Non‐R&D innovation and firms’ new product performance: the joint moderating effect of R&D intensity and network embeddedness

Non‐R&D innovation increasingly plays a critical role in explaining firms’ new product performance. Yet, there has been little research on the consequences and contingent mechanisms of non‐R&D innovation for firms embedded in collaborative network environments. To address this research gap, we investigated a conceptual framework of non‐R&D innovation using data drawn from Chinese manufacturing firms. First, we found that non‐R&D innovation positively affects firms’ new product performance. Second, we discovered that high R&D intensity positively strengthens the impact of firms’ non‐R&D innovation on new product performance. Third, we provided critical analysis of the role of non‐R&D innovation in promoting new product performance, accomplished by enhancing R&D investment while simultaneously improving the degree of network embeddedness. Our findings extend both the non‐R&D innovation literature and open innovation literature while providing managers with several key recommendations.     

Vertical innovation partnerships and relational performance: The mediating role of trust,interdependence, and familiarity

Which relational atmosphere would allow clients and suppliers to fully benefit from their innovation partnerships? Adopting an interactionist approach, we hypothesized that elements of a partnership atmosphere mediate the relationship between partnership type and relational performance. Based on taxonomic analysis of 160 cross-industry vertical innovation partnerships (VIPs) with differing contractual, relational, and organizational arrangements, we identified four VIP types: free, project-based, elaborated, and exclusive. Our results did not support a direct effect from VIP types on performance. However, we found that a trustful atmosphere enables achieving and exceeding expected benefits in both project-based and exclusive VIPs, whereas a familiar atmosphere enables achieving and exceeding expected benefits only for exclusive VIPs, and interdependence allows exceeding benefits only for project-based VIPs.     

Understanding the role of service innovation behavior on business customer performance and loyalty

Providing new services to customers gives firms a competitive advantage in the market. Consequently, firms strive to develop innovative service that delivers new value propositions to customers and leads to customer satisfaction and the acquisition of new customers. The authors investigate the relationship between the innovative behavior of service providers, business customer performance, and business customer loyalty in the safety industry. The study's results show that technology-oriented and co-creation-oriented innovative behavior leads to business customer performance. Business customer performance is closely related to recommendations and re-contracts. Moreover, the degree of safety involvement has a moderate effect between service innovation and business customer performance. The findings have important theoretical and managerial implications for service innovation for researchers as well as service providers.     

Building relationship innovation in global collaborative partnerships: big data analytics and traditional organizational powers

This study examines how relationship innovation can be developed in global collaborative partnerships (alliances, joint ventures, mergers, and acquisitions). The recently emerging theory of big data analytics linked with traditional organizational powers has attracted a growing interest, but surprisingly little research has been devoted to this important and complex topic. Therefore, after developing the theoretical foundations, our study empirically quantifies the links between the theoretical constructs based on the data collected from chief executive officers, managing directors, and heads of departments who work in contemporary global data‐and‐information driven collaborative partnerships. The results from structural equation modeling indicate that the relationship innovation depends on the power of big data analytics and non‐mediated powers (NMP, expert and referent). The power of big data analytics also mediates the correlation between NMP and relationship innovation. However, mediated powers (coercive and manipulative) negatively affect the power of big data analytics and relationship innovation. The interaction effects further depict that analytically powered partnerships have better relationship innovation compared with those which focus less on the analytical power. Consequently, the contributions of this study provide a deeper understanding of mechanisms of how modern collaborative partnerships can use big data analytics and traditional organizational powers to co‐create relationship innovation.     

Recombination for innovation: performance outcomes from international partnerships in China

This paper examines the relationship between different types of international partnerships and innovation performance. By drawing on a conceptual framework which outlines how new bundles of transferrable and nontransferrable ownership advantages are created from such partnerships (Collinson and Narula, 2014 ), we analyze empirical evidence from a large‐scale survey of 320 individual company responses from the China‐based operations of foreign multinational firms alongside in‐depth case studies. Our study reveals that different types of collaborative partnerships (cooperative vs. competitive) are associated with different innovation performance outcomes (product vs. process innovation). In addition, we find that a sustainable, reciprocal relationship between collaborative partners can generate superior innovation performance. Contextual factors including the role of government and industry characteristics have an important bearing on innovation performance in collaborative partnerships in China. We conclude with implications for researchers, managers, and policymakers.     

Partner technological heterogeneity and innovation performance of R&D alliances

This study investigates the impacts of partner technology heterogeneity on innovation performance of alliance firms both in terms of R&D output and the enhancement of partners’ innovation capability. We apply a generalized semi-parametric model on a questionnaire survey result of 413 High and New Technology Enterprises in China. In order to ensure the robustness and practicability of our result, PCA is applied to extract comprehensive information and SiZer analysis is employed to test the linearity and significance of the nonparametric functions in the model. Our results indicate that collaborations between partners with different industry technologies exert inversed U-shaped R&D output pattern and affect very little the innovation ability of focal firms. The impact of industry domain divergence is no longer significant when partner technology heterogeneity is added in the model of analysis. Partner technology heterogeneity leads to an ascending S-shaped R&D output pattern and contributes positively to innovation capabilities. One of the implications of our findings is that when choosing R&D alliance partners, firms are better off avoiding candidates from a different industry domain but opt for potential collaborators who are in the same industry but in the different technical domain, which may facilitate more effective organizational learning. Further, we argue that the reasons behind the S-shaped R&D output pattern led by technology heterogeneity being the co-existence of competition and cooperation between partners where firms collaborate in value-creation by combining diverse resources and compete for acquiring partner’s distinct technology and resources. Therefore, we suggest that, for the sustainability of collaborative innovation outcome, both cooperation and competition amongst alliance partners should be encouraged and well balanced at different stages of joint R&D projects.     

The effects of complementarity of knowledge and capabilities on joint innovation capabilities and service innovation: The role of competitive intensity and demand uncertainty

Service innovation has become increasingly important for the growth of developed and developing countries. Despite an extensive body of literature on the role of joint innovation capabilities in improving a firm's innovativeness, the multivariate influences of operant resources and joint innovation capabilities, as well as the interplay among these in the prediction of service innovation have not been scrutinized in the context of B2B SMEs in a developing country. This study aims to fill this gap by testing a model that shows the relationships among complementarity of knowledge and capabilities as operant resources, joint innovation capabilities, and service innovation. We derive hypotheses about these relationships and test them using data from a sample of 302 respondents from 151 firms operating in the UAE. The results show that the relationships between complementarity of knowledge and joint innovation capabilities, and between joint innovation capabilities and service innovation, are significant and positive. They also show that the mediation effect of joint innovation capabilities on the relationship between complementarity of knowledge and service innovation is positive and full. This study also tests the moderating roles of competitive intensity and demand uncertainty in the relationship between joint innovative capabilities and service innovation and finds that their connection is stronger when competitive intensity is high.     

How to perform collaborative servitization innovation projects: the role of servitization maturity

Although current literature indicates that openness and collaboration are crucial for success in an innovative servitization solution within interorganisational servitization projects, research is limited compared to that on product and technology innovation projects. Moreover, this emerging servitization literature is limited to the traditional lead-firm perspective within larger consortiums. To help redress the balance, our research studied six collaborative servitization projects in mobile information and communication technologies (mICT) to explore why some open innovation efforts succeed in simultaneous service and product innovation with a market application of innovative solution, while others do not. The study provides empirical evidence that only a small number of projects resulted in an effective servitization innovation solution. This conclusion emphasises the complexity of creating service innovation in the mICT sector. By comparing better performing servitization projects with those that were less successful suggests that higher performance, in terms of novel service development, requires more than mere strong intention, adequate leadership and change management competencies. Rather, it also requires real servitization maturity in terms of a shared servitization framework and market-oriented innovation.     

Public–private partnerships: Task interdependence and contractibility

We examine the proper scope of public–private partnerships in the context of a project consisting of two tasks, building and operation of a facility. We investigate the optimal arrangement regarding bundling versus unbundling and private ownership versus public ownership. Like Bennett and Iossa (2006), we assume that the innovative activity in the building stage has impacts on, among other things, the subsequent operational cost. We relax the nature of task interdependence and study different contractual frameworks. The general insight is that given limitations in contractibility, contrary to common sense, complementarity between tasks favors unbundling over bundling.     

Customer collaboration,service firms' diversification and innovation performance

To sustain competitive advantage, service firms must adapt to the market environment, often by means of diversification and innovation. While extensive research has focussed on the role of customer collaboration in service firm innovation performance, fewer studies have examined the role of firm diversification in this relationship. This study draws on the resource-based view and dynamic capability literature to explore relationships between customer collaboration, diversification and innovation performance of service firms. A conceptual framework was developed and tested using a survey of 156 mining equipment, technology and services (METS) firms in South Australia, and case studies. The findings indicate that service and market diversification mediate the relationship between customer collaboration and innovation performance. Importantly, our findings demonstrate that customer collaboration has no direct effect on the innovation performance of service firms. The research helps practitioners and policymakers to understand the importance of enhancing collaboration across supply chains to build diversified and resilient to downturns in traditional sectors service economies.     

Priorities when selecting business partners for service innovation: The contingency role of product innovation

Firms increasingly engage in business-to-business cooperation to develop relevant innovations. Scholars have shown that firms can improve service innovation either by cooperating with suppliers or by cooperating with competitors. However, there is a dearth of research examining the relative importance of cooperating with suppliers and competitors to improve service innovation, and how this relative importance depends on embracing product innovation. Based on a cross-industry sample of 16,062 Spanish firms, this article addresses these research gaps, finding that firms can benefit from cooperating with both suppliers and competitors to boost service innovation, without prioritizing either. However, this article also shows that, if firms embrace product innovation, they should prioritize cooperating with competitors to boost service innovation.     

Transatlantic innovation infrastructure networks: public-private, EU–US R&D partnerships

Collaborative, team-based research is now the most significant mode of activity in the global scientific community. Anecdotal and statistical evidence shows moreover that collaboration in scientific research is increasingly global in nature. That is, the groups of researchers who are involved in scientific progress often span one or more nations in origin, location and/or sponsorship. Another significant trend in recent cases of scientific collaboration is the increase in cross-sectoral cooperation, where researchers in a group are employed by government, private industry, and/or academic and other non-profit institutions.
In this paper, we review the scale, scope and intensity of cross-national, cross-sectoral research collaboration through the analysis of historical data on co-authorship of scientific publications. The first part of the paper reviews existing literature on the analysis of co-authorship data, and discusses the limitations of this form of analysis and typical strategies to mitigate those limitations. The second part of the paper describes a preliminary study of cross-national, cross-sectoral scientific collaborations covering the years 1988 through 1997, where we examined the scale (volume of co-authored papers), intensity (co-authored papers versus other kinds of co-authorship), and scope (patterns in co-authorship) for cross-national, cross-sectoral collaborations. The conclusion of the paper discusses significant trends and patterns derived from this study, and their implications for further research into these types of collaborations.     

Creating shareholder value via collaborative innovation: the role of industry and resource alignment in knowledge exploration

Collaborative innovation provides firms with a privileged opportunity to perform exploration in an externally oriented mode. The central challenges in exploration via collaborative innovation lie in the selection of relevant partners and in gaining access to potentially valuable external knowledge that the focal firm lacks. This article focuses on two aspects of inter-organizational alignment that affect knowledge differences and may thus help explaining the shareholder value implications arising from collaborative innovation: industry and resource alignment. Relying on data covering 97 bilateral collaborative innovations (194 innovation partners) in R&D intensive high-technology industries, we used event study methodology and follow-up hierarchical regression analyses to test our conceptual framework. With regard to industry alignment, results suggest that investors value greater industry distance between collaborating partners, especially when the partner firm provides high-level R&D resources. Furthermore, the results show a positive effect of supplementary resource alignment (i.e., a focal firm's R&D resources are supplemented by a partner firm's R&D resources) and, notably, a negative effect of complementary resource alignment (i.e., a focal firm's R&D resources are complemented by a partner firm's marketing resources) on investors' valuation of the collaboration's expected future performance. They, thus, contribute to research on shareholder value implications of collaborative innovation. From a managerial perspective, the study provides a better understanding of partner selection and shows how managers should position a collaboration to signal the shareholder value-creating potential to investors.     

Product‐market strategy and the marketing capabilities of the firm: impact on market effectiveness and cash flow performance

We report on two studies (a single and a multi‐industry) that empirically investigate a nomological network of relationships between strategic business unit product‐market strategy (differentiation, cost‐focus, and product‐market scope), marketing capabilities (architectural and specialized capabilities, as well as their integration), and business unit performance (market effectiveness and subsequent one‐year objective cash flow), along with a series of controls. Addressing important lacunae in the resource‐based view our main research objective is to augment understanding of how critical firm‐level marketing capabilities enable the realization of strategy, thus, further advancing both the resource‐based view and more recent capabilities theorizing. Specifically, we test seven hypotheses and find strong evidence that both architectural and specialized marketing capabilities, and their integration, positively mediate the product‐market strategy and derived business unit performance relationship. In contrast to many extant studies, both survey and objectively measured data are combined, and because the secondary data collected contains both resource‐level (input) data and subsequent one‐year financial data, a higher level of confidence may be attributable to our findings. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Firms' open innovation policies,laboratories' external collaborations,and laboratories' R&D performance

The value of the open innovation approach is now widely recognized, and the practice has been extensively researched, but still very little is known about the relative impact of firm‐level and laboratory‐level open innovation policies and practices on R&D performance. This study attempts to measure that impact by analyzing a sample of 203 laboratories of Japanese firms located in Japan. It examines simultaneously the effects of firm‐level open innovation policy and laboratory‐level external collaborations on laboratory R&D performance. The study aims to go beyond a general understanding of the importance of open innovation; it shows how an open innovation policy can have a positive and significant effect on collaborations between a laboratory and local universities or business organizations. The results also show how an open innovation policy can contribute to the laboratory's R&D performance by facilitating external collaborations by the laboratories. It demonstrates how these factors affect R&D performance in different ways, depending on the type of R&D tasks. Our findings suggest several theoretical and practical implications in the field of R&D management.     

The effects of the chief technology officer and firm and industry R&D intensity on organizational performance

Between 1993 and 2013 the number and power of CTOs increased; as indicated in the percentage of firms with CTOs, their increasing presence on boards, their compensation relative to their CEOs, and compensation relative to other highly compensated executives. Firms which pursue an aggressive technology strategy (powerful CTO, high R&D spending) in industries in which technology is a critical contingency have well above normal market adjusted returns while those which pursue that strategy in industries in which technology is not critical have well below normal returns. These results empirically confirm longstanding, untested assumptions in the field of technology management. Moreover, the effect of R&D expenditures on firm performance is contingent on the degree to which technology is a critical contingency in the industry and on the power of the firm's CTO. These findings may explain the mixed results of past studies of the effects of R&D expenditure on firm performance. A model which integrates its own insights with those of earlier work on CTOs, R&D expenditures, firm strategy, and firm power dynamics is presented and supported.     

Modeling service alliances: an exploratory investigation of spillover effects in service partnerships

The objective of the current study is to provide a preliminary look at the process by which consumers evaluate alliances between service providers. Specifically, the study demonstrates how the service quality of one partner can impact, or ‘spill over’ onto, consumers' evaluations of their transactions with a second partner, and how the performances of partners can have differing effects on customers' intentions to reuse a service partnership. The study tests hypotheses related to the quality, value, and reuse intentions of customers relative to the partnered service through a sample of 334 customers utilizing a seamless service alliance. Our results suggest that spillover effects of service partnerships can either result in beneficial gains for service partners or produce grave consequences when partner providers' service quality is substandard. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Roles, role performance, and radical innovation competences

Despite the importance of radical innovations (RI), few firms have the capability to develop such innovations internally; success is increasingly linked with relationships and networks. However, the way(s) in which relationships and networks support RI is less clear. Successfully launching RIs requires the development of four distinctive competences; discovery, incubation, acceleration and commercialization. This paper examines how networks support the development of RIs, focusing on when and how network partners become involved and how their role performances support the development of the four competences. The study context is the automotive industry, which is heavily dependent upon RI and complex interrelationships. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with network participants involved in developing several RIs. Five task-oriented and three network-oriented roles are uncovered and the performance of these roles supports the development of different competences, with some roles being exclusively connected with particular competences and others supporting several competences. Focusing on role performance offers a useful means for distinguishing between acontextual actors, and the activities and resources they bring. In doing so, the paper enhances understanding of the links between network participants, role performances and the development of RI competences, and identifies a number of important implications for theory and practice.     

The impacts of performance relative to analyst forecasts and analyst coverage on firm R&D intensity

Taking an agency theory perspective of managers as risk averse and self‐interest seeking and focusing on externally generated analyst forecasts as the performance target, we propose that managers tend to cut R&D expenses when they are under pressure to meet analyst forecasts, especially when they face an increase in employment risk after missing the forecasts. We further argue that analyst coverage can serve as an external monitoring mechanism to help contain this agency problem. We test these arguments with data from a sample of U.S. manufacturing firms during the period of 1979 to 2005. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.