Assessing co-creation based competitive advantage through consumers’ need for differentiation

The extant literature analysing the impact of value co-creation on consumers' need for differentiated products is sparse, so the present study examines the role of consumers' need for differentiation in relating value co-creation with consumers' word-of-mouth to foster competitive advantage. Specifically, we investigate the effects of innovation differentiation and market differentiation on micro businesses' abilities to co-create value and generate positive word-of-mouth, which ultimately helps them sustain their revenues. We collect data from a sample of 196 female consumers who participated in the co-creation process used in the micro businesses to design trendy apparel. We use structural equation modelling to test the hypotheses. Having a strong desire for differentiation in their dresses, these consumers invest their resources and capabilities in designing their own apparel. The results show that value co-creation not only leads to consumers’ need for differentiated products (enabling the differentiation strategy), but also results in negative word-of-mouth. More particularly, value co-creation leads to differentiated offerings but consumers desirous of possessing unique products do not spread positive words about the professional designer. As a result, sustaining economic development in emerging economies dominated by micro and small businesses is still a big challenge.     

基于价格竞争理论的旅行社产品创新策略研究

目前,国内旅行社产品低价竞争状况严重。旅行社产品在产品同质化的情况下,价格必然成为影响旅游消费者购买偏好的决定性因素,只有施行差异化竞争战略才能有效规避低价竞争;同时旅行社必须充分了解并有效把握市场需求,在产品中不断添加创新元素,创造性的以新产品引导消费,通过品牌识别和服务创新巩固旅行社产品差异化,才能不断强化旅行社产品的排他性,持久增强旅行社企业的竞争优势。     

A multidimensional perspective of SME internationalization speed: The influence of entrepreneurial characteristics

This paper contributes to a multidimensional perspective on the speed of SME internationalization. It examines the influence of entrepreneurial characteristics – experience, rationales and innovation strategies – on multiple dimensions of internationalization speed. Findings from a sample of 180 SMEs show that earliness, speed of deepening, and speed of geographic diversification can be viewed as three different strategic alternatives and that each dimension is predicted by a different set of entrepreneurial antecedents. Earliness of internationalization is associated with entrepreneurs’ international business experience and their perception of opportunities abroad as well as preference for an innovation strategy characterized by ambidextrous innovation. Speed of deepening is related to entrepreneurs’ international business experience, their orientation towards differentiation vis-à-vis competitors, and commitment to innovation and a strategy focusing on exploration. These results indicate the importance of distinguishing between different forms of innovation. Speed of geographic diversification is predicted only by entrepreneurs’ orientation towards differentiation vis-à-vis competitors.     

Market orientation, competitive advantage, and performance: A demand-based perspective

This study assesses how customer value affects a firm's market orientation and consequently, competitive advantage and organizational performance in a service industry — the global hotel industry. The findings show that if a firm perceives its customers as valuing service, the firm is more likely to adopt both a customer and a competitor orientation; if the firm thinks its customers are price sensitive, the firm tends to develop a competitor orientation. Moreover, the greater a firm's customer orientation, the more the firm is able to develop a competitive advantage based on innovation and market differentiation. In contrast, a competitor orientation has a negative effect on a firm's market differentiation advantage. Finally, innovation and market differentiation advantages lead to greater market performance (e.g., perceived quality, customer satisfaction) and in turn, higher financial performance (e.g., profit, market share).     

R&D spending,strategic position and firm performance

Based on R&D investment data from Chinese listed manufacturing firms, this paper examines the effect of R&D spending on firms’ future performance conditional on their strategic positions. We find that firms pursing a product differentiation strategy have more R&D spending than those with a cost leadership strategy. In addition, we document a positive effect of R&D spending on firms’ future performance if they adopt a product differentiation strategy. Meanwhile, for the firms that adopt a cost leadership strategy, the relationship between R&D spending and firm performance resembles an inversed U-shape. Furthermore, we find this inversed U-shape relationship only exists for non-state-owned firms. Overall, this paper provides guidance and useful suggestions on the efficient allocation of R&D resources for Chinese manufacturing firms.     

R&D spending,strategic position and firm performance

Based on R&D investment data from Chinese listed manufacturing firms, this paper examines the effect of R&D spending on firms’ future performance conditional on their strategic positions. We find that firms pursing a product differentiation strategy have more R&D spending than those with a cost leadership strategy. In addition, we document a positive effect of R&D spending on firms’ future performance if they adopt a product differentiation strategy. Meanwhile, for the firms that adopt a cost leadership strategy, the relationship between R&D spending and firm performance resembles an inversed U-shape. Furthermore, we find this inversed U-shape relationship only exists for non-state-owned firms. Overall, this paper provides guidance and useful suggestions on the efficient allocation of R&D resources for Chinese manufacturing firms.     

Innovation success of non-R&;D-performers: substituting technology by management in SMEs

This paper investigates the impact of in-house R&D and innovation management practices on innovation success in small and medium-sized firms (SMEs). While there is little doubt about the significance of technology competence for generating successful innovations, in-house R&D activities may be a particular challenge for SMEs due to high risk exposure, high fixed costs, high minimum investment and severe financial constraints. SMEs may thus opt for refraining from R&D and relying more on innovation management tools in order to achieve innovation success. We analyse whether such a strategy can pay off. Based on data from the German CIS, we find that R&D activities are a main driver for innovation success if combined with external R&D, using external innovation sources or by entering into co-operation agreements. SMEs without in-house R&D can yield a similar innovation success if they effectively apply human resource management tools or team work to facilitate innovation processes.

Evolution of firms' product strategy over the life cycle of technology-based industries: A case study of the global mobile phone industry, 1980–2009

This paper adopts industry life cycle approaches to understand better the changing rationales for product strategy development in the worldwide mobile phone industry. Based on both primary and secondary sources, we find that mobile phone manufacturers have radically changed their product strategy over the industry life cycle in response to various factors, such as the intense global competition and the need to respond rapidly to changes in technology and mass-consumer preferences. We also find that, when the mobile phone industry entered a stage of shake-out in the 2000s, contrary to the prediction of the classical product–process life cycle model, mobile phone manufacturers focused their strategy not only on process but also on product innovations. The continuous launch of new and advanced product technologies served mainly to stimulate the demand for replacement purchases. We observe this unexpected key role of product innovation to be very strong also in the stage of industry maturity.     

自主创新要突出技术战略与品牌战略的结合

本文认为,自主创新的主体是企业,最重要的载体是企业竞争力,最终的标志是经济竞争力的实现,自主创新需要有一种强烈的内在冲动和有效的制度支持。自主创新能力的提高不仅体现在科研水平的提高和技术能力的提高上,更重要的是体现在产业竞争力的提高上。从研究能力→研究成果→一种生产方式→一种稳定的生产能力→产品的销售能力,最后再到企业竞争能力,每一个环节都蕴含了大量的智慧,需要企业和技术拥有者努力,需要制度保障,需要政策支持,才能成功实现这种转换。文章提出,自主创新应注意以下几个问题:第一,技术战略一定要与品牌战略和市场扩展战略相结合;第二,技术创新一定要有很好的制度创新来保障;第三,重视文化力因素对技术创新的作用和影响;第四,充分激发国民内在的创新激情。     

Manage the value and liability of offshoring innovation

The impact of offshoring innovation on firm innovativeness remains unclear. To bridge this gap, we draw upon the new eclectic paradigm and the strategy structure paradigm to examine offshoring innovation, a combination of geographical dispersion and functional interdependence of various innovation activities. We also explore the sole and joint effects of two managing mechanisms – a global offshoring strategy and captive operations – on the relationship between offshoring innovation and firm innovativeness. As offshoring innovation has positive impact on firm innovativeness, each mechanism helps firms appropriate the value of offshoring innovation. Despite that, the joint adoption of both mechanisms exerts a greater impact of offshoring innovation on firm innovativeness than does sole one.     

TMT社会网络、公司创业与企业绩效关系研究

拥有大量内外部信息资源的高管团队(TMT),其社会网络不但可以提供公司创业的机会来源,也是企业现在绩效和未来绩效的影响因素。TMT的社会网络只有通过公司创业机制才能转化为企业绩效的价值创造过程。中国背景下的实证研究显示:TMT社会网络、公司创业都与企业绩效正相关,对于企业而言,要高度重视通过管理手段激励整个高管团队的所有成员去构建有效的内外部社会网络;公司创业的价值增值中介作用也得到证实,公司创业发挥着重要的资源整合作用,有价值的TMT内外部社会网络只有充分融入企业的产品或服务创新,以及深层次的战略更新过程中,为企业的价值增值服务,才能转变为企业绩效。     

Strategies towards innovative services: findings from the German service landscape

The specifics of services seem to prohibit a simple transfer of innovation strategies from the manufacturing to the service sector. To better understand what works, successful strategic service innovators and their strategic approaches have been the focus of this study. To do so, 80 service innovators in Germany have been monitored over a period of one year. By analyzing them, according to the basic strategies they follow (low cost, differentiation or mixed emphasis) and the dominant design of their service delivery system (information technology-based, people-based or mixed approach), this paper provides an understanding of the strategic approaches followed by successful service innovators. Our findings propose that there is a fit between the complexity of service offerings and variety of the interaction approaches by successful service innovators. In sum, we argue that for an appropriate design of service innovation strategy both managers and researchers need to go beyond the traditional distinction of low cost and differentiation strategy.     

蓝色贸易壁垒的双重效应及两手策略

蓝色贸易壁垒是一种新型的国际贸易壁垒,其产生是社会、经济、科技发展的产物.蓝色贸易壁垒具有双重效应,既有负面影响,也有正面影响.我们要以两手策略来应对,即一手对外积极应战,一手对内苦练内功,两手都要硬,就不难突破蓝色贸易壁垒.     

Service innovation as a political process

Service innovation processes are driven by stakeholders in interaction and are understood and sketched as a value negotiation process that consists of an iterative process of securing potential value in service. While previous research has focused on service innovation as a harmonious closed system, our study explores service innovation as a political process in which stakeholders negotiate to create and secure future value. Data are collected through interviews and participant observations in four different case studies. Our study contributes to the field by illuminating service innovation as a political process and explaining how this is operationalized. The findings also contribute to an understanding of how stakeholder resources impact a chosen strategy; the resulting strategy’s impact on the service concept vis-à-vis its potential value; and how several involved stakeholders formulate, negotiate, and secure future potential value, which are the activities that drive a service innovation process.     

Process innovation strategy in SMEs,organizational innovation and performance: a misleading debate?

This article contributes to the study of process innovation as a growth strategy for SMEs, enriching and complementing the well-researched debate about product innovation. Thus, under-researched process innovation strategies are analyzed, and their antecedents and innovative performance implications explored. The results show that process innovation strategy is mainly shaped by the acquisition of embodied knowledge, which acts as a key mechanism for countering firms’ weak internal capabilities. As process innovation is mainly production oriented, performance consequences are measured using the production process indicators of cost reduction, flexibility and capacity improvement, avoiding traditional misguided measures based on sales, which are more product oriented. Drawing on information for 2,412 firms taken from Spanish CIS data, our results suggest that R&D efforts are not positively related to production process performance, but that the latter is improved by the synchronous co-adoption of organizational and technological innovation. SMEs conducting a process innovation strategy rely heavily on the acquisition of external sources of knowledge in order to complement their weak internal innovative capabilities, and their pattern of innovation shows clear-cut differences from traditional R&D-based product innovation strategies. The article uses a resource-based view framework to generate hypotheses.     

试论现代营销新策略

探讨在新形式下,企业营销应该具有的新的营销策略,主要包括：新的营销理念——战略营销;新型顾客观——重视顾客价值;新的营销方法——重视观念创新、市场创新和方法创新等。     

Businesses without glamour? an analysis of resources on performance by size and age in small service and retail firms

Research on factors influencing performance in new and small companies is extensive. Earlier work found that strategies (e.g. cost, quality, differentiation, etc.) affected performance contingent on industry conditions, the environment, and the entrepreneur’s background. Although this work provides a solid basis for understanding differences in entrepreneurial performance, some firms are limited in their choices of strategy due to size, age, or industry. Often these firms are in industries where entry barriers are low and competitive advantages are easily imitated.Small service and retail businesses operate in sectors where these conditions are apparent. Comprising more than 50% of all small firms, they require minimal start-up investments but face intense competition. Lacking the “glamour” of high innovation/high growth firms, service and retail companies are at the “end” of the value chain, their fortunes rising and falling as a result of the direct influence of the owner-founder. Hence, performance variation may be better explained by the capabilities of the firm or individual competencies of the owner-founder, that is the resource-base and resource combinations, rather than strategy.The strategic importance of an organization’s resources and capabilities is the foundation of resource-based theory. Resources are tangible and intangible assets tied to the firm in a relatively permanent fashion. Their combinations are heterogeneous and form the basis for product/market strategies. Studies of resources, strategies, and performance are emerging in the entrepreneurial area. Research shows that various resources in concert with different strategy types can lead to above average performance over the business life cycle, and that combinations of resources are related to survival. Yet the vast majority of work focuses on high growth, high tech, or manufacturing businesses. Less is known about the relationships of resources to performance in less “glamorous” sectors. In these small service and retail businesses, we speculate that resources, in particular human and organizational resources, may play a greater role in explaining performance than strategy. Further, as other authors have suggested, it is expected that the combinations of these resources will vary across age and size.This study examines the influence of human and organizational resources on performance in a sample of 195 service and retail firms operating in central New Jersey, using a structured questionnaire. All companies utilized a focus strategy (either focused cost or focused differentiation) and employed a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 100 employees. All measures had theoretical and/or empirical precedent and were tested statistically for reliability. We used factor analysis to reduce the independent variables to: two human resource variables (owner resources and commitment), one organizational resource variable (comprised of planning, systems, and staff skills), and one strategy variable (focused cost and focused differentiation). Control variables were business age, business size, environmental benignness, and industry growth. The dependent variable performance was measured in two ways: net cash flow and log of growth in employees over 3 years.The study first examined whether strategy or resources had a greater influence on performance. Results showed that strategy influenced performance less than human and organizational resources both individually and interactively. The influence of owner resources (background and attitudes) on net cash flow was stronger than on growth, where the only significant variable was industry (market) growth.To analyze effects of resources on performance by size, we divided the sample by size groupings, selecting the smallest (maximum five employees) and largest quartiles (minimum 16 employees), which were comprised of 55 and 50 companies, respectively. These analyses showed that owner resources, commitment, and organizational resources contributed positively to net cash flow in very small firms; however, interactive effects of these resource combinations were negative. For instance, owner resources and organizational resources together, and organizational resources and commitment together, resulted in less positive cash flow than when analyzed separately. This implies that different resource combinations can have negative influences in these very small firms.We examined age effects in the same manner as size—dividing the sample into age group quartiles and conducting an analysis only for very young (fewer than 5 years) and very old (minimum 19 years) groups, which comprised 54 and 52 companies, respectively. These analyses showed that although growth was more rapid among the youngest firms, there were no distinctive resource-based correlates to growth in either age group. Substantive increases in formalized systems and procedures were not apparent among the oldest of these companies compared with the youngest, contrary to previous work showing the evolution of these over business life cycles.Results of this study are applicable only in the context of service and retail firms, and, readers should note this sample was nonrandom and geographically concentrated. Our purpose was not to predict, but describe associations between resources and performance. This study shows that, for firms in competitive industries at the end of the value chain, type of strategy is less important than resource combinations for certain types of performance. Human and organizational resources are associated with more positive cash flow, whereas industry and market factors are related to growth. These results imply that firms seeking growth are best served by selecting and entering growth markets and industries. On the other hand, if strong positive cash flows are the primary objective, attention to combinations of resources is more important. For instance, owner-founders having a strong business and managerial background, and industry experience will need less formalized systems, whereas those owner-founders with weaker managerial resources might benefit from more formalized procedures and skilled staff.     

Open innovation requires integrated competition-community ecosystems: Lessons learned from civic open innovation

Open innovation has received substantial business attention as a means of providing firms in hyper-competitive environments with the ability to create a stream of new products and services. For open innovation, organizing external sources correctly is a critical capability; current literature suggests that external sources should be organized either as collaborative communities or as competitive markets. While firms have generally been slow to adopt open innovation, many cities in the U.S. and Europe have been quick to embrace it—providing needed field-based experience on how to organize external sources. Based on our examination of six cities opening their data for innovation, we found that while cities often started with one or the other approach to organizing their external sources, each approach was inadequate in ways that could potentially be addressed by the addition of the other approach. Thus, we conclude with an integrated approach in which the needs of the entire ecosystem of sources and supporters of innovation are organized to address both competitive and community needs.     

Sources of open innovation in foreign subsidiaries: An enriched typology

This paper analyzes the drivers of multinational affiliates’ innovation, using a dataset based on the Community Innovation Survey for Belgium. Specifically, we investigate the role of external knowledge sources on foreign affiliates’ research efforts and innovation. We thereby develop an enriched typology by taking both the MNC and the host country perspective into consideration and distinguish between different types of subsidiaries, in order to disentangle differences in the use of knowledge sources between technology exploiting, seeking and creating subsidiaries. Our findings show that technology-creating foreign affiliates are able to tap into a combination of industry-based value chain partners and science-based partners. In particular, a combination of clients and universities have a powerful impetus on the research effort of technology creating firms. Our results also indicate that technology-seeking subsidiaries make more use of collaboration with competitors. Technology exploiting subsidiaries make significantly less use of external knowledge sources and have a lower R&D intensity.     

知识动态能力视角的电商平台大数据分析价值链战略

电子商务领域信息技术的开放性提高了服务创新的可见性,为适应多维度要素交互的平台竞争环境,需要基于电商平台丰富的数据资源,通过大数据分析提高战略规划的动态性、灵活性和响应敏捷性,形成一种能够快速集合与组织资源的模式,实现业务价值传递的可持续,满足竞争对抗与互动以及时间轴动态演化的需要。鉴于此,基于大数据分析、知识管理、动态能力、业务流程理论和指向性网络调查数据,构建大数据分析价值链战略研究模型,探讨大数据分析、动态能力、流程级创新与核心竞争力及战略绩效之间的关联。研究结果表明,大数据分析能实现有效的内生源和外生源知识管理,帮助企业形成动态能力,构建核心竞争力,进而提高战略绩效;大数据分析能提高企业组织的灵活性,可作为企业在竞争中赖以生存发展的战略投资;外生源知识管理和内生源知识管理均可单独运作产生知识动态能力,但外生源知识管理的作用更显著有效,更值得重视;知识共享是流程级创新的潜在障碍,与合作商进行知识共享需要选择合适的路径;动态能力既可直接影响流程级创新与核心竞争力,也可调节知识资产对竞争力的影响。总之,大数据分析能够通过影响动态能力和流程级创新来提高核心竞争力,且动态能力在知识管理与流程级创新及核心竞争力(战略绩效)间具有中介作用,电商平台应客观认识大数据分析潜在价值,将之纳入信息技术战略,通过梳理大数据分析→动态能力→核心竞争力→战略绩效的价值链过程,形成战略协同,最终提高知识创新的边际绩效。