The relationship between team communication,structure, and academic R&D performance: empirical evidence of the national telecommunication program in Taiwan

This research evaluates the frontier National Telecommunication Program (NTP) in Taiwan using the data envelopment analysis approach and analyzes the influence of team communication and structure on R&D performance by establishing a structural equation modeling relationship. The results show that team communication is highly correlated with R&D performance. The high‐scored projects have internal communication patterns with a higher meeting frequency but shorter dialogue duration, a uniform distribution of regular meetings, a scheme for the lower hierarchy to meet with the project leader, a well‐managed channel to access accumulative expertise, and an open forum for communication. They also have external communication patterns with a gatekeeper bridging inward and outward information, a lower frequency of time‐consuming external sourcing, and a higher frequency of external cooperation, referencing, learning, and benchmarking. Though team structure has no significant influence on R&D performance, the high‐scored research group focused more on the structural dimensions of research strategy, laboratory management, and motivation incentives. This research will provide effective principles of project management to team leaders and industrial policy guidelines to program sponsors.     

Organizing for Inbound Open Innovation: How External Consultants and a Dedicated R&D Unit Influence Product Innovation Performance

Firms increasingly acquire technological knowledge from external sources to improve their innovation performance. This strategic approach is known as inbound open innovation. The existing empirical evidence regarding the impact of inbound open innovation on performance, however, is ambiguous. The equivocal results are due to moderating factors that influence a firm's ability to acquire technological knowledge from external sources and to transform it into innovation outputs. This paper focuses on a relevant yet overlooked category of moderating factors: organization of research and development (R&D). It explores two organizational mechanisms: one informal and external‐oriented (involvement of external consultants in R&D activities) and one formalized and internal‐oriented (existence of a dedicated R&D unit), in the acquisition of technological knowledge through R&D outsourcing, a particular contractual form for inbound open innovation. Drawing on a capabilities perspective and using a longitudinal dataset of 841 Spanish manufacturing firms observed over the period 1999–2007, this paper provides a fine‐grained analysis of the moderating effects of the two organizational mechanisms. The involvement of external consultants in R&D activities strengthens the impact of inbound open innovation on innovation performance by increasing marginal benefits of acquiring external technological knowledge through R&D outsourcing. Moreover, it reduces the level of inbound open innovation to which the highest innovation performance corresponds. Instead, the existence of a dedicated R&D unit makes the firm less sensitive to changes in the level of inbound open innovation, by reducing marginal benefits of acquiring external technological knowledge through R&D outsourcing, and increases the level of inbound open innovation to which the highest innovation performance corresponds. The results regarding the role of informal and formalized R&D organizational mechanisms contribute to research on open innovation and absorptive capacity, and also inform managers as to what organizational mechanism is recommended to acquire external technological knowledge, depending on the objectives that the firm pursues.     

The Paradox of Openness: How Product and Patenting Experience Affect R&D Sourcing in China?

External R&D sourcing may help firms compete in an environment characterized by rapid technological changes. Yet, prior studies have produced conflicting findings on how a firm's technological experience affects the extent to which the firm engages in external R&D sourcing. Although many highlight that firms with extensive technological experience are equipped with more technological knowledge, collaborative skills, and absorptive capacity, encouraging greater levels of external R&D, others suggest the opposite due to potential exchange hazards and partnership conflicts. Adopting an external partner's perspective, the current study reconsiders this “paradox of openness” by analyzing how a focal firm's product experience and patenting experience affect an external partner's tendency to provide external R&D services to the focal firm. Specifically, this study explore how a focal firm's knowledge protectiveness and tacitness embedded in its product and patenting experience influences the external partners' motivation for knowledge transfer. This study predicts that a firm's product experience increases the focal firm's external R&D sourcing because it provides high levels of knowledge tacitness and external openness and can encourage external partners to share and exchange knowledge with the focal firm. In contrast, a firm's patenting experience decreases the focal firm's external R&D sourcing because it denotes knowledge explicitness and protectiveness and may discourage external partners to share and exchange knowledge with the focal firm. This study further predicts that patenting experience has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between product experience and external R&D sourcing. Using a data set of 575 high‐tech firms in China, this study finds support for our predictions. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on the knowledge‐based view and technology entrepreneurship in emerging markets.     

The technological gatekeeper

The present study identifies a two-step flow process of communication mediated by technological gatekeepers for scientific and technical fields characterized by dynamic information environments. Peer identification and a supervisory recognition of the phenomenon validate the gatekeeper finding. Certain characteristics of this study differ from previous research. The external communication needs of military in-house researchers are mitigated greatly by the infusion of technical information into the laboratory which is a part of the everyday activities of the organization. Gatekeepers are differentiated by topic and not the media monitored. Finally, the gatekeeper phenomenon is implicitly recognized, even though the development may be spontaneous; development that results because either the formal media leave a void in information needs or that engineers are not trained in the use of the formal information sources. In either case, the technological gatekeeper is a natural response to an information need.     

Leaders,laggards, and the pursuit of foreign knowledge

This paper analyzes how firms in different technological and market share positions use foreign R&D to augment their technological capabilities. Technology transfer issues and absorptive capacity arguments are examined to analyze the different technological capabilities of leading and lagging firms. In addition, a new strategic rationale (in terms of non‐dominant market share firms) that has not been considered in prior studies analyzing knowledge‐seeking FDI is offered. From a panel dataset which includes information on all foreign R&D investments made by publicly traded Japanese manufacturing firms (from 1974 to 1994), I show that Japanese firms investing in foreign R&D tend to be the non‐dominant market share firms, but also the technologically leading firms across fairly diverse industries. By considering both the technological and market share positions of firms, this study reveals important characteristics that influence when firms use foreign R&D as part of a strategy to augment their technological capabilities. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why some firms never invest in formal R&D

In this paper we study the frequency of formal R&D investments. We link real options theory to the knowledge‐based view to explain how a firm's knowledge resources influence its frequency of investing in R&D to establish technological options. Specifically, we propose that a firm that lacks internal knowledge resources is more likely to never invest in R&D, a firm that has both internal and external knowledge resources is more likely to sometimes invest in R&D, while a firm that has internal knowledge resources but lacks external knowledge resources is more likely to always invest in R&D. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How do dynamic capabilities transform external technologies into firms’ renewed technological resources? – A mediation model

How externally acquired resources may become valuable, rare, hard-to-imitate, and non-substitute resource bundles through the development of dynamic capabilities? This study proposes and tests a mediation model of how firms’ internal technological diversification and R&D, as two distinctive microfoundations of dynamic technological capabilities, mediate the relationship between external technology breadth and firms’ technological innovation performance, based on the resource-based view and dynamic capability view. Using a sample of listed Chinese licensee firms, we find that firms must broadly explore external technologies to ignite the dynamism in internal technological diversity and in-house R&D, which play their crucial roles differently to transform and reconfigure firms’ technological resources.     

Licensing Foreign Technology and the Moderating Role of Local R&D Collaboration: Extending the Relational View

The relational resource‐based view posits that performance differences among firms can be explained not only by the possession of internal resources but also by maintaining and developing relationships with external partners. However, studies in the extant literature usually address the separated roles of various external relationships of focal firms, but the literature has not addressed how relationships with different sets of knowledge partners are related to each other and influence focal firms' performance. Therefore, to fill this research gap, this study focuses on how technological resources acquired from one set of partners (licensing foreign technologies) may generate subsequent internal and relational rents in terms of technological innovation in the context of collaboration with an entirely different set of knowledge partners (local R&D partners). Specifically, we propose that local R&D collaborations need to be large in scale and broad in scope. The empirics are based on the analysis of a sample of 160 high‐tech Chinese firms observed from 2000 to 2011. Consistent with our predictions, our findings contribute to extending the relational view by addressing the relations among the relationships of focal firms.     

Clustering and the R&D management of high-technology small firms: in theory and practice

Much of the policy assistance for high-technology small firms (HTSFs) over recent years has been directed at encouraging their research and development (R&D) collaboration through local networking and technology transfer. Following a consideration of why HTSFs are formed, and how they perform R&D in order to cope with the competitive environment, this paper explores the value of external collaborative R&D to internal R&D management, inside geographically concentrated incubators, science parks or clusters. It is concluded that, although R&D collaboration with external partners occurs in limited instances, much HTSF R&D is highly confidential, competitive and wholly internalised. This tendency, as far as it relates to R&D management, is significant in that it minimises the likelihood that local management collaboration between co-located firms will improve the performance of R&D projects.     

Proactive/Responsive Market Orientation and Marketing—Research and Development Integration

The level of integration between the marketing and research and development (R&D) functions may be gauged by degree of communication, information sharing, and collaboration between the functions during the new product development process. This article examines how a firm's strategic choice regarding market orientation may influence the relationship between marketing and R&D personnel, and how this relationship may affect organizational success. Under examination are both the responsive form of market orientation, in which a firm focuses on immediate customer needs and tends to be market driven, and the proactive form, in which the firm focuses on future market needs and tends to be invention driven. It is theorized that responsive market orientation will be more positively related to marketing‐R&D integration due to the market‐driven nature of the orientation. Conversely, it is theorized proactive market orientation will be more positively related to organizational success than responsive market orientation due to the innovation‐driven nature of the orientation. The study was implemented via a Web‐based survey and data analysis was performed using structural equation modeling techniques. The results of this study provide empirical evidence that both proactive and responsive market orientation exhibit a positive relationship with marketing–R&D integration, indicating that both forms of market orientation may lead to closer collaboration between the marketing and R&D functions. Despite the assumption that a proactive orientation is driven by innovation and technology in which R&D may play a more significant role, there is evidence that a high degree of synergy is developed between the groups when the focus is on future market needs. A market‐driven responsive orientation by necessity requires high integration between departments to commercialize products in a timely manner to meet current market needs. Proactive market orientation exhibits a positive relationship with market performance, whereas responsive market orientation does not. The result may show evidence of the “new product paradox," whereby developing products to address immediate market needs may result in lower market performance because the new products may be replacements for obsolete offerings or are actually cannibalizing sales of existing products.     

The importance of internal and external R&D network linkages for R&D organisations: evidence from Singapore

This paper examines the importance of internal and external R&D networks for R&D organisations of multinational firms (MNCs) in Singapore and investigates corresponding R&D management requirements in this context, namely a late-industrialising country in Asia. A unique feature of Singapore is its ability to attract 'high quality' foreign direct investment, involving activities of higher value added and more complex technology without having developed full-fledged R&D activities among its business organisations, thus creating a challenging situation for subsidiary R&D managers, both in the internal R&D organisation as well as in the external research environment. This paper analyses these issues.
Based on in-depth interviews with 53 R&D subsidiaries of MNCs operating in Singapore, this paper identifies internal and external R&D management needs. Through our analysis of data gleaned from these interviews, we found that subsidiary R&D managers need to increase and/or maintain the strategic importance of their R&D site internally within their global corporate R&D organisation. This requires constant upgrading of the technological level at the R&D subsidiary and intense communication with headquarters as well as other R&D subsidiaries. Furthermore, our findings indicate that in the external research environment, subsidiary R&D managers need to create an efficient local network of external players. If these internal and external issues are properly addressed, the R&D subsidiary can effectively contribute to the corporate R&D organisation and be a critical partner in the local research network. Lessons learned from the Singapore experience include the need to develop sufficient local expertise as well as to change the mindset of managers to focus on creativity rather than precise execution.     

External Technology and In-House R&D's Facilitative Role

A number affirms use external sourcing of technology to create technological change in their organizations. In this article, Falguni Sen and Albert Rubenstein develop a rationale to support the concept of an integrative technology development strategy which emphasizes the role of in-house R&D during the planning and implementation process for externally sourced technology. They divide the external sourcing process into two major components: an acquisition phase and an implementation phase. Next, they define five distinct stages within both phases. Based on a review of the literature, the authors identify some common problems with external sourcing and discuss potential ways that in-house R&D can alleviate them by becoming involved in specific steps in each of the ten stages. The data in the article have been obtained from thirty-one cases of external sourcing of technology from a diverse group of industries in the United States and India. R&D's involvement in the external technology process varies among firms and is generally low in the acquisition phase. In the research, R&D managers describe barriers to their involvement, and the article develops measures of effectiveness of the activities in each stage of the external sourcing process. The authors recommend removing relevant barriers, especially in those stages where the involvement of in-house R&D groups could increase the effectiveness of the process.     

Interplay between internal investment and alliance specialization in R&D and marketing

A firm's efforts to build its technological and marketing capabilities are not limited to internal investments but can be extended to include external knowledge acquisitions. We examine the interaction between a firm's specialization in R&D or marketing through its internal investments and its alliances in two different industrial contexts. Our results, based on secondary data sources such as Compustat and SDC Platinum from 1985 to 2009, show that the interaction effects of internal specialization and alliance specialization are contingent on the types of tasks (i.e., R&D and marketing) and the industrial context (i.e., high- and low-tech industries). Our findings indicate that a firm in a high-tech industry is able to achieve greater gains by complementing its internal focus on R&D with its external focus on marketing or by focusing on R&D both internally and externally. In contrast, a firm in a low-tech industry is able to achieve greater performance when R&D and marketing complement each other, without regard for how they are aligned through internal investments and alliances. The firm is also able to improve its performance by focusing on marketing both internally and externally. These findings provide new insights into the complementarity between internal investments and alliances.     

Insider trading as a vehicle to appropriate rent from R&D

While most insider trading is routine and legal, investors still treat it as new information about the firm's prospects—they assume that trades reflect managers' attempts to profit from their private information. This article explores insider trading as a mechanism to appropriate rent from R&D advances. We analyze stock price reactions to over 134,000 insider‐trading events and find that insider purchases generate larger positive stock price reactions for R&D‐intensive firms. Investors seem to assume that managers use insider trading to appropriate rent from R&D breakthroughs. We discuss how shareholders may prefer this rent appropriation mechanism over other forms of compensation that directly reduce the firm's income. Copyright © 2002 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.     

Does board social capital influence chief executive officers' investment decisions in research and development?

The findings of the chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics–research and development (R&D) investment relationship remain incomplete if previous unexamined contingencies are not considered. Very few studies in this area have invariably focused on the constraints from the external environment and overlooked the important influence of board social capital on such relationship. This study uses insights from resource dependence theory to examine how the effects of CEO characteristics on R&D investment are contingent on board social capital. The results show that board social capital mitigates/enhances the negative/positive effect of CEO tenure/CEO educational level on R&D investment, supporting the view that board social capital, as an important conduit to link firms to critical information and essential resources in the environment, may offer better counsel to CEOs and enhance their decision‐making capabilities in moving toward R&D. One important implication is that firms wishing to encourage innovation through R&D spending should consider nominating directors with rich social capital to the board because they may assist CEOs in coping with R&D complexities and acquiring requisite resources, leading to a better planning of R&D.     

A Closer Look at Cross‐functional R&D Cooperation for Innovativeness: Innovation‐oriented Leadership and Human Resource Practices as Driving Forces

Because cross‐functional research and development (R&D) cooperation appears to drive innovation, many firms have invested considerably in it. However, despite substantial efforts to improve information and communication infrastructures or to bring departments in closer proximity with one another, structural investments often fail to produce the desired positive impact on cross‐functional R&D cooperation. This failure may arise because firms undertaking these structural investments do not manage their employees adequately. Extant research acknowledges the importance of motivating and enabling members of the R&D function to cooperate with other functions. Yet empirical studies investigating the relative importance of leadership and different human resource (HR) practices for enhancing cross‐functional R&D cooperation are scarce. Drawing on the resource‐based view and organizational support theory, this study investigates how innovation‐oriented leadership and HR practices might support members of the R&D function and encourage cross‐functional R&D cooperation, which enhances product program innovativeness. Specifically, members of the R&D function who are supported in their innovation efforts through innovation‐oriented leadership and HR practices should reciprocate for the support they receive by intensifying their cross‐functional cooperation to achieve greater product program innovativeness. Relying on multi‐informant data from 125 firms with assessments from marketing and R&D managers, this study shows that innovation‐oriented leadership and HR practices have different effects on cross‐functional R&D cooperation. A structural equation modeling‐based analysis of the hypothesized relationships reveals that innovation‐oriented leadership, rewards, and training and development have considerable positive effects. In contrast, recruitment does not drive cross‐functional R&D cooperation. Because firms usually operate in dynamic markets, and increasingly acquire relevant information from customers when generating innovations, this study also considers market‐related dynamism and customer integration as important contingency factors. For firms facing market‐related dynamism and those relying on customer integration, leadership and training and development are particularly effective for enhancing cross‐functional R&D cooperation. By integrating two theoretical perspectives, this study not only advances knowledge on the antecedents of cross‐functional R&D cooperation, but also helps explain differences in their relative effectiveness. Furthermore, it both adds to the discussion of whether monetary rewards are appropriate means to foster innovation and challenges existing assumptions about the role of recruiting for innovation.     

Consumer Research to Focus R&D Projects

R&D occurs early in the design stage of a telecommunications product that will be aimed at an unfulfilled market need. New technologies offer some exciting possibilities but the R&D team needs guidance in focusing their technologies on the right set of user benefits. In this article, John R. Hauser uses a case study to show how consumer theory and models for evaluating new product concepts can be used to provide R&D management with diagnostic information to improve the chances of innovation success. It's a good example of how management science can be applied to management problems.     

Technology transfer as technological learning: a source of competitive advantage for firms with limited R&D resources

The objective of this article is to answer why and how firms in developing countries with limited R&D resources can gain sustainable competitive advantage through technology transfer (TT). Successful firms are those that can accumulate competence through internal technological learning after transferring technologies from external technology sources. Organizational intelligence, firm specificity of technology, and causal ambiguity are identified as three mediators between technological learning performance and several antecedents previously discussed in the literature. A survey of Taiwanese manufacturers is conducted to explore the technological learning phenomenon as an integral part of TT, which is important but often neglected. This article also provides an interesting research setting for the evaluation of technological learning theories.     

The moderating role of competence specialization in the effect of external R&D on innovative performance

This paper studies the functional specialization of SMEs’ technological competence and its moderating role in the effect of external R&D on their innovative performance. Technological competence consists of many functional dimensions such as basic research, product architecture, process construction, testing, and evaluation, which constitute a sequence of innovation tasks. The specialization of technological competence allows SMEs to utilize economies of specialization in R&D, enhance their bargaining power and appropriability conditions in the process of external R&D, and attract promising R&D partners. However, competence specialization may hamper SMEs’ capabilities to coordinate and integrate diverse external R&D projects. Using a sample of SMEs in Korean manufacturing industries, we find the following results. First, competence specialization positively moderates the effect of external R&D on SMEs’ innovative performance. Second, the positive moderating effect of competence specialization diminishes as the share of external R&D increases. Third, the moderating effect of competence specialization differs across industries depending on the degree of market dominance by a few large firms (i.e., market concentration) and the novelty of technologies pursued by SMEs in each industry.