation performance. Cross‐functional integration in the form of collaboration also proved significantly correlated with innovation performance, while interaction showed no such relationship. Further, decision‐making based on information from the industry environment correlated significantly with innovation performance. Research and managerial implications of these findings are presented and are discussed.     

Service Regulations,Input Prices and Export Volumes: Evidence from a Panel of Manufacturing Firms

Using a panel of firm‐level data from Spanish manufacturers, this study shows that better service regulation reduces the price of intermediate inputs paid by downstream firms. The beneficial cost effects of services reforms extend to both large and small‐to‐medium sized corporations (SME’s), but the former tend to enjoy greater gains. This feature also manifests itself in international markets. We find evidence of an input cost channel through which service regulations affect the volume of exports of large manufacturers, while the evidence of such a channel is weaker for SME’s. Our estimates indicate that, from 1991 to 2007, large firms increased their volume of exports by an average of 20 per cent as a result of the direct input cost effect of services reforms, such that the firms that benefited the most typically belonged to industries more dependent on service inputs. Furthermore, convergence to the ‘best practice’ regulatory framework in services would have raised exports at least by an additional nine per cent. We conclude that firm size is relevant for the connection between services reforms, intermediate input prices and export volumes.     

The Collaboration of Innovation Intermediaries and Manufacturing Firms in the Markets for Technology

Many manufacturing firms have opened up their product innovation processes and actively transfer knowledge with external partners in the markets for technology. However, the markets for technological knowledge have remained inefficient in comparison with the markets for most products. To reduce some of the market inefficiencies, manufacturing firms may collaborate with innovation intermediaries, which are defined as organizations that act as agents or brokers in the innovation process between two or more parties. These innovation intermediaries comprise different service providers ranging from consulting companies to Internet marketplaces for technology. In light of an increasing importance of intermediary services in the context of open innovation, this paper specifically focuses on the collaboration of manufacturing firms and innovation intermediaries, which may be critical for the success of intermediary services. Based on new interview data from 30 innovation intermediaries and 30 European manufacturing firms, this paper examines the question of how innovation intermediaries and manufacturing firms collaborate concerning the following issues, which emerged as the key themes from the interviews: potential of intermediation, roles of intermediaries, types of intermediation, drivers of intermediation, complementarity of intermediation, compensation of intermediation, and the importance of repeated collaborations. The findings indicate how manufacturing firms may reduce their transaction costs in technology markets by collaborating with intermediaries. However, intermediary services can only be regarded as a complement rather than a substitute of manufacturing firms' internal activities of managing technology transfer. Thus, manufacturing firms need sufficient internal capabilities for managing technology transfer, such as absorptive capacity and desorptive capacity.     

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.     

产业链定位、分工与集聚如何影响企业创新——基于江苏省制造业企业问卷调查的实证研究

本文利用对江苏省342家制造业企业的调查问卷实证研究了产业链定位、分工和集聚效应对于企业创新强度的影响,结果发现:处于产业链终端环节企业并没有表现出特定的创新优势,一定程度上反映出我国制造业产业链中的终端集成环节并未形成相应市场势力或集成创新能力;分工活动(以供应商数量作为度量指标)与创新强度之间呈现较为复杂的U型非线性关系;集聚效应并未对我国微观企业创新活动产生积极影响,未成为激发集群创新动力的有机载体。针对以上实证结果,基于我国经济转型背景和企业微观层面行为特征,我们就产业链定位、分工与集聚效应三个因素与我国制造业企业创新活动的内在关系与作用机理,结合统计性分析进一步进行了剖析和解释,并据此提出了相应的可行对策思路。     

Differential Potency of Factors Affecting Innovation Performance in Manufacturing and Services Firms in Australia

Whether or not industrialized nations are experiencing a fundamental shift from a manufacturing- to a service-based economy may be a matter of debate. However, the service sector is clearly growing at an explosive rate, particularly in comparison with manufacturing. With this in mind, we need to better understand how the successful development of new services differs from that of new products. Such understanding requires identifying the critical success factors for new service development (NSD), as well as contrasting them with the factors underlying successful new product development (NPD). Kwaku Atuahene-Gima describes the results of a study comparing the innovation activities of Australian services firms and manufacturers. The study explores managers' perceptions of the factors necessary for successful NSD and NPD. In addition to comparing the differing perceptions of managers of services firms and manufacturers, the study highlights implications of these differences for managers striving for improved NSD. Services and manufacturing firms focus on similar factors for improving innovation performance. However, the relative importance of those factors depends on the type of firm. The critical factor for services—the importance accorded to innovation activity in the firm's human resource strategy—ranks third in importance for manufacturers. Manufacturers focus primarily on product innovation advantage and quality. In contrast, service innovation advantage and quality ranks third in importance for service firms. Surprisingly, technology synergy is found to have a negative effect on new service performance. If a new service is a close fit with a firm's current technologies, competitors will likely be able to quickly imitate the new service. As a result, NSD efforts based on technology synergy will not provide a competitive advantage. Compared to manufacturers, successful service firms must place greater emphasis on the selection, development, and management of employees who work directly with the customer. Through effective self management, these contact personnel shape the quality of the customer relationship. In addition, their close contact and potentially long-term relationships with customers make such employees an important source of new ideas in the firm's NSD process. Such relationships also cast contact personnel in a make-or-break role in the launching of new services.     

Ambidexterity under scrutiny: Exploration and exploitation via internal organization,alliances, and acquisitions

Prior research on ambidexterity has limited its concern to balancing exploration and exploitation via particular modes of operation. Acknowledging the interplay of tendencies to explore versus exploit via the internal organization, alliance, and acquisition modes, we claim that balancing these tendencies within each mode undermines firm performance because of conflicting routines, negative transfer, and limited specialization. Nevertheless, by exploring in one mode and exploiting in another, i.e., balancing across modes, a firm can avoid some of these impediments. Thus, we advance ambidexterity research by asserting that balance across modes enhances performance more than balance within modes. Our analysis of 190 U.S.‐based software firms further reveals that exploring via externally oriented modes such as acquisitions or alliances, while exploiting via internal organization, enhances these firms' performance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparison of Organization Communication Effectiveness on Construction Firms and Manufacturing Firms

基于用先进的制造业改造传统建筑业的现实需求,在对影响组织沟通的核心要素分析的基础上,设计问卷及测量问题,并进行了数据收集及其信度、效度检验,应用数理统计方法对建筑业和制造业企业的组织沟通有效性进行了比较研究.研究结果表明:制造业企业信息交流的准确性、及时性和充分性均明显好于建筑业企业;而制造业企业的信息交换量虽大于建筑业企业,但差异并不显著.该研究有助于建筑业企业借鉴制造业的先进经验,通过组织沟通有效性水平的提升促进与其他联盟企业的合作.     

Technology Acquisition in Family and Nonfamily Firms: A Longitudinal Analysis of Spanish Manufacturing Firms

Technology acquisition from external sources has been identified as a critical competence for sustained success in innovation, and research has paid a good deal of attention to studying its advantages, drawbacks, determinants, and outcomes. Traditionally, research has modeled the choice to acquire technology from outside a firm's boundaries as the result of a trade‐off between the benefits of external acquisition (e.g., higher return on investment, lower costs, increased flexibility, access to specialized skill sets, and creativity) and its drawbacks (e.g., opening the market to new entrants, risk of imitation of core competencies, and reduced value appropriability). Yet, this view does not capture the behavioral considerations that may potentially encourage or discourage managers from sourcing technology outside the firm's boundaries. This behavioral aspect is especially important if one wants to understand the conduct in external technology acquisition of family firms, which are found to favor strategic actions that preserve the controlling families' control and authority over business, even at the cost of giving up potential economic benefits. Thus, external technology acquisition is likely to be interpreted differently in family and nonfamily firms. Despite its importance, how the involvement of a controlling family affects decisions in technology and innovation management and specifically external technology acquisition is an overlooked topic in extant research and requires further theoretical and empirical examination. This study attempts to fill these gaps by extending the tenets of the behavioral agency model and prior research pointing to particularistic decision‐making in family firms to uncover the behavioral drivers of external technology acquisition in family and nonfamily firms. Theory is developed that relates performance risk, family management, and the contingent effect of the degree of technology protection on external technology acquisition, and the hypotheses are tested with longitudinal data on 1540 private Spanish manufacturing firms. The analyses show that managers are more likely to acquire technology from external sources through research and development contracting when firm performance falls below managers' aspirations. Family firms are generally more reluctant to acquire external technology, and the effect of negative aspiration performance gaps becomes less relevant as family management is higher, which is attributed to family managers' attempts to avoid losing control over the trajectory that technology follows over time. However, family firms become more favorable to considering the adoption of an open approach to technology development when some protection mechanisms (specifically, the filing of patents on the firm proprietary technologies) increase the managers' perceptions of control over the technology trajectory. As such, this study makes a contribution to the understanding of the behavioral factors driving external technology acquisition, and it offers important insights regarding technology strategy in family firms.     

Ownership Advantages, Foreign Production and Productivity: Evidence from Austrian Manufacturing Firms

Multi-plant economies of scale generated by firm-specific assets form a constituent feature of multinational firms. This paper uses a panel of Austrian manufacturing firms to test for multi-plant economies of scale by examining the dependence of labor productivity in plants of the home country on the volume of foreign production. As there is an inherent causality problem in testing this proposition, the econometric estimates use a simultaneous equation framework. The estimation results indeed indicate that firms which operate plants abroad achieve productivity advantages in domestic plants. The same holds true for affiliates of foreign multinationals.     

Internationalization, Local Adaptation, and Subsidiary's Entrepreneurship: An Exploratory Study on Taiwanese Manufacturing Firms in Indonesia and Malaysia

This inductive research attempts to explore the dynamics of firm internationalization process, with a focus on a manufacturing firm's first-time foreign entry endeavor. By conducting comparative analyses based on six cases of Taiwanese manufacturing firms who have established production bases in Indonesia and Malaysia, we postulate a conceptual framework entailing relationships among entry decision, implementation strategy, and local adaptation. We highlight the role of subsidiary's entrepreneurial initiatives play in achieving required extent of local adaptation and hence successful implementation for companies lacking sufficient experiential knowledge of internationalization. Propositions based on the conceptualization are detailed and the implications of these qualitative insights are discussed, with an expectation of contributing to the extant theories of internationalization.     

Importing and Productivity: An Analysis of South African Manufacturing Firms

Review of Industrial Organization - This paper uses firm-level data from company tax declarations to analyse the complementary relationship between direct access to imported intermediate inputs and...     

New Product Strategies of Large, Dominant Product Manufacturing Firms: An Exploratory Analysis

Although researchers have expended considerable effort exploring the links between new product strategy and firm-level performance, most studies of this subject focus on small- to medium-sized firms. Compared to smaller firms, however, large companies typically maintain broader portfolios of products and have easier access to capital markets. Such fundamental differences suggest the need for closer examination of the relationship between new product strategy and the performance of large firms. Based on a study of 459 new products introduced during a 5-year period, Richard W. Firth and V. K. Narayanan profile the new product strategies of 18 large companies. They examine the methods used to acquire new products (internal development or external sources) as well as three dimensions of each firm's new product introductions: newness of embodied technology, newness of market application, and innovativeness in the market. In other words, these profiles identify the degree to which a firm's new product introductions involve core technologies and markets that are new to the firm, as well as the degree to which the market views these products as innovative. Because new product strategy is an investment decision, the study also examines the relationship between these strategic profiles and two facets of firm-level performance: risk and return. The study identifies five archetypes of new product strategy: Innovators, who produce innovative products by using their existing resources; Investors in Technology, who focus on expanding their technological base. Searching for New Markets, firms that venture into unfamiliar markets by introducing products closely aligned with those in their existing portfolios; Business as Usual, firms that rely on existing technologies and products to serve existing markets; and Middle-of-the-Road, firms content to introduce new products rated as low to moderate along all three dimensions of the strategic profile. For new products closely aligned with their core markets and technologies, the firms in this study typically rely on internal development. To introduce products involving new technologies or market applications, they turn to acquisition from external sources. Firms that emphasized market innovativeness in their new product introductions enjoyed higher returns than less innovative firms. And contrary to conventional wisdom, they gained this advantage without an accompanying increase in risk. In other words, continual innovation might provide a large firm with the means for achieving higher returns without higher risk.     

Only the Brave: Product Innovation,Service Business Model Innovation,and Their Impact on Performance

Recent empirical findings concerning the performance effects of service business model innovation (servitization) and its interplay with product innovation are mixed. Using the lenses of the demand‐based view on value creation and complementarity, the performance impact of two key service business models is examined: the product‐oriented model and the customer‐oriented model, implemented jointly with product innovation. Results indicate that the interplay between service business model innovation and product innovation results in long‐term performance benefits coupled with a degree of short‐term performance sacrifice. Service business model innovation in isolation from product innovation results in short‐term profit gains but long‐term knowledge loss and, thus, market performance decline. Our study suggests that firms need to look beyond the evidence on short‐term effects in order to achieve superior performance in the long run.     

Technology and the Size Distribution of Firms: Evidence from Dutch Manufacturing

Empirical studies have shown that the size distribution of firms can be described as a Pareto distribution. However, these studies have focused on large firms and aggregate statistics. Little attention has been placed on the role of technology in shaping firm size distributions. Using a comprehensive dataset of manufacturing firms and the Community Innovation Survey from the Netherlands, the paper investigates the relationship between firm size and technology. It shows that technological factors shape the distribution of firm size, suggesting that the Pareto law is not an invariant property and that technology can constrain the “self-organising” character of industrial economies.     

井塔辉煌--中国石油勘探开发事业回顾及前景展望

我国原油产量从2002年1．689亿t增加到2003年1．69亿t，天然气产量从2002年326亿m^3增加到2003年340亿m^3。2004年力争国内原油生产稳中有升已成为我国石油工业可持续发展的固本之策。     

知识密集型服务业对中国制造业创新的影响——基于高技术制造业的实证分析

知识密集型服务业（KIBS）通过创造和转移知识推动创新。本文利用2005～2013年的省际面板数据,定量分析研究KIBS对高技术制造业创新影响,得出结论：整体上KIBS发展有助于高技术制造业创新;此外,KIBS发展对高技术制造业创新影响存在行业间和地区间差异,相比于西部的消极影响,中、东部的KIBS促进高技术制造业创新。因此提出政策建议：积极引导西部地区劳动密集型服务业的转型,加速KIBS的发展;引进外商投资,培养高素质KIBS人才,为中国制造业提供创新动力。