Enabling open innovation in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises: how to find alternative applications for your technologies

A critical success factor in the practice of Open Innovation is the timely identification of opportunities for out‐licensing a firm's technologies outside its core business. This can be particularly challenging for small‐ and medium‐sized enterprise (SMEs), because of their focussed business portfolio, specialized knowledge basis, and limited financial resources that can be devoted to innovation activities. The paper illustrates a quick and easy‐to‐use methodology for the identification of viable opportunities for out‐licensing a firm's technologies outside its core business. The method uses established TRIZ instruments in combination with non‐financial weighting and ranking techniques and portfolio management tools. It has been developed by the authors in collaboration with an Italian SME working in the packaging industry.     

A Twenty‐Year Citation Analysis of the Knowledge Outflow and Inflow Patterns from the Journal of Product Innovation Management

Since its inception in 1984, an emphasis on cross‐functionality and interdisciplinary research was encrypted into the DNA of the Journal of Product and Innovation Management (JPIM). This essay explores the extent to which the journal has served as a platform for exchange of ideas between different disciplines by examining knowledge outflow and inflow with other scientific journals and disciplines over a 20‐year period (1994‐2013). Based on an extensive bibliometric database, we gain insights about how JPIM has evolved. We show that the journal has become a gatekeeper, importing knowledge mostly from the marketing and management literatures, and exporting knowledge to the technology and innovations management and the operations management domains.     

The Determinants of Seller‐Buyer Interactions during New Product Development in Technology‐Based Industrial Markets

A growing body of literature indicates that the new product development (NPD) process in technology‐based, industrial markets is characterized by collaborative seller‐buyer relationships. Unfortunately, the extant literature is deficient in some significant ways. For example, there is no theoretical framework that explicates the content of these relationships. Also, there is little empirical research on the antecedents or consequences of these relationships. Therefore, managers seeking guidance on how to manage their NPD relationships have lacked appropriate insights. Not surprisingly, ineffective relationship management is a major contributor to new product failure in such settings. Against this background, this study develops and tests a model of seller‐buyer interactions during NPD. The model is based on the relationship marketing literature and is rooted in Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA). It was tested using data from 296 small to mid‐sized firms in a variety of technology‐based, industrial markets. It specifies product co‐development, education, and post‐installation product knowledge generation as three key behavioral dimensions that characterize seller‐buyer interactions during NPD. Our results indicate that the intensity with which these dimensions are undertaken vary with buyer‐related (i.e., perceived buyer knowledge and prior relationship history) and innovation‐related (i.e., product customization and innovation discontinuity) characteristics. For example, perceived buyer knowledge has a positive impact on product co‐development while innovation discontinuity has a positive impact on education. Further, we find that a seller's satisfaction with undertaking these behaviors is moderated by the technological uncertainty in the seller's industry. As a case in point, satisfaction with undertaking product co‐development is reduced when technological uncertainty is high. Collectively, the overall support we find for our model can help NPD managers optimize their relationships with buyers during NPD.     

Complementary technologies,knowledge relatedness,and invention outcomes in high technology mergers and acquisitions

Prior research on M&As and invention outcomes has not systematically examined the influence of two types of knowledge differences. Knowledge relatedness has typically been equated with knowledge similarity and the separate influence of knowledge complementarity has been overlooked. Similarly, studies examining innovation outcomes of M&As have typically focused on the role of technological knowledge and overlooked the influence of scientific knowledge. We develop a model of relatedness and invention performance of high‐technology M&As that considers science and technology similarity and complementarity as important drivers of invention. We test the model using a sample of M&As from the drug, chemical, and electronics industries and a fine‐grained measure of knowledge relatedness that distinguishes between science and technology relatedness. We find that complementary scientific knowledge and complementary technological knowledge both contribute to post‐merger invention performance by stimulating higher quality and more novel inventions. This suggests that high‐technology firms seeking acquisitions should search for, identify, and acquire businesses that have scientific and technological knowledge that is complementary to their own. Our results also suggest that similarities in knowledge facilitate incremental renewal, while complementarities would make discontinuous strategic transformations more likely, and that absorptive capacity research should be expanded to consider complementarities as well as similarities. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Innovation communities: the role of networks of promotors in Open Innovation

Research on Open Innovation has increasingly emphasised the role of communities in creating, shaping and disseminating innovations. However, the comparability of many studies has been hampered by the lack of a precise definition of the community construct, and the research on Open Innovation has to date not been well connected to insights from research on the role of transformational leaders and the networking of champions and promotors across organisational boundaries. For this reason, this paper introduces a new construct of 'innovation communities' based on promotor theory, which it defines as 'networks of promotors'. It proposes a comprehensive concept of the quality of interaction in innovation communities, and presents findings of three case studies, which explore the role of promotors and networks of promotors in Open Innovation. The case studies reveal that such transformational leaders as promotors, and especially their close and informal co-operation across functional and organisational boundaries, play a key role in Open Innovation.     

Creating University Spin‐Offs: A Science‐Based Design Perspective*

Academic entrepreneurship by means of university spin‐offs commercializes technological breakthroughs, which may otherwise remain unexploited. However, many universities face difficulties in creating spin‐offs. This article adopts a science‐based design approach to connect scholarly research with the pragmatics of effectively creating university spin‐offs. This approach serves to link the practice of university spin‐off creation, via design principles, to the scholarly knowledge in this area. As such, science‐based design promotes the interplay between emergent and deliberate design processes. This framework is used to develop a set of design principles that are practice based as well as grounded in the existing body of research on university spin‐offs. A case‐study of spin‐off creation at a Dutch university illustrates the interplay between initial processes characterized by emergent design and the subsequent process that was more deliberate in nature. This case study also suggests there are two fundamentally different phases in building capacity for university spin‐off creation. First, an infrastructure for spin‐off creation (including a collaborative network of investors, managers and advisors) is developed that then enables support activities to individual spin‐off ventures. This study concludes that to build and increase capacity for creating spin‐offs, universities should do the following: (1) create university‐wide awareness of entrepreneurship opportunities, stimulate the development of entrepreneurial ideas, and subsequently screen entrepreneurs and ideas by programs targeted at students and academic staff; (2) support start‐up teams in composing and learning the right mix of venturing skills and knowledge by providing access to advice, coaching, and training; (3) help starters in obtaining access to resources and developing their social capital by creating a collaborative network organization of investors, managers, and advisors; (4) set clear and supportive rules and procedures that regulate the university spin‐off process, enhance fair treatment of involved parties, and separate spin‐off processes from academic research and teaching; and (5) shape a university culture that reinforces academic entrepreneurship by creating norms and exemplars that motivate entrepreneurial behavior. These and other results of this study illustrate how science‐based design can connect scholarly research to the pragmatics of actually creating spin‐offs in academic institutions.     

Ethics of care and co‐worker relationships in UK banks

Utilising an analytical framework based on an ethics of care approach, this article examines the changing nature of co‐worker relationships in UK banks under the rise of performance management practices. It illustrates that with the implementation of performance management practices in general, and electronic performance management monitoring in bank branches in particular, co‐worker relationships have become increasingly objectified, resulting in disconnected and conflict‐ridden forms of engagement. The analysis reveals the multi‐layered and necessarily complex nature of co‐worker relationships in a changing technologically driven work environment and highlights the possibilities for people to defend the capacity to care for others from the erosive tendencies of individualised processes.     

Thinking inside the box? Intellectual structure of the knowledge base of innovation research (1988–2008)

Innovation is becoming increasingly popular as a concept as well as a field of research. As a field, it has accumulated a significant amount of scientific knowledge. Based on bibliometric data from four major social science disciplines—economics, sociology, psychology, and management—this study presents a ‘global view’ of the field by combining longitudinal and structural perspectives. It identifies major research traditions in the field, determines the content and disciplinary composition of each tradition, and maps the changes in the intellectual structure of the field over time. The study suggests that innovation research is becoming increasingly compartmentalized between economics and management disciplines and each segment is becoming increasingly self‐contained. A strategy along with a framework is suggested for making research contribution to the field. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Explaining post‐IPO venture performance through a knowledge‐based view typology

We extend the knowledge‐based view with a new typology and its application to post‐IPO firm performance. The typology categorizes knowledge development activity along the dimensions of familiarity (whether the firm has experience with the knowledge or it is new) and source (whether the firm creates it independently or with partners). We use this typology to determine direct and interaction effects of knowledge development activity on survival, RoA, and Tobin's q of newly public firms. Using a sample of 1,056 high‐technology manufacturing IPOs in 1990–2005, we find that focused, internal knowledge development correlates with higher performance. We also find a positive interaction effect in combining focused, internal and diversifying, alliance‐based knowledge development, and a negative interaction effect in combining diversifying, internal and alliance‐based knowledge development. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A New Method for Identifying Recombinations of Existing Knowledge Associated with High‐Impact Innovation

How existing technologies and ideas are recombined into new innovations remains an important question, particularly as the store of prior technology, art, and work expands at an increasing rate. Yet, methodologies for identifying effective recombinations remain a nascent area of research. This paper extends our previous work, which developed a network methodology for assessing a scientific article's recombinations of prior work. The methodology uses information from the entire co‐citation network of all papers recorded in the Web of Science to identify combinations of prior work that are conventional or atypical and then identifies the virtuous mix of conventional and atypical pairings associated with high impact work. Here, we summarize our prior method and findings, present new findings, and perform a case study application to the field of management science. First, the results show that despite an ever‐increasing frontier of possible new combinations of prior work, atypical combinations of prior work are becoming increasingly rare with time, while the distribution of conventional pairings is increasing with time. Second, our analyses show that with time the atypical pairings found in hit papers have a relatively stable mean rate at which they become conventional pairing. Nevertheless, the variance around the mean is growing significantly, which indicates that there is a greater tendency over time for novel pairings either to be virtually never used again or to become conventional pairings.     

The Economic Performance of State-owned Enterprises in Argentina an Empirical Assessment

This paper empirically investigates the economic performance of 13 Argentine SOEs. Among them, one displays a behavior consistent with profit maximization, eight exhibit a behavior consistent with output maximization with a maximum loss constraint, and four show a behavior consistent with employment maximization. Such behavior taken together is consistent with the use of SOEs to achieve government macroeconomic targets. We also have found that, although different political regimes have different effects on the behavior of individual SOEs, there is no evidence that the SOEs as a group performed differently under military regimes than under the populist Peron regime.     

Determinants of the Level of Knowledge Application: A Knowledge‐Based and Information‐Processing Perspective*

Knowledge application is of key importance in the development of successful new products. Knowledge application refers to an organization's timely response to technological change by utilizing the knowledge and technology generated into new products and processes. This study uses the knowledge‐based theory of the firm and considers its roots in the information‐processing approach to organization theory to identify and structure potential antecedents of knowledge application. This study develops four hypotheses concerning antecedents of knowledge application. The hypotheses are tested using data collected from 277 high‐technology firms. Empirical results indicate that a long‐term orientation supported by a research and development (R&D) budget, formal rewards, and information technology directly increases the level of knowledge application, while R&D co‐location indirectly increases the level of knowledge application. It is surprising to find that an increase in the level of organizational redundancy reduces the level of knowledge application. The findings also suggest that information technologies, lead‐user, and supplier networks do not appear to significantly influence organizational redundancy.     

Deliberate learning in corporate acquisitions: post‐acquisition strategies and integration capability in U.S. bank mergers

This paper introduces a knowledge‐based view of corporate acquisitions and tests the post‐acquisition consequences on performance of integration decisions and capability‐building mechanisms. In our model, the acquiring firm decides both how much to integrate the acquired firm and the extent to which it replaces this firm's top management team. It can also learn to manage the post‐acquisition integration process by tacitly accumulating acquisition experience and explicitly codifying it in manuals, systems, and other acquisition‐specific tools. Using a sample of 228 acquisitions in the U.S. banking industry, we find that knowledge codification strongly and positively influences acquisition performance, while experience accumulation does not. Furthermore, increasing levels of post‐acquisition integration strengthen the positive effect of codification. Finally, the level of integration between the two merged firms significantly enhances performance, while replacing top managers in the acquired firm negatively impacts performance, all else being equal. Implications are drawn for both organizational learning theory and a knowledge‐based approach to corporate strategy research. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dark Side or Bright Light: Destructive and Constructive Deviant Content in Consumer Ideation Contests

Firms use ideation contests to generate ideas from consumers. This type of collaboration provides access to new knowledge and reveals latent consumer needs. But it also is risky, as firms give up control to an unknown crowd. Some contestants use ideation contests to post content that is unintended and unwanted by contest hosts, a behavior that represents deviant co‐creation. Drawing on literature from sociology and consumer research, deviance is defined as a relative, norm‐violating behavior that has the potential to activate others. We report the results from a netnography study to define the phenomenon of deviant co‐creation in ideation contests. Based on these findings, we provide a theoretical foundation for deviant co‐creation and conceptualize and empirically illustrate various patterns of deviant content, ranging from destructive to constructive. The study reveals that deviant content in ideation contests includes illegitimate as well as legitimate content. Legitimate content includes five themes: humorous, provocative, unique, violation from technical, and social norms. Deviant content usually bewilders evaluators and draws their attention to the content. Destructive deviant content may trigger visible and malicious protests or result in mocking and ridicule on the contest platform and other social media, thereby exposing the contest host to reputational risks. Constructive deviant content can lead to positive discussions in comment sections and other social media outlets, as well as foster further development of an initial idea, thereby contributing to the firm's innovation potential. This article provides managers a deeper understanding of deviant content raising awareness for the dark side risks as well as indicating how to leverage it to achieve constructive co‐creation.     

Political Entrepreneurs and Co‐Managers: Labour Transnationalism at Four Multinational Auto Companies

This article examines labour transnationalism within four multinational automakers. In our sample, we find different forms of labour transnationalism, including transnational collective bargaining, mobilization, information exchange and social codes of conduct. We explain the differences through the interaction between management and labour in the context of the company structure; of particular importance are transnational coercive comparisons by management and the orientations of worker representatives as political entrepreneurs or co‐managers. We conclude that, although intensified worker‐side cross‐border co‐operation has not prevented wage‐based competition in general (due to the lack of between‐firm co‐ordination), it has reshaped employment relations within these multinational corporations.     

Modelling the incentive to participate in open source biopharmaceutical innovation

The open source model provides a valuable framework for collective knowledge production and dissemination. Open knowledge networks and other cooperative strategies (classified as open source discovery initiatives) are enabling biopharmaceutical companies to access disembodied knowledge‐based resources critical to downstream drug development. The objective of these cooperative strategic alliances is to preserve the downstream technological opportunities for multiple firms. When upstream discovery research cannot yield commercial products and when the costs associated with excessive upstream competition are too high, companies jointly benefit from cooperative knowledge production and open knowledge dissemination. An analysis of 39 open source initiatives (consortia) provides us with information on: the likely participants in such initiatives, the focus of knowledge production activities, the characteristics of the knowledge generated, and the management of joint knowledge assets. Based on this analysis, we use game models to understand the decision to participate in such strategic alliances better. Our game models provide a simple but elegant framework for understanding the impact of changing knowledge structures on the payoffs associated with cooperation and defection in knowledge production, and therefore on behaviour.     

Knowledge exchange in networked organizations: does place matter?

While many studies of knowledge exchange have been undertaken in private and service organizations, government and R&D enterprises, few have studied scientific inter‐organizational collaborations. Furthermore, in the literature on international networks there has been a tendency to assume that knowledge exchange will be inevitably enhanced by global dispersion. Two linked dynamics deserving further study are the role of geographic proximity and the role of information and communication technologies in facilitating knowledge flow across international networks. Studies of intra‐ and inter‐firm knowledge transfer, managerial work values and cultural norms all point to China as being a fascinating counterpoint for the way knowledge exchange might occur in Europe. So in this study of the ATLAS collaboration, a ‘big science’ global network of 3,500 physicists, we explore the perceptions of two subgroups: UK physicists working in Europe and Chinese scientists based in Beijing and HeFei. Findings from 24 interviews and non‐participant observation reveal that face‐to‐face working at European Organization for Nuclear Research (Geneva) is not without its difficulties, but for a variety of sociocultural reasons, it is primarily the Chinese scientists who perceive themselves to be inhibited from full participation in effective knowledge exchange.     

Pipes,pools, and filters: How collaboration networks affect innovative performance

Research summary : Innovation requires inventors to have both new knowledge and the ability to combine and configure knowledge (i.e., combinatory knowledge), and such knowledge may flow through networks. We argue that both combinatory knowledge and new knowledge are accessed through collaboration networks, but that inventors' abilities to access such knowledge depends on its location in the network. Combinatory knowledge transfers from direct contacts, but not easily from indirect contacts. In contrast, new knowledge transfers from both direct and indirect contacts, but is far more likely to be new and useful when it comes from indirect contacts. Exploring knowledge flows in 69,476 patents and 89,930 unique inventors reveals evidence that combinatory knowledge from direct contacts and new knowledge from indirect contacts significantly affects innovative performance. Managerial summary : Inventors often combine ideas to create innovations. To do this, they need ideas to combine and they need the ability to combine those ideas. Inventors can get ideas to combine as well as the ability to combine ideas through prior co‐workers. Prior co‐workers can share ideas that may be relevant for the inventor's project and can tell the inventor about other things that other people are working on, especially people the inventor may not know. This can help inventors easily learn about ideas from friends‐of‐friends. The ability to combine ideas, however, is much harder to pass on. Prior co‐workers must carefully work with the inventor to teach him or her the complex processes of combining ideas. This means that it is very hard to learn how to combine knowledge from a friend‐of‐a‐friend, but it may be possible to learn from prior co‐workers. We explore this phenomenon in the social relationships of software inventors. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The double‐edged effect of knowledge acquisition: How contracts safeguard pre‐existing resources

Research summary : Acquiring knowledge on a partner's pre‐existing resources plays an important yet ambiguous role in collaborative relationships. We formally model how contracts trade off productive and destructive uses of knowledge in a buyer‐supplier relationship. We show that, when the buyer's pre‐existing resources are vulnerable to the revelation of sensitive knowledge, the supplier overinvests in knowledge acquisition as it expects to use the knowledge as a threat in price negotiations. A non‐renegotiable closed‐price contract prevents such overinvestment and reduces the supplier's ability to expropriate the buyer ex post. Our results extend to the cases of renegotiable closed‐price contracts, repeated interactions between a buyer and a supplier, and the use of nondisclosure policies. We draw theoretical, empirical, and managerial implications from our model. Managerial summary : This study yields new insights regarding the use of contract design in protecting pre‐existing, nonrelationship specific assets in buyer‐supplier arrangements. Anecdotal examples illustrate the “dark side” of these arrangements where opportunistic suppliers exploit knowledge of buyers' pre‐existing resources to seek rent and appropriate value. When a supplier is likely to act harmfully, a closed‐price contract that specifies the price of the supplier's component upfront may reduce the supplier's incentives to overinvest in acquiring and exploiting knowledge of the buyer's pre‐existing resources. As such, when a buyer's pre‐existing resources are highly valuable, and thus more vulnerable to use by the supplier outside of the arrangement, a non‐renegotiable closed‐price contract is more efficient. Additionally, limited disclosure policies and informal agreements based on repeated interactions complement indirect governance via price contracts. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

After the reforms: how have public science research organisations changed?

Throughout the Western world, the provision of public good science research has undergone dramatic reforms over the past two decades. In the aftermath of these reforms, this paper asks whether the organisations engaged in science research and knowledge production have actually changed, and if so, how? Archetype analysis is used to explore the deep structures of four comparable case study organisations drawn from the New Zealand science sector. The study concludes that no new, stable organisational archetype has emerged following the reforms, but that in fact, a dynamic style of organisation that is in a state of endless transition is the most appropriate response to contemporary demands for knowledge production. The role of organisational leaders in this context is not only to make sense of the organisation's ever‐changing situation, but also to translate this sense into the actions of organisational members and other stakeholders.