Performance in publicly funded innovation networks (PFINs): The role of inter-organisational relationships

This research investigates how performance in Publicly Funded Innovation Networks (PFINs) is affected by the inter-organisational relationships in terms of alignment between network administration and participating organisations. Our findings from a longitudinal embedded case study of a PFIN in the Nordic maritime industry show two key insights. First, we identify three patterns of inter-organisational relationships: functional (alignment between the self-organised relationships by project partners and relationship requirements from network administration), dysfunctional (contradictions between the self-organised relationships by project partners and relationship requirements from network administration), and anarchic (self-organised relationships by project partners with a lack of direction or leadership). Second, we show that each of these patterns of inter-organisational relationships have different effects on performance factors. An unexpected emergent finding was the observation of sub-circles of functional relationships within projects of dysfunctional relationships aimed at circumventing the misaligned requirements of network administration. We propose a conceptual framework detailing the effects of these three relationship patterns on PFIN performance in terms of immediate and long-term effects.     

The development of post-project buyer–seller interaction in service-intensive projects

The purpose of this research is to enhance the understanding of post-project buyer–seller interaction, a topic previously studied mainly from the perspective of social exchange or sleeping relationships. With the advent of service-intensive projects, however, the dynamics of post-project interaction has changed, demanding a broader theorization. This research extends the scope of project marketing, by proposing a research framework illustrating interaction development in a longitudinal setting. We utilize the framework to analyze three projects, two of which continued for more than a decade, through a qualitative case study. The research provides empirical insight into the interaction orientations and development patterns arising in the post-project stage. It suggests that post-project interaction develops through three main orientations (cooperative development, buyer-led development, and seller-led maintenance) that vary over time, thus creating unique development patterns. The study concludes with five practical recommendations for managers to deal with evolving post-project interaction.     

The marketing strategy of a project-based firm: The Four Portfolios Framework

The purpose of this paper is to address the simultaneous management of multiple business relationships and multiple projects in the marketing strategy of the project-based firm. The research question is: How can the essence and interdependencies between the portfolios of relationships and projects be conceptualized as the marketing strategy of a project-based firm? We address this question by constructing a framework including two portfolios of relationships and two portfolios of projects, and by discussing how these portfolios may be interrelated. Combining the approaches of relationship management in project marketing on the one hand and the management of project portfolios on the other contributes a novel viewpoint to project marketing.     

Integrating Knowledge and Knowledge Processes: A Critical Incident Study of Product Development Projects

Various scholars have argued that knowledge processes in organizations are integrally linked in practice. The extant literature though treats them separately and thereby disregards the interactions and tensions between them. A result of this way of studying knowledge processes is that little is known about their relative importance and how they work together. This paper addresses this gap in the literature through a critical incident study of knowledge processes in product development projects of high‐tech small firms. The paper starts off with a conceptual framework comprised of four knowledge processes—knowledge creation, knowledge application, knowledge integration, and knowledge retention—and their interactions. From the framework, three hypotheses are derived concerning the importance of these types of knowledge processes and their interactions, which in turn guide the empirical research. The hypotheses were tested in a retrospective study of 58 critical incidents in product development projects of 16 high‐tech small firms in the Netherlands. Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews using the critical incident interviewing technique. Interviewees were asked to “relive” and describe particular successful and unsuccessful examples of product development projects in the past. The analysis of the interview data focused upon whether there are differences between successful and unsuccessful projects in the types of knowledge processes and interactions that are performed. After coding all data into the various types of knowledge processes and interactions of the framework, t‐tests were used to test for significance of differences. The findings indicate that the difference between success and failure in these projects lies primarily in the extent to which knowledge integration and integration between knowledge processes have taken place. These findings demonstrate that, of the four knowledge processes, knowledge integration had the most significant impact on product development project success. The study demonstrates furthermore that higher degrees of interactions between knowledge processes were also associated with project success. Despite the limitations of this study, these results provide empirical support for the claim that integration is a key factor in organizations in general and in innovation projects in particular. For academics, this suggests further research on knowledge integration, and integration between knowledge processes, is warranted. For practitioners, it means that integration is a key process to be considered when choosing and executing new product development projects.     

How public policy can stimulate the capabilities of firms to innovate in a traditional industry through academic engagement: the case of the Swedish food industry

This paper shows how public policy can stimulate innovation in low- and medium-technology industries, by connecting firms and universities through collaborative scientific research. A conceptual framework proposes that collaborative research between universities and firms may result in tangible innovative outcomes, such as new or improved products or processes, and intangible outcomes that strengthen firms’ internal capabilities and thereby indirectly increase their innovativeness. Findings are presented from a case study of a Swedish public policy stimulating the development of firm capabilities for innovation, through collaborative research projects connecting universities and firms in the food industry between 1998 and 2006. In line with the conceptual framework, the analysis distinguishes between (i) direct outcomes, such as new products; and (ii) indirect outcomes in the form of the development of firms’ capabilities to innovate. Based on this analysis, the initial conceptual framework is expanded to indicate how policy can stimulate the development of firms’ capabilities.     

Applying knowledge management to project marketing in a demanding technology transfer project: Convincing the industrial customer over the knowledge gap

Literature in project and knowledge management has examined knowledge management in projects, but the utilization of knowledge management in project marketing is still largely unexplored. This study examines the links between knowledge management and project marketing activities in a project where the seller wants to convince the potential buyer about a demanding investment project. An in-depth case study illustrates this in a situation hampered by a technical knowledge gap between the parties. The buyer is committed when they can trust the seller's capability to successfully accomplish the project. The seller must criticize and communicate its core and project specific knowledge of technologies and customer needs through project marketing. A framework and implications on knowledge management and project marketing activities in different project phases is presented. It is proposed that knowledge management is a pertinent tool for project marketing as it helps to understand the roles of different knowledge types.     

Anatomy of a social partnership: A stakeholder perspective

We offer an anatomic analysis of a social partnership among a complex network of stakeholder organizations. Contributions of this research are twofold. First, we use explanatory case data to develop a framework of stakeholder collaboration in a complex setting involving a mix of for-profit and non-profit organizations. Our study is motivated by a need for understanding about how organizations can work within social partnerships to achieve their goals (be they profit related or otherwise). Second, we offer insight about lateral relationship exchange from the view of the entire project—a perspective not typically employed in the domain of relationship marketing. The focal issue in the case, use of technology to improve highway safety, is a social initiative which further sets our study apart in the relationship marketing literature. Using fieldnotes from 33 in-depth interviews, we employ a mix of inductive and deductive reasoning to formulate a conceptual framework and research propositions for the social partnership. The conceptual framework offers in-depth understanding of social partnership development and relationship dynamics. This, in turn, may help stakeholders achieve organizational goals more effectively in this unique environment.     

Why do students present different design objectives in engineering design projects?

Engineering design practice has been recognized as an effective approach to engage students in STEM learning. However, we noticed that students who possessed strong STEM knowledge did not necessarily perform well on their design projects. Thus, this study sought to explore factors that shaped students’ design objectives and means. A design-based research was adopted using a single group teaching experiment, in which students’ performance in relation to conceptual knowledge, engineering design practice, and their STEM attitudes were assessed in different design complexity groups. Based on the findings of this study, we concluded that students’ interest and metacognitive skills might be the key factors affecting their motivation during the engineering design process. Their abilities in predictive analysis and testing/revising were core elements affecting their design thinking. Our work provides preliminary evidence on how students form and present different design purposes and objectives in an engineering design project.     

How Relevant Is Government Championing Behavior in Technology Development?

Many studies emphasize the importance of government support in technology development. However, this study is among the first to provide empirical findings of the relevance of government roles for the performance of technology development projects. Based on earlier research and the strategic management literature, a theoretical model and hypotheses are developed to study the relevance of government roles and project teams' strategic behavior for technology development projects. Our results show that government championship is an important positive factor for the performance of technology development projects. Government championing behavior overcomes regulatory barriers, enthusiastically promotes the technology's advantages, and gets key decision makers involved. As such, government championship has more impact than government financial/technical assistance on both project performance and benefits to customers. The findings also show that both the proactiveness and defensiveness dimensions of project teams' strategic behavior contribute positively to project performance and benefits to customers. The paper concludes with implications for practice: From a policy perspective, government should extend its technology policies by taking on the role as a champion, while companies should invest in building professional relations with champions in government.     

Involving suppliers in product development: Insights from R&D directors and project managers

While there is increasing evidence that involving suppliers in new product development (NPD) is important, and for many firms even inevitable, there is also evidence that not all such efforts are successful. Firms aiming at implementing this strategy effectively have to pay close attention to several contingency factors on the organizational level and properly manage supplier involvement on the project level. The exploratory case study research underlying this article explores key issues to be considered when involving suppliers in NPD and the counter measures they can take. Our research shows that companies differentiate between so-called “know-how” and “capacity” projects, and that they manage them differently. Furthermore, this research shows that firms outside the automotive and high-tech manufacturing industries are likely to intensify supplier involvement in the future.     

Organizational structuring and project team structuring in integrated product development project

For a superior project result, integrated product development (IPD) project need to have stage-specific management approaches where the front-end structuring supports and strengthens the management of the project and the team during the execution stages. In the current study we focus on relationships on the organizational level variable during the front-end stage of the project, organizational structuring, with a project execution level variable, project team structuring to study the impact on product design glitches and project performance in the concurrent project environment. We hypothesize that managing the overall product development projects with integrated organizational structuring at the front stage and project team structuring during the development and project implementation stages can lead to reduced product glitches which can enhance the overall IPD project performance. We test our hypothetical model using data collected from the US automotive industry. Our data supports all the three proposed hypotheses. Discussion and implication of the empirical results, limitations of the current study, and recommendations for future studies are also provided.     

Antecedents of open innovation at the project level: empirical analysis of Korean firms

The concept of open innovation has recently gained wide academic attention, as it seems to have significant impact for company performance. Most empirical investigations about this emerging concept have been case studies of successful early adopters of open innovation, and their analyses have largely been at the company level. Although case studies at that level provide meaningful implications, the new phenomena merit a more in‐depth examination: that is, we need to collect and analyze data on multiple companies to explore more systematic findings about open innovations across companies. Moreover, analyses may need to go down to the individual project rather than the whole company level because innovation activities are often conducted as part of research and development (R&D) projects. To meet these needs, this study examines companies' open innovation efforts at the level of the individual R&D project. Specifically, the present study focuses on project‐level openness to better understand the mechanisms of open innovation. It explores systematic relationships between various antecedent factors and the degree of openness. Project‐level openness could be affected by team and task characteristics, such as team size, learning distance, strategic importance, technology and market uncertainty, and relevance to the main business. Relevant data collected from 303 companies in Korea were used to identify the antecedents that affect inbound and outbound openness. The research findings are expected to help provide a concrete theoretical framework suited for more generalized application and further practical development of open innovation strategy.     

Shared knowledge and product design glitches in integrated product development

Product development processes based on the joint collaboration of the cross-functional team, suppliers, and customers can minimize project glitches. Glitches in the product development project can cause project cost over-runs and delay a project past when first mover advantages are possible. While previous theoretical work has suggested a negative relationship between shared knowledge and product development glitches, empirical studies have not identified how different types of shared knowledge are associated with each other and the design glitches. This study proposes a model of the relationship between specific types of shared knowledge and design glitches in integrated product development (IPD) projects. We test our model using a sample of 191 projects from the automotive industry in the United States. The major findings were that: (1) shared knowledge of the development process can be built by improving a team's shared knowledge of customers, suppliers, and internal capabilities, (2) shared knowledge of the development process for a project reduces product design glitches, and (3) reduced product design glitches improve product development time, cost, and customer satisfaction.     

The Influence of Knowledge Accumulation on Buyer-Supplier Codevelopment Projects

This article investigates innovation across a supply chain and considers how knowledge accumulation as a consequence of buyer‐supplier codevelopment projects can influence the projects' specifications. The setting is the semiconductor industry, and the players are chip producers who cooperate with their suppliers to modify their manufacturing equipment used to produce new semiconductor devices. Two detailed case studies were undertaken to determine the tradeoffs encountered by the buyer and supplier when setting the parameters that govern codevelopment projects. The findings from the case studies inform a conceptual framework that outlines the net payoffs to buyers when deciding whether to “make” or “buy” their production equipment. If buyers pursue the “make” option, they then have to decide the degree to which they sponsor modifications tailored to their production processes or modifications more generally applicable across the industry. More generally applicable modifications likely would prompt suppliers to invest relatively more in follow‐on knowledge creation for upgrades and field support while leading to lower equipment costs due to economies of scale from larger production runs of the new equipment. The framework suggests that when making this sequence of decisions, an innovative buyer also weighs the importance of codevelopment for securing intellectual property rights, guaranteeing early access to new equipment enabling early product launch, and achieving high production yields quickly due to “previewing” the equipment. The conceptual framework leads to a multi‐period model that focuses on the importance of knowledge accumulation for project parameterization. As captured by the model, buyers may prefer generally applicable modifications to customized ones, because generally applicable modifications may lead to greater knowledge accumulation at the supplier. This knowledge accumulation may be either “embodied” in equipment upgrades or “unembodied” in improved field support. In addition to shaping the nature of particular codevelopment projects, knowledge accumulation also may have profound implications for long‐run industry structure. As seen in the semiconductor industry, knowledge accumulation at equipment suppliers has contributed to the rise of contract manufacturers, because these manufacturers can outfit their production facilities with equipment that embodies the accumulated knowledge. These findings suggest that for both short‐run and long‐run reasons, the dynamics of knowledge accumulation merit thorough attention when members of a supply chain cooperate during the course of new product development.     

Sources and management of tension in co-opetition case evidence from telecommunications satellites manufacturing in Europe

Co-opetition is filled with tension due to inherent contradictory and opposing forces. In this research, we develop a multi-level conceptual framework that helps to understand key drivers of tension in co-opetition and key approaches to managing the tension. We combine literature-based conceptual arguments and insights from in-depth study of one exemplar case of co-opetition between Astrium (EADS group) and Thales Alenia Space (Thales group) within the sector of telecommunications satellites manufacturing in Europe. Our findings highlight multiple sources of co-opetitive tension at different levels. Further, our research shows that a mixed organization based on both separation and integration of competition and cooperation is helpful to understand and effectively manage tension in co-opetition. This paper offers case-based rich insights on the sources and management of tension and has important implications for the design and conduct of future empirical research.     

Product Development Strategy: An Integration of Technology and Marketing

Although it seems obvious that a new product development strategy must bring together marketing and R&D strategies, the conceptual development of marketing and R&D strategies has taken place in relative isolation. More than ten years ago, when Professor Harry Nyström began his research program on product development in Swedish firms, he realized that the isolation wasn't an appropriate point of view. He began to construct a conceptual framework for analyzing product development strategies that incorporated many more variables than had traditionally been considered. The latest set of firms in the research program are four pulp and paper companies. They are in mature, process industries, quite unlike the earlier study firms. Yet many of the same propositions from the earlier research still hold. In this article, Professor Nyström presents the most recent version of his framework to help managers develop an integrated product development strategy.     

Commercialization performance of outbound open innovation projects in public research organizations: The roles of innovation potential and organizational capabilities

The current literature on open innovation (OI) has been limited to organization-level studies of inbound OI despite the importance of understanding outbound OI to improve performance of public research organizations (PRO) at project level. Our study contributes to the OI literature by investigating the relationship between the innovation potential and the commercialization performance of 189 outbound OI projects between PROs and firms, and the effect of network and project management processes on this relationship. In line with our expectation, our results demonstrate that PRO-firm outbound OI projects with technologies of high innovation potential are likely to have high commercialization performance. In addition, we empirically establish that among projects with technologies of high innovation potential, those with high resource allocation quality are more likely to have high commercialization performance. Finally, our findings indicate that among projects with technologies of high innovation potential, those with high opportunity discovery through networks are more likely to have high commercialization performance.     

Risk management, project success, and technological uncertainty

In times of increased competition and globalization, project success becomes even more critical to business performance, and yet many projects still suffer delays, overruns, and even failure. Ironically, however, risk management tools and techniques, which have been developed to improve project success, are used too little, and many still wonder how helpful they are. In this paper we present the results of an empirical study devoted to this question. Based on data collected on over 100 projects performed in Israel in a variety of industries, we examine the extent of usage of some risk management practices, such as risk identification, probabilistic risk analysis, planning for uncertainty and trade-off analysis, the difference in application across different types of projects, and their impact on various project success dimensions. Our findings suggest that risk management practices are still not widely used. Only a limited number of projects in our study have used any kind of risk management practices and many have only used some, but not all the available tools. When used, risk management practices seem to be working, and appear to be related to project success. We also found that risk management practices were more applicable to higher risk projects. The impact of risk management is mainly on better meeting time and budget goals and less on product performance and specification. In this case, we also found some differences according levels of technological uncertainty. Our conclusion is that risk management is still at its infancy and that at this time, more awareness to the application, training, tool development, and research on risk management is needed.     

Institutional means-ends decoupling work in industrial R&D project implementation

Managing goals is a key network management function and is critical in the implementation of industrial R&D projects. In this paper, we explore the implementation of an industrial R&D project, focusing in particular upon the role of means-ends decoupling work to understand how the goals are managed. We combine several data sources in our case research to explore project implementation through an understanding of means-ends decoupling work. We collected in-depth interviews, archival records and field observations within the R&D research setting of an industrial R&D project in the period of 2015 to 2017. Our findings identify three types of means-ends decoupling work in R&D project implementation: ‘work on’ causal complexity, ‘work at’ behavioural invisibility, and ‘work with’ practice multiplicity. In addition, we uncover six dynamic micro-mechanisms that collectively influence the making and nature of means-ends decoupling work and therefore serve to allow for the fluid switching of work as the institutional conditions permit. Overall, our findings have significant implications for understanding means-ends decoupling as a highly skilled network competence for managing R&D project implementation goals.     

Securing and managing an organization's network legitimacy: The case of Motorola China

This study combines concepts from institutional and network theory to explain the currently observed behaviors of organizations in securing their network legitimacy. Organizations secure their network legitimacy by engaging in business, social, and political activities, with key network actors and institutions. This is achieved within an institutional framework of rules, regulations, and ideologies, including any consequential contextual changes. But while network legitimacy plays an important part in an organization's survival, limited attention has been paid to the development of a conceptual framework. In this article we provide one such framework and, specifically examine attributes of successful network legitimacy through an inductive, interpretative case analysis of Motorola China, in a transitional Chinese telecommunication sector.