Recombination in digital innovation: Challenges,opportunities, and the importance of a theoretical framework

In this article I argue that the quest to establish digital innovation as a research domain is hindered by three challenges. As digital innovation research we are too often: a) reifying the agency of digital innovation actors; b) developing explanations of digital innovation detached from the specifics of digital technology, and c) developing overly specific explanations of digital innovation. I begin by providing a brief overview of the recombination perspective and considering why this perspective holds great appeal in the digital age. I then engage with Henfridsson et al.'s (2018) value spaces framework as a platform for framing value creation and value capture in relation to recombination in digital innovation. Next, I push Henfridsson et al.'s arguments one step further to discuss them in relation to what I consider to be the key challenges for digital innovation research. Illustrating with some of my own recent projects, I suggest that in order to fully address these challenges we need to (1) develop explanations of digital innovation acknowledging the complexity of sociomaterial interaction in digital innovation; (2) develop explanations of digital innovation building on the specifics of digital technology, and (3) develop explanations of digital innovation based on an oscillation between the specific and the general. The article concludes by pointing to future challenges and developments for digital innovation research.     

The microfoundations of firms’ explorative innovation capabilities within the triple helix framework

In this paper we show how the triple helix model provides an organising regime within which participant firms can extend their capabilities for explorative innovation through funded collaborations with academia. In so doing, we adopt Felin et al.’s multi-level framework to examine the microfoundations of participant firms’ capabilities for explorative innovation in university partnerships. In our qualitative case study of a set of research projects that comprise a national research programme, we decomposed the microfoundations of the processes, interactions and the structures that facilitated the extension of member firms’ explorative innovation capabilities nurtured within each university-industry partnership. We explain the attitudinal and behavioural modifications of the firms’ individuals involved in the research project collaborations with university partners that aggregated into firm-level capabilities. Ultimately, we show that using a microfoundational lens allows for a deeper understanding of how triple helix programmes can influence the capabilities of firms for explorative innovation.     

Technology transfer and the restructuring of science and technology in central and eastern Europe

Profound changes which have occurred in central and eastern Europe (CEE) have left science and technology systems in those countries in a dilapidated state. Reform efforts have focused on restructuring and privatising research institutes and promoting technology transfer between domestic institutions and between domestic and foreign institutions.¹ Both of these reform initiatives are aimed at increasing levels of innovation. Emphasis has been put on introducing the market mechanism. This paper looks at these reforms in CEE, particularly in Poland. The following broad points emerge: First, the track record of efforts to promote technology transfer need to be understood and interpreted in conjunction with a fuller understanding of institutional change, innovation and learning. Technology transfer is meant to encourage innovation, but a range of things need to happen if technology transfer initiatives are to work. Gibbons (Gibbons M. et al., 1994) observed, for example, that effective innovation requires new configurations of knowledge (and skills). The coordination activities required to effect these new configurations within and between organisations and institutions impose their own demands on actors engaged in technology transfer, which rapid privatisation or liberalisation policies in CEE do not begin to address. Reform policies which have focused on introducing new economic incentives need to address change at micro and meso levels. Creating new institutional practice depends not only on creating economic incentives but on wider reform processes, such as creating new organisational practices and encouraging the emergence of new sorts of institutions which can facilitate links. Second, the reform process is a social and political one. Changing the emphasis of policy towards technological development requires a change in power relations so that technological development and innovation, rather than success in science, are prioritised. These political battles greatly influence the pace and nature of change, and in CEE the promotion of technology and innovation is taking place in a context of social upheaval. Social consequences of reform in general and in science and technology in particular are difficult and uncomfortable, and change in this area is perhaps not yet a political priority in some CEE countries.     

Receptivity of India's small and medium-sized enterprises to information system adoption

This study surveys the receptivity of India's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the adoption of information systems (IS). Utilising a portion of Rogers' model of innovation diffusion as the framework, and treating IS as a form of new innovation, this study analyses factors affecting IS diffusion. A multiple regression analysis is carried out, with the five attributes of innovation highlighted by Rogers, to determine the attributes that affect the willingness to adopt. Out of the five factors affecting the adoption of IS by SMEs, only relative advantage, compatibility and trialability appear significant, with the overall regression explaining around 39% of willingness to adopt.     

Contributions of design emphasis,design resources and design excellence to market performance in technology-based service innovation

The value of design in product innovation is widely acknowledged and supported by empirical research, although extant research tends to focus solely on the role of designers, or design excellence, or design emphasis. Design in the context of service innovation is less well understood. Technology-based firms are viewed as key loci of innovation and, indeed, this innovation is not limited to product innovation, even though many of the stereotypes that come to mind have to do with the development of ever more technologically advanced ‘widgets’. In response to the gaps in current literature, this work takes a holistic approach to measuring design and examines how design resources (designers), design emphasis (emphasis on aesthetics and experience) and the outcomes of design (design excellence) jointly contribute to market performance in technology-based firms engaged in service innovation. Based on a survey conducted among managers of 176 technology-based service firms and evaluations of design excellence by design experts, the findings suggest that design emphasis and design resources both contribute to market performance. Surprisingly, design excellence is not found to contribute to market performance and possible reasons for this are discussed.     

Recombination in the open-ended value landscape of digital innovation

Digital innovation introduces a new open-ended value landscape to anyone seeking to generate or capture new value. To understand this landscape, we distinguish between design recombination and use recombination, explore how they play out together, and redirect the attention from products and services toward digital resources. Digital resources serve as building-blocks in digital innovation, and they hold the potential to simultaneously be part of multiple value paths, offered through design recombination and assembled through use recombination. Building on this perspective, we offer the value spaces framework as a tool for better understanding value creation and capture in digital innovation. We illustrate the framework and offer the early contours of a research agenda for information systems researchers.     

Affection not affliction: The role of emotions in information systems and organizational change

Most IS research in both the technical/rational and socio-technical traditions ignores or marginalizes the emotionally charged behaviours through which individuals engage in, and cope with the consequences of, IS practice and associated organizational change. Even within the small body of work that engages with emotions through particular conceptual efforts, affections are often conceived as a phenomenon to be eradicated – an affliction requiring a cure. In this paper, I argue that emotions are always implicated in our lived experiences, crucially influencing how we come to our beliefs about what is good or bad, right or wrong. I draw from the theoretical work of Michel Foucault to argue for elaborating current notions of IS innovation as a moral and political struggle in which individuals’ beliefs and feelings are constantly tested. Finally, I demonstrate these ideas by reference to a case study that had considerable emotional impact, and highlight the implications for future work.     

Short-term R&D bias,competition on cost rather than innovation,and time to market

Mounting evidence indicates that capital markets often apply short-term pressure on firms to gain short-term results by focusing primarily on reported financial performance. As a result of short termism, it has been argued that companies are likely to cut expenditure on R&D which might otherwise improve longer-term performance. As there is a growing consensus that R&D is critically important to both organizational and national performance, short termism may have significant detrimental organizational consequences. One implication arising from a short-term R&D bias, and examined in this paper, is its effect on market time reduction. Arguments are examined that suggest a dominant R&D strategy is to reduce product time to market. Concerns have been expressed, however, that such a strategy is applicable in specific circumstances only. A review of the literature suggests that analyst and shareholder bias against high-risk, long-term research in favor of lower-risk, short-term product R&D influences organizations to reduce the time it takes to get a product to market when the emphasis in the marketplace is on cost competition rather than product innovation. The findings of the study suggest that when the emphasis on competition on cost rather than innovation is low, short-term R&D bias does not affect market time. In contrast, when the emphasis on competition on cost rather than innovation is high, the results indicate that short-term R&D bias positively influences market time reduction. The study concludes with suggestions for further research.     

The Structure of Networks in Industrial Districts

In research on industrial districts, network relations among firms and organizations are considered critical for the development and diffusion of new knowledge, with implications for innovation and regional development. A review of this literature, however, suggests that many investigators are surprisingly silent, conceptually and empirically, about the structure of innovative networks, although they often couch their arguments implicitly in structural language. The survey of a sample of 64 empirical industrial district studies shows that few researchers have measured and analysed network structures, and none have studied performance outcomes of variations in network structure. An evolutionary perspective is used to propose a research agenda for a better understanding of the relationship between network structure and innovation. Dans les recherches sur les districts industriels, les réseaux relationnels entre entreprises et organisations sont jugés essentiels pour le développement et la diffusion de nouvelles connaissances, d'où des implications pour l'innovation et l'expansion régionale. A la lumière de ces documents, on constate néanmoins que de nombreux enquèteurs sont étonnamment silencieux, à la fois au plan conceptuel et empirique, sur la structure des réseaux innovants, m? me s'ils formulent souvent leurs arguments implicitement dans un langage structural. L'examen d'un échantillon de 64 études empiriques sur les districts industriels montre que peu de chercheurs ont mesuré et analysé les structures en réseau, et qu'aucun n'a étudié les performances à la suite des variations dans ce type de structure. Appliquant une perspective évolutionniste, l'article propose un programme de recherches pour une meilleure compréhension de la relation entre structure en réseau et innovation.     

Teamworking and Lean revisited: a reply to Carter et al.

This paper is a reply to Carter et al.’s response to an earlier paper of ours in this journal on the subject of teamworking under Lean in the UK public services . Our reply covers the following issues which Carter et al. have raised: the literature we used to structure our findings; the way in which we used concepts such as autonomy and teamworking; our research methods and approach; how Carter et al.’s newly available data on teamworking might be interpreted; and how data drawn from an official employee attitude survey might best be understood. On the basis of this, we conclude that Carter et al.’s paper fails to meet its objectives. On some things, the authors are simply wrong; on others, they grossly misrepresent our position; on still others, their interpretations are, at best, highly questionable.     

Exploring the Role of IT in the Front-End of Innovation: An Empirical Study of IT-Enabled Creative Behavior

The front-end of innovation (FEI) is critical for successful innovation in contemporary organizations. Employee creativity, or creative behavior, is at the heart of the FEI and it encompasses three activities: idea generation, idea elaboration, and idea championing. Information technology (IT) can play an important role in enabling these activities but extant research has focused primarily on IT-enabled idea generation. This paper complements the extant research by examining the entire set of activities that compose FEI. Specifically, we develop a model that examines IT-enabled idea generation, IT-enabled elaboration and IT-enabled championing, and that, grounded in the componential theory of creativity, analyzes their key drivers. An empirical study establishes the applicability of the model. The paper contributes to IS research and practice by shedding light on the tripartite role that organizational IT can play in employee creativity, and it serves as a springboard for future research.     

Innovation ecosystems as a service: Exploring the dynamics between corporates & start-ups in the context of a corporate coworking space

The desire to create innovative organizational spaces has led to various instantiations of innovation ecosystems. Towards this direction, there is a growing interest in establishing corporate innovation ecosystems in the form of ‘corporate coworking spaces’ (CWS). From a relational ontological standpoint, this study builds on the collaborative spaces literature with the aim to investigate the emerging dynamics between corporates and start-ups in an innovation ecosystem. Through an abductive research strategy (ARS) as well as service design methods, we explore how co-creation between corporates and start-ups emerges (or not) in an innovation ecosystem that serves as a collaborative space in Denmark. Our empirical findings challenge the mostly overenthusiastic connotations and thus the study contributes to the critical coworking research stream. More specifically, we give emphasis on the co-constructive entanglement of socio-spatial arrangements and we propose a framework for revisiting the design of CWS through 1) balancing the engineered and evolving parts of the ecosystem, 2) facilitating stakeholder alignment, 3) adopting a service-oriented approach and 4) developing inclusive strategies. Apart from the implications for scholars and practitioners who study and design CWS, we argue that future research would especially benefit from building on a service-oriented approach of innovation ecosystems and we call for more interdisciplinary research.     

关于改进高校工程项目管理的几点意见

高校在长期从事基础研究和应用基础研究的过程中,在相关学科领域拥有先进的科研团队,雄厚的研究基础和超前的研究水平,同时兼具原始创新、重视创新等特点。因此在工程项目的承担上,一些大型企业、集团往往通过采取产学研合作模式,利用高校的人才技术资源完成工程技术问题的实现。但在高校参与到工程项目的过程中时,其自身的管理问题也得到了突显。     

Data governance and digital innovation: A translational account of practitioner issues for IS research

There is widespread agreement in research and practice that data governance is an instrumental element to help organizations leverage and protect data. IS research has observed that our practical and our scientific knowledge of data governance remains limited, and the increasing ability for organizations to generate, acquire, store, transform, process and analyze data calls for us to further identify and address issues on the topic. Striving to contribute to answer this pressing need, we argue that understanding the nature and the implications of governance mechanisms is of high importance as it is these mechanisms that effectively instantiate data governance in an organization. Building on our experience preparing and teaching workshops to 102 executives on the topic, we adopt a position of engaged scholarship and provide a translational account of our pedagogical experience on data governance, highlighting four outstanding themes for IS research. We argue that these four themes—(1) embracing data governance without compromising digital innovation; (2) enacting data governance through repertoires of mechanisms; (3) moving away from data governance toward governing data; and (4) moving away from a view of data at rest to adopt a service-based perspective on data governance—are highly relevant for practice and research. In our view, studying these themes will contribute to inform practitioners who often struggle with the implementation of comprehensive data governance programs and frameworks. At the same time, the ability to leverage theory to study these themes can help research generate novel theoretical contributions on data governance, helping future research on the topic.     

The communicative constitution of IT innovation

This paper contributes to studies of IT innovation, by approaching discourse and technology not as alternating causalities of change, but rather as constitutive to processes of change. Drawing on a communicative constitution of organization (CCO) perspective, the paper provides an analysis of oral and written evidence on innovations in the English National Programme for IT (NPfIT) from 1998 to 2011. The paper makes two key contributions to the literature. First, it offers a longitudinal empirical understanding of how IT innovation is constituted in the triadic relationship between human and nonhuman actors, and the narrative texts in which the delegation between the first two occurs. The paper explores the implications of this renewed understanding of IT innovation for IS research in sociomateriality. Second, the paper contributes to CCO-informed research by adopting a methodological approach that draws on both a historical analysis of the constitution of material objects in specific narrative texts and a rhetorical analysis of communicative actions. The paper explores the methodological implications of this approach for addressing the challenge of understanding the scaling-up of micro communicative actions to macro actions towards the constitution of IT innovation.     

How to stimulate supplier innovation? Insights from a multiple case study

Drawing on the literature on supplier innovation, supplier development, and the relational view, we bring forward the concept of stimulation of supplier innovation, which refers to the buyer company's actions which aim to enhance its suppliers' innovativeness, guide its suppliers' innovation processes, and/or encourage its suppliers to share their innovations. Through four case studies about purchasing categories in three companies, we study how the stimulation focus is determined and what methods can be used for stimulating supplier innovation. We propose that stimulation comprises indirect and direct forms of knowledge-sharing and governance with an emphasis on indirect methods and suggest that the concept sheds light on the research gap on the push model of supplier innovation. We also elaborate the literature on supplier development and relational view in the context of supplier innovation.     

The Role of Feelings in Investor Decision-Making

Abstract.  This paper surveys the research on the influence of investor feelings on equity pricing and also develops a theoretical basis with which to understand the emerging findings of this area. The theoretical basis is developed with reference to research in the fields of economic psychology and decision-making . Recent advancements in understanding how feelings affect the general decision-making of individuals, especially under conditions of risk and uncertainty [e.g. Loewenstein et al . (2001). Psychological Bulletin 127: 267–286], are covered by the review. The theoretical basis is applied to analyze the existing research on investor feelings [e.g. Kamstra et al . (2000). American Economic Review (forthcoming); Hirshleifer and Shumway (2003). Journal of Finance 58 (3): 1009–1032]. This research can be broadly described as investigating whether variations in feelings that are widely experienced by people influence investor decision-making and, consequently, lead to predictable patterns in equity pricing. The paper concludes by suggesting a number of directions for future empirical and theoretical research.     

Navigating value networks to co-create sustainable business models: An actionable staging approach

Sustainable transitions typically require collaboration between multiple actors in the value chain or value network. Recent research has emphasized mapping of stakeholders and values as a starting point for identifying opportunities to realign these relationships, followed by business model experimentation to enable change. However, a simple mapping exercise does not consider the interplay between actors' concerns, business models, and interpretations of sustainability. Pedersen et al. (2022) advocated that aligning concerns is essential to collaborative design and innovation, and requires continuous negotiation between multiple actors. Here, we present a microlevel in-depth case study to examine how alignment across central value chain actors may be facilitated through the staging of numerous negotiations during the innovation process. Drawing on the staging negotiation spaces co-design framework, we provide insight into the content of multiple negotiations concerned with different aspects of sustainability during the development of a more sustainable laundry service system on the Danish island of Bornholm. Our findings illustrate how both value chain actors and a third-party intermediary stage negotiations, and elaborate the framework by attending to the strategic navigational efforts of network alignment through negotiations.     

Heterogeneity and Specificity of Inter-Firm Knowledge Flows in Innovation Networks

abstract    Literature on innovation networks reveals little of to what extent different types of knowledge are exchanged and combined by collaborating firms to foster innovation. Based on field research in the aerospace industrial cluster of Rome, this study investigates the exchange of technological, market and managerial knowledge. Using social network analysis, the paper shows that the three types of knowledge are unevenly distributed and exchanged, thus revealing that the process of exchange is knowledge-specific. Further, it is found that in most collaborative relationships, partners exchange technological knowledge together with market and managerial knowledge, emphasizing the complex nature of the innovation process which requires access to and recombination of diverse knowledge. This phenomenon concerns not only large companies, but also small-to-medium enterprises. The reconsideration of the relative salience of the three types of knowledge has remarkable managerial and theoretical implications, which are developed in terms of propositions offered for further research.     

In defense of ‘eco’ in innovation ecosystem

Innovation ecosystem is an increasingly popular but all too often ambiguously utilized concept across academia, policy and business. In their recent well-argued critique of the concept, Oh et al. (2016) called it a “flawed analogy” that is potentially dangerous for its lack of rigor. In this letter, we reflect on this critique and examine pathways to resolve some of the issues pointed out. We suggest that, at its best, the ecosystem analogy combines salient features from natural ecology to inform the design of system-level innovation management activities. This requires a great deal of conceptual and empirical rigor, and we outline a number of ideas for future research in this regard.