In search of alliance-level relational capabilities: Balancing innovation value creation and appropriability in R&D alliances

In order to advance our knowledge of alliance-level relational capabilities, this paper investigates how searching across different knowledge domains affects both innovation value creation and appropriability in R&D alliances. Focusing on the alliance level of analysis, we advance that, in R&D strategic alliances, search span has a curvilinear (inverted U-shape) relationship with value creation and a positive relationship with value appropriability. Our analysis on a sample of 1515 interfirm dyadic R&D alliances confirms these hypotheses. We find that, after a threshold level of search span, joint value creation decreases. Conversely, the allied firms’ ability to appropriate the value of their jointly developed inventions grows exponentially as the alliance search span increases. Thus, value creation and appropriability may have conflicting exigencies. We argue that firms involved in R&D strategic alliances should develop the interorganizational relational capability to jointly manage the process of search that occurs at the interorganizational level, and specifically the span of their search, in ways that balance the needs of value creation and appropriability.     

Strategy and process of value creation and appropriation in service clusters

Service-oriented networks and clusters of firms have increasingly become prevalent in recent decades. This new form of service clusters is different from the traditional industrial clusters in which the focus is primarily on costs, production, and channel distributions. We extend the research on service innovation, alliance networks, and industrial clusters to analyze the strategy and the process of value creation and appropriation in service clusters. Higher perceived customer value is created and delivered by a network of agglomerate firms dynamically engaged in value networking and service innovation. The proposed theoretical framework and innovation mechanism provide new insights for firms located in the service clusters to gain and sustain competitive advantages. It also offers a new perspective for policymakers to advance regional and global competitiveness.     

Business Models for Frugal Innovation in Emerging Markets: The Case of the Medical Device and Laboratory Equipment Industry

This study investigates business models for frugal innovation (i.e. a specific form of resource-constrained innovation) in the medical device and laboratory equipment industry in the context of emerging markets. Based on original data from five case studies, we investigate how firms can set up value creation and value capturing mechanisms to reach new customer segments in remote rural areas with unprecedented value propositions. With this research, we contribute to the literature on frugal innovation and business models in emerging markets. It is among the first empirical studies to apply a fine-grained perspective on resource-constrained innovation in emerging markets. In doing so, we focus on its most disruptive form, which is when these innovations entail entirely new applications. We advance and detail the value proposition for frugal innovation in these industries and argue that frugal innovation create new markets. Further, we show how firms set up their value creation and value capturing mechanisms to achieve the value proposition and identify two distinct Research & Development (R&D) strategies for frugal innovation.     

Improvised internationalization in new ventures: The role of prior knowledge and networks

How do entrepreneurs identify foreign market opportunities and how do they identify foreign market(s) and customers? We draw on the concepts of effectuation, improvisation, prior knowledge and networks to study the early internationalization of new ventures operating in the Irish Shellfish sector. We argue that the internationalization process was strongly influenced by two ‘resources to hand’: the entrepreneurs’ idiosyncratic prior knowledge and their prior social and business ties. We observe an effectuation logic and extensive improvisation in the internationalization process of these new ventures.     

An analysis of firm-level innovation strategies in the US biotechnology industry

This study examines factors that may affect innovation strategies and performance of firms in the biotechnology industry. Specifically, differences between factors common to firms with high R&D intensity and those to firms with low R&D intensity are investigated. Biotechnology firms with relatively higher levels of R&D intensity attribute their innovation performance to research-based innovation factors and strategies such as strengthening their own research capabilities, entering into research collaborations with universities, industry leaders and other biotech firms, and licensing their technology. These strategies can be summarized as alignment within the industry. Firms with relatively lower R&D intensity have a hybrid focus—they invest in R&D but may also have products on the market. These firms attribute their innovation performance more so to production-based innovation factors and strategies such as gaining market access and maintaining connections with customers. Their strategy focuses on competitiveness, marketing, and distribution channels, while not ignoring the importance of a strong research base and the need to advance technologically. In a sense, strategies employed to achieve successful innovation reflect the stage of innovation in which a firm is operating for a particular product or process.     

成熟企业发展突破性技术创新的困境与对策

鉴于突破性技术创新非连续和突变性的特点,产品性能比主流市场上已定型的产品差、市场规模难以预测等自身特点,加之外界组织环境的局限性,使得成熟企业在发展突破性技术创新时,面临着诸如技术识别能力、投资决策模型、市场营销过程、主流用户、组织结构适应性、资源缺乏和分配、组织决策层意识观念等多方面的困境。通过剖析这些困境产生的原因,提出了技术突破轨道图的技术识别、投资决策的实物期权、技术开发的二元组织、目标客户的市场地位、灵活的联盟战略、宽松扶持的政策环境以及全面的技术支持等对策,为成熟企业发展突破性技术创新提供有力的理论支撑。     

欠发达地区企业技术创新联盟构建策略

企业技术创新联盟有利于企业技术创新能力的提升,然而,欠发达地区存在着企业技术创新投入有限、技术创新人才缺乏、高新技术研发落后、战略性和长期性的产学研合作缺乏、政府有效支持不力等不足。因此,本文就欠发达地区企业可以通过构建企业技术创新联盟来加快技术进步,并从政府主导作用的发挥、企业资源整合与合作、鼓励高校和科研机构积极参与、加强学习能力培养、发挥技术创新战略联盟协同效应等方面,提出了企业技术创新联盟的构建对策与建议。     

Supplier's involvement and success of radical new product development in new ventures

Supplier involvement is essential to a new venture seeking to develop a radical innovation. Despite this, prior literature has not adequately addressed supplier involvement in radical innovation, nor what the antecedents to increased supplier involvement are. We build and test a conceptual model of the antecedents and new product performance outcomes of supplier involvement in the development of radical innovation by new ventures. Antecedent variables (supplier's specific investments and the new venture's qualification of the supplier's abilities) are drawn from the transaction cost analysis literature. We include new venture's relative power and new venture's level of commitment to the supplier as contingency conditions. We develop a set of hypotheses relating supplier involvement to radical innovation performance, relating the antecedent variables to supplier involvement, and also testing the interaction effects of the two contingency conditions. We gather data from both new ventures and their major suppliers for 173 recent radical innovation projects, and use hierarchical regression analysis to test our hypotheses. We find that the contingency conditions moderate achieved levels of supplier involvement, and also find a direct relationship between achieved level of involvement and performance. We conclude with theoretical contributions and managerial implications.     

网络位置、产品创新战略与创新绩效——以中国制造企业为样本

以创新网络理论与产品创新战略理论为基础,本文将网络位置视为重要的外生性创新资源并作为模型的独特前置因素,以279家中国制造企业为样本,运用因子分析、回归分析以及Bootstrap方法实证研究产品创新战略与创新绩效问题。从技术、市场、设计三个维度将产品创新战略划分为技术推动型、市场拉动型和设计驱动型三种类型,进而厘清网络位置、三种产品创新战略以及创新绩效之间的逻辑关系,从产品创新视角清晰揭示不同网络位置影响企业创新绩效提升的内在机理和具体路径。研究结果表明,网络中心位置和中介位置均会显著促进企业绩效提升;三种产品创新战略分别在网络中心位置影响创新绩效过程中发挥显著的中介效应;但在网络中介位置影响企业创新绩效过程中,技术推动型产品创新战略的中介效应不显著,市场拉动型和设计驱动型产品创新战略则分别发挥显著中介效应。最后对研究结果进行分析和理论解释,以期对指导中国制造企业积极利用创新网络资源、选择适合自身发展的产品创新战略以促进绩效提升具有一定参考价值。     

Creating new business through strategic community management: case study of a multimedia business

For the last few years, the videoconferencing system and multi-point connection service market represented by multimedia technology have enjoyed strong growth in Japan. Behind the recent upturn in this market was the strategic alliance of NTT, Japan's largest telecommunications carrier, and PictureTel of the US, followed by the birth of business communities centred around or outside NTT, thus intensively creating and boosting a new market referred to as interactive video communication. This article reviews the challenges that faced NTT, one of the big businesses in Japan, followed by PictureTel and other players within and outside NTT, all of which were lined up to create various strategic business communities. The article gives careful consideration to the measures taken by these players who achieved success in such a way as to alter employee consciousness, vitalize organizational morale, entrench the new NTT 'Phoenix' brand (videoconferencing system) in the Japanese market and create an emergent new video multi-point connection network service market. And it was under the innovative leadership of community leaders that communities' core competencies were elevated, and innovation of the multimedia business achieved, as a function of the creation and harmonization of new value outlooks within the business community, inside as well as outside the companies.     

Top management team compensation in high-growth technology ventures

We examine the key compensation issues pertaining to the top management team that occur during the early stages of growth in new ventures, specifically those anticipating rapid growth such as in technology-intensive markets. Similar to other new ventures, high-growth technology ventures are small in size but they have a goal of rapid growth giving rise to a need for resources and managerial talent to sustain the growth. New ventures are likely to compete in the market with larger organizations for top management team members. As a result, new ventures in rapid growth technology markets experience some unique compensation challenges. Critical for these firms is the issue of distributing equity among members of the founding team and structuring compensation to attract and retain non-founder executives. Drawing from the human resource management and entrepreneurship literatures, this paper develops a set of propositions predicting top management team compensation strategies for rapidly growing new ventures. Directions for future research are also discussed.     

中美人工智能发展对比研究及对江苏的启示

文章对中美两国人工智能的政策战略、市场现状、代表性企业、创新能力、产业集聚等进行详细对比,总结各自的优势和不足.通过对比,借鉴中美国家层面的发展经验,提出江苏下一步人工智能发展应围绕产业生态打造,突出五个重点:一是持续优化省级政策及战略,统筹调动各部门力量;二是加强人工智能市场培育,支持AI投融资、模式创新、供需对接等...     

Supply-Side Innovation and Technology Commercialization

The majority of research and practice tends to conceptualize innovation as a vertically coupled, intra-organizational process. We expand this perspective by conceptualizing innovation as a vertically decoupled, inter-organizational process and by studying the role of research universities as suppliers of discoveries to this market for innovation . We combined logic from agency and real options theories to explain why the outcomes of technology commercialization are a function of licensing strategies, the autonomy of technology licensing offices (TLOs), and the incentives bestowed on scientists, research departments, and TLO officers. We rely on data from licensing surveys, interviews with 128 TLO directors, and – for convergent validity – from web-based searches of the TLOs of American universities and the US Patent and Trademark Office. Results suggest that commercialization outcomes (in this case, revenue and start-up creation) are enhanced when TLOs employ diverse licensing strategies, TLOs enjoy greater autonomy, universities share revenues with scientists' departments, and universities compensate TLOs officers well. Results also show that late entrants – typically underperforming universities – inflate royalty shares to scientists as a means to rectify their commercialization record. We conclude with a discussion of this study's contribution to the literature on innovation and technology commercialization.     

Market challenges facing academic research in commercializing nano-enabled implantable devices for in-vivo biomedical analysis

This article reports on the research and development of a cutting-edge biomedical device for continuous in-vivo glucose monitoring. This entirely public-funded process of technological innovation has been conducted at the University of Barcelona within a context of converging technologies involving the fields of medicine, physics, chemistry, biology, telecommunications, electronics and energy. The authors examine the value chain and the market challenges faced by in-vivo implantable biomedical devices based on nanotechnologies. In so doing, they trace the process from the point of applied research to the final integration and commercialization of the product, when the social rate of return from academic research can be estimated. Using a case-study approach, the paper also examines the high-tech activities involved in the development of this nano-enabled device and describes the technology and innovation management process within the value chain conducted in a University–Hospital–Industry–Administration–Citizens framework. Here, nanotechnology is seen to represent a new industrial revolution, boosting the biomedical devices market. Nanosensors may well provide the tools required for investigating biological processes at the cellular level in vivo when embedded into medical devices of small dimensions, using biocompatible materials, and requiring reliable and targeted biosensors, high speed data transfer, safely stored data, and even energy autonomy.     

技术联盟促进海洋产业发展研究——以温州为例

"海洋强国"和沿海大开发已成为我国新一轮发展的重要引擎和历史使命。构建海洋技术联盟对促进海洋产业发展是一个非常有意义的命题。然而与皮革、低压电器等传统优势产业的技术联盟相比,战略性新兴产业的技术联盟在构建模式和运行机制等方面均有明显差异,因此,为了让技术联盟在温州发展海洋产业中发挥作用,我们应该采取由政府承担龙头组建技术联盟、依托科研单位提升技术创新能力及通过技术联盟构建人才平台三项措施。     

Collectively created opportunities in emerging ecosystems: The case of solar service ventures

This study suggests that in the entrepreneurial communities of emerging industries, individual entrepreneurs may simultaneously create opportunities that spill over to others and discover opportunities already created by others. Extant opportunity literature, focused on single actors and their personal networks or on the information function of market prices, is largely mute on the role of opportunities in value networks with distributed entrepreneurial efforts. Ecosystem theory, a literature stream that seldom intersects opportunity literature, contributes with a conceptual framework to study the question. The paper seeks to shed light on how opportunities are created or discovered by new ventures as they are involved in the interlinked endeavor of forming a new ecosystem.The study examines five case studies of US ventures in the early phase of the solar service industry, an industry in which entrepreneurs offer customers access to solar panels as a service rather than as a product. These ventures inadvertently created an industry ecosystem together, as they could not protect the value created by their business partners׳ new knowledge, or by the emerging social webs between partners. They shaped opportunities together, passing value back and forth amongst themselves. This paper offers fundamental observations on how opportunity creation and discovery is distributed among a community of entrepreneurs as a business ecosystem grows.     

Exploring preconditions for open innovation: Value networks in industrial firms

The open innovation model embraces the purposive flow of internal and external ideas as a foundation for innovation and network formation. While the open innovation paradigm has been successfully applied in high-tech settings, there is a lack of research on adopters of open innovation in other settings. We describe a case study conducted in a process industry setting, focusing on the LKAB mineral group as it makes a transition from a closed to a more open innovation context by adopting remote diagnostics technology. This process has resulted in the creation of new value networks. By tracing the reasoning behind the organizational transformation and studying the technology used to carry it through, we seek to explore the preconditions for open innovation and provide insight into the role of IT in the process. Our findings show that adoption of the open innovation model is grounded in developing organizational environments that are conducive to innovation, including expertise in creating a culture for knowledge sharing, building a trustful environment, and a resourceful use of IT.     

Outbound open innovation in bio-pharmaceutical out-licensing

Our study investigates the outbound open innovation of firms engaged in technological venturing. Leveraging insights from the sociology theory and innovation literatures, we clarify whether social status helps entrepreneurial ventures overcome market imperfection and information asymmetry in out-licensing and illustrate the importance of specific aspects of social status building in this context. We also examine the effect of failure experiences on out-licensing. We take a dynamic view of desorptive capacity by studying an entrepreneurial venture’s learning process, both internally, in terms of its own technology trajectory, and externally, through inter-organizational alliances. We apply a negative binomial model to our novel panel of 180 firms studied over an 18-year period with controls for stocks of clinical development activities, patenting and prior licensing activities. Empirical analysis enables us to observe the impact which the firms’ technological and development status, reputation and desorptive capacity exert upon out-licensing volume. Prior outbound open innovation studies do not account for the heterogeneity of technology and R&D success and failure experiences observed in our study. We also demonstrate the contingency effect of external learning from alliances during the building-up of a firm’s desorptive capacity, or the way in which the number of co-authoring partners in scientific publications negatively moderates the positive effect of the number of commercial alliances on the volume of its out-licensing deals. Our findings contribute to the understanding of external knowledge exploitation and complement important aspects of the literatures on outbound open innovation and desorptive capacity, offering empirically rich insights for bio-pharmaceutical firms into the drivers behind volumes of out-licensing deals.     

价值驱动视角下制造企业服务创新能力的构建机制——基于艾默生网络能源(中国)的案例研究

服务创新能力是一种基于服务机会识别与开发的价值创造能力,也是制造企业应对动态市场环境,提升服务质量和服务效率,构建、提高与维持竞争优势的有效路径。现有服务创新能力的研究主要从企业内部运营与网络嵌入视角探讨服务产品和服务流程的创新,很少涉及制造企业的服务创新能力及其构建机制。本文从价值驱动视角,运用案例研究方法,通过对艾默生网络能源(中国)的案例分析,基于人力资本、关系资本和结构资本三个价值驱动要素探讨制造企业如何实现服务创新能力的构建。研究结果显示,在人力资本、关系资本和结构资本的共同驱动下,制造企业通过组织学习、网络嵌入和资源匹配构建其服务创新能力,且驱动因素在企业生命周期的不同阶段具有动态变化性。     

河南省科技金融赋能中小型科技企业高质量发展现状与对策

中小型科技企业是培育发展新动能的重要力量,但融资难是其长期性难题,科技金融是解决该难题的有效途径。当前,河南省在打造中西部科技创新高地的过程中,需要通过科技金融机制体制创新,积极拓展与科技保险、创新创业、网络金融等方面相适应的科技金融途径,解决资金与技术的对接难题,打通中小型企业从技术到产业的“最后一公里”,实现地区中小型科技企业的高质量发展。