Creating value through mutual commitment to business network relationships

A structural model of business relationship development in a business network context is formulated and tested on data from the European International Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) project. The empirical analysis demonstrates a causal chain from business network connection through mutual commitment and mutual dependence to value creation in the relationship. The results show that mutuality in business network relationships is critical in developing interfirm systems of workflow interdependence that promote the creation of value. This also implies that, through their interaction in business network relationships, firms in business markets organize and share an unbounded structure of interdependent activities, enabling them to achieve greater value than would be the case if they did not engage in relationship development. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Creating or destroying value through mergers and acquisitions: A marketing perspective

A majority of mergers and acquisitions are horizontal, combining companies within the same industry. They are most frequently motivated by a desire to achieve revenue and profit growth through market expansion or by adding new product lines, with cost efficiencies being a secondary agenda. However, the modest body of literature on post-merger performance using marketing metrics indicates that marketing objectives such as sales revenue and market share growth are rarely achieved. This paper reports on a detailed study of 45 M&A deals undertaken to develop a deeper understanding of how marketing performance is affected by mergers and acquisitions. Our results show that marketing performance improved along two dimensions — sales revenue growth, and a reduction in selling, marketing and administrative costs as a percentage of sales revenue, suggesting the realisation of synergies in these areas — economies of scale and scope. However, these benefits did not follow through into better returns on sales suggesting that the marketing cost economies are not sufficient to outweigh cost diseconomies in other parts of the business.     

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.     

Creating superior customer value for B2B firms through supplier firm capabilities

In a dynamic global business-to-business (B2B) environment, innovation and marketing appear crucial to providing supplier firms' positional advantage through the ability to create value for customers. Our examination is grounded in seeking to address the research question: To what extent is the creation of superior performance, relationship, and co-creation value driven by market orientation, product innovation and marketing capabilities in B2B firms? The results of a survey of 155 large B2B firms show product innovation capability and marketing capability partially mediates the relationship between a firms' market orientation and its ability to create value (performance and co-creation), except for the role of marketing capability which we found acted as a full mediator of the relationship between market orientation and relationship value.     

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 integrative domain of foresight and competitive intelligence and its impact on R&D management

R&D takes years to come to fruition, thus choosing R&D programs should be set in the context of the environment that will exist at the time that research is completed. Foresight and competitive intelligence are two fields that seek to address future oriented environmental scanning. The paper looks at what the domains of foresight and competitive intelligence entail and in particular how competitive technical intelligence can work to integrate and enable competitive agility in foresight positioning. Focus is put on reviewing literature that addresses how foresight impacts R&D project selection. A review is made on foresight programs from around the world based on a recently completed study on Canada's foresight capacity. The authors conclude that agile organizations need to be adaptive and well prepared for tomorrow's challenges and so by integrating competitive technical intelligence, (typically oriented to business needs) with strategic technology foresight, (typically designed to address government priorities for technology investments and innovation policy issues), enterprises will be best positioned to address uncertainties in the technology cycle.     

开拓创新 奉献名牌——访中国石化集团江汉石油管理局第三机械厂厂长黎明

中国石化集团江汉石油管理局第三机械厂（以下简称三机厂）总部坐落于九省通衢之都武汉市风景秀丽的东西湖区吴家山国家级台商投资开发区，占地面积近6万m^2。     

渠道模式创新与管理提升

一、国内玩具渠道的变化趋势1、玩具渠道运作问题分析(1)、渠道理念与模式滞后:博弈关系,冲突不断,结构和分工不合理,效能低下;(2)、经销商能力制约渠道效能:职能落后,无法承担销售、维护、推广和服务的重任;(3)、渠道管理不到位:网络有效覆盖差,日常维护流于形式,支持服务少;(4)、渠道策略与激励粗放:简单的政策和资源驱动,往往高端放货,难以区域精耕。2、国内玩具渠道环境认识     

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.     

Actor engagement,value creation and market innovation

We extend the discourse on actor engagement by arguing that the ‘actor’ should be viewed both as a single-actor (humans or machines) and a group of actors (collectives or organizations), and that engagement implies both exchange-based and non-exchange-based resource contributions, which are facilitated by dispositions, formed partly by actor specific characteristics and partly by the institutional and organizational arrangements prevalent in the context in which the resource contributions occur. We further show how the resource contributions, combined with other resources, improve resource density and, thus, drive value creation. This mechanism can be the foundation for ‘economies of actor engagement’; focal actors can achieve increasing returns by mobilizing actor engagement. Building on this, we argue that actor engagement is central for market-shaping strategies that aim for market innovations, which we define as the emergence and institutionalization of resource linkages that improve resource density and, hence, value creation in a market. Finally, we suggest that the dramatic shifts that we see in the operating environment are elevating the role of actor engagement, making the management of actor engagement a strategic priority.     

Effects of R&D policy choice on accounting performance and market value

Using primary data that was gathered from the annual reports of companies listed in the Chinese Stock Exchanges, this study analyzes and compares the different effects of R&D policy choice on their accounting performances and market values. For the period 2007 through 2014, the results show that different R&D policy choices provided different implications in firm value and firm strategy to the market. Specifically, the firms choosing to capitalize their R&D investments have higher market value, implying that the strategy was focused on sustaining their long-term development. On the contrary, the companies selecting to expense their R&D expenditure have higher accounting performance and the focus was on improving short-term gains. The results of this study suggest that the policy choice on R&D capitalization and expensing is a trade-off result between the accounting performance and the market value of a firm.     

Demand chain alignment competence — delivering value through product life cycle management

This paper endorses demand chain alignment as a competence that supports effective product life cycle (PLC) management. Demand chain alignment integrates the demand creation (historic domain of marketing) and demand fulfilment processes (domain of supply chain management), to develop and to deliver products that convey superior customer value while deploying resources efficiently. So far, the relationship between demand chain alignment and PLC management has only been addressed from an operations and demand/supply chain perspective, but not from a marketing perspective. Three research propositions, on the relationship between both concepts, are derived from a literature review and applied to a case study from a global player in the tobacco industry. The findings do not support the current view that the product life cycle is a market-oriented classification variable for demand chain strategies. Instead, demand chain alignment needs to link customer needs-based segments with the supply chain. Moreover, PLC management and demand chain alignment have a mutually reinforcing relationship, in which PLC management can facilitate the competence development, ensures a dynamic perspective and, at the same time, benefits from aligned demand creation and fulfilment processes. Based on the findings, a model integrating demand chain alignment and PLC management is proposed.     

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.     

Encouraging and enabling action research in innovation management

Although action research offers great advantages of connecting academia and practice, it is surprisingly underutilised in innovation management. This paper, therefore, focuses on how innovation management research and researchers can more effectively and efficiently apply action research to their domain. The analysis commences with the rationale for aligning action research and innovation management before assessing the strengths and limitations of existing interdisciplinary action research approaches from an innovation management perspective. Combining and enhancing the strengths of these approaches, a new Action Innovation Management Research (AIM-R) framework is developed to assist in resolving the increasing demand for action-orientation in innovation management. AIM-R offers a structured research process for systematically applying action research as a way of encouraging rigorous research processes, while also importantly stimulating relevant practical outcomes. AIM-R specifically considers different change levels (individual, team, organisational) and objects (e.g. outcome, process, capability) critical for the multi-faceted character of innovation management. A real-world example towards the end of the article illustrates how AIM-R has been applied to a complex problem-solution space. This example adds important insights for readers wanting to apply this more engaged, but currently underutilised, innovation management research technique.     

Product–service innovation and performance: the role of collaborative partnerships and R&D intensity

Treating the intersection of the strategic partnerships, R&D intensity and servitisation literatures, this study explores empirically whether external collaborative service development and provision and industrial R&D intensity help to unpack the complex relation between product–service innovation (servitisation) and performance. We argue that manufacturing firms implementing services benefit from strategic partnerships with Knowledge‐Intensive Business Service (KIBS) firms. KIBS partnering provides opportunities for downsizing, externalising risks and sharing knowledge. Additionally, manufacturers in R&D‐intensive industries are more likely to benefit from implementing service provision than firms in other sectors because of industry dynamics and reduced customer uncertainty. The study surveys executives in 370 large manufacturers worldwide. Results reinforce the importance of concentric strategic partnerships to successful product–service innovation in high R&D industries.     

Green innovation in technology and innovation management – an exploratory literature review

The importance of green innovation management is growing both in practice and in academia. This paper provides a current overview of the existing body of literature in the field of green innovations, identifying the most active scholars, institutions and relevant publications. It also contributes to a clarification of the concept ‘green innovation’. The review explains that three different notions of green, eco/ecological and environmental innovation are used largely synonymously, while the notion of sustainable innovation broadens the concept and includes a social dimension. According to this review, the most active scholars are situated in Europe (especially the Netherlands, Italy and Germany). A ranking is provided of innovation management journals by their total number of green innovation publications. The paper stimulates discussion about the adequacy of research in this subject area (managing green innovation) and the dearth of comprehensive literature reviews.     

Co-production and its effects on service innovation

This study explores the influence of business-to-business (i.e., upstream) co-production on service innovation in the information technology (IT) industry, and examines the antecedents of co-production, based on a survey of sales managers, the seller side of the co-producers, from 157 IT businesses in Taiwan. The findings indicate that co-production positively influences service innovation to a degree that depends on the collaborative partner's compatibility and history of business relations, affective commitment, and expertise. Moreover, the business' innovation orientation enhances (moderates) the relationship between co-production and service innovation. These results have several managerial implications. Businesses should choose co-production partners that are compatible and can contribute toward advancing the relationship. Furthermore, investments in building their innovation orientation will strengthen their efforts in service innovation through co-production.