PERSPECTIVE: The World's Top Innovation Management Scholars and Their Social Capital*

Using 959 articles reflecting the work of 1,179 scholars, this study ranks the world's top scholars in innovation management (IM) on the basis of the number of research articles published across 14 top academic journals in technology and innovation management, marketing, and management between 1990 and 2004. Twenty‐three scholars have at least eight articles in this period. Michael Song has the most (31), followed by Robert Cooper, Roger Calantone, William Souder, and Elko Kleinschmidt, who have published at least 17 articles in the 15‐year period. Surprisingly, the list of schools that either trained or currently employ these top scholars is quite different from Linton's (2004) recent ranking of the top business schools in the management of technology. Guided by social capital theory, the present study analyzes the embeddedness characteristics of IM scholars to determine the extent to which social capital explains scholarly productivity. A current controversy in the social capital literature is the embeddedness characteristics that create social capital. On the one hand, the closure perspective argues that social capital results from strong relational ties with others in a dense, local neighborhood of actors who are relatively disconnected from others. On the other hand, the brokerage perspective argues that social capital is created when actors have relational ties that span these dense, local neighborhoods. The findings in the present study support both perspectives. Furthermore, the results suggest that strategic orientation is a contingency variable that clarifies the conditions in which closure‐ or brokerage‐based embeddedness is appropriate. Specifically, scholars pursuing an entrepreneurial publication strategy are more productive when their relational embeddedness is consistent with the brokerage perspective of social capital creation, whereas scholars pursuing a focused publication strategy are more productive when their relational embeddedness is consistent with the closure perspective of social capital creation. The results have implications for both the IM scholar community and the social capital literature. Whether IM scholars are pursuing an entrepreneurial strategy that capitalizes on emergent knowledge across various theories and perspectives or pursuing a focused strategy by concentrating on gaining deep understanding of a specific stream of research, there are many avenues and opportunities for improving publication performance through the formation of new social capital. Finally, the empirical support for the contingency variable strategic orientation is consistent with recent speculation that both perspectives are important and suggests that future work should focus on further identification and clarification of contingency factors associated with them.     

PERSPECTIVE: Ranking the Technology Innovation Management Journals*

A citation analysis of the 10 leading technology and innovation management (TIM) specialty journals is conducted to gain insights into the relative ranking of the journals. The journals are ranked based on number of citations, citations adjusted for publication frequency, citations corrected for age, citations corrected for self‐citation, and an overall score. The top 50 journals in management of technology based on citation analysis are listed. Overall, the top 10 journals based on citation analysis are Journal of Product Innovation Management, Research Policy, Research‐Technology Management, Harvard Business Review, Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Administrative Science Quarterly, R&D Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, and Academy of Management Review. The top 10 specialty journals in the technology innovation management specialty are Journal of Product Innovation Management, Research Policy, Research‐Technology Management, R&D Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, International Journal of Technology Management, Technovation, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, and Journal of Engineering and Technology Management. It is found that many of the TIM journals, although focused on TIM, have additional foci based on traditional management disciplines. Each of the 10 leading TIM specialty journals is considered from the perspective of traditional management disciplines; how the journals relate to each other and the related implications of these findings are considered.     

A comparative analysis of the internationalization of Chinese and Japanese firms

This paper integrates institution-, industry-, and resource-based views of internationalization and demonstrates that industrial characteristics, firm resources, and institutional factors can significantly explain the differences and similarities of international expansion of Chinese and Japanese multinational enterprises (MNEs). In particular, this paper maps the growth of Chinese MNEs since economic reforms in 1978 and that of Japanese MNEs after World War II. We illustrate the similarities and differences between Chinese and Japanese MNEs with two case studies: foreign direct investment (FDI) of Haier and Matsushita. We suggest that how firms internationalize, in addition to being influenced by industry- and resource-based considerations, is inherently shaped by the domestic and international institutional frameworks governing these endeavors.

Economic upgrading in a state-coordinated,liberal market economy

Well-established research into different models of capitalism has not been applied well to developing countries. Changing global conditions, institutional differences, and path-dependent histories have forced late developing countries to create models of their own. By and large, however, these models have been less than successful in fostering economic development through technological upgrading. A comparison of skills upgrading in several fast-growing economies in Southeast Asia suggests that perhaps there is a new “State Coordinated, Liberal Market Economy” developmental model that can successfully lead to upgrading-driven economic development. This model combines elements from the Developmental State, Coordinated Market, and Liberal Market Economy models while differing significantly from each.

Firm Characteristics and NPD Program Success: The Significant Influence of Global Discovery Management

Managing new product development (NPD) with a global point of view is argued to be essential in current business more than ever. Accordingly, many firms are trying to revitalize their NPD processes to make them more global. Therefore, examining global NPD management is one of the top priorities for research. While scholars have examined global launch management, there has been scant attention on the direct effect of global discovery management on NPD success. Therefore, this study investigates how a globally managed discovery phase enhances a firm's overall NPD success. Drawing upon the resource‐based view (RBV) and using Kotabe's ( 1990 ) generic model for market success in global competition as the overarching framework, this study examines four drivers of NPD success: global discovery management, the firm's “global footprint,” its inbound knowledge sourcing practices (i.e., “open innovation proclivity”), and nationality of the teams (i.e., “cross‐national global NPD team use”). The hypotheses are tested using a sample of 255 business units from multiple industries, headquartered worldwide, and surveyed during the 2012 PDMA Comparative Performance Assessment Study (CPAS). The PLM‐SEM analyses show that, of the four drivers examined, only global discovery management strongly influences a firm's NPD program success. The findings enhance our understanding of the particularities in global NPD. Based on the study's results, suggestions are provided as to how multinationals can leverage their international operations in the course of their front‐end activities.     

Mapping the invisible colleges of R&D Management

R&D Management has consistently been considered one of the top technology and innovation management journals since its inaugural issue in 1970. The purpose of this paper is to use bibliometric techniques to examine R&D Management in four time periods, 1986–1990, 1991–1995, 1996–2000, and 2001–2005 in order to reveal changes in its intellectual base. Bibliometric research has illuminated the knowledge domains of several technology and innovation management journals including R&D Management Linton and Thongpapanl, but there has not previously been a comprehensive detailed analysis focused only on R&D Management . Using co-citation analysis, this paper identifies the invisible colleges (research networks) associated with publications in R&D Management . The results indicate that Cohen and Levinthal's absorptive capacity model dominates the final two periods. The conclusions suggest how the absorptive capacity model might be more effectively utilized in future R&D Management research.     

An assessment of world-wide research productivity in production and operations management

Journal publications are important to facilitate knowledge sharing among production and operations management (POM) academics and practitioners. The purpose of this study was to explore the global POM research performance based on papers published in 20 core POM journals in the past half century. The data for the study were obtained from Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science/Knowledge databases, from 1959 to 2008, when 63,776 papers were published in POM journals. The annual distribution of papers published shows a significant growth in POM research productivity over the time period 1959 to 2008. The most productive authors in these five decades were T.C. Edwin Cheng from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong; Gilbert Laporte from HEC Montréal, Canada; S.K. Goyal from Concordia University, Canada; S. Eilon from the University of London, UK; and Oded Berman from the University of Toronto, Canada. The five most productive institutions were as follows: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Purdue University, and the University of Michigan. The countries found to have the highest outputs were the USA, the UK, Canada, the Netherlands and Taiwan.     

In search of confidence: Context,collaboration, and constraints

The development of any field of scientific inquiry involves global scholarly conversations. While we agree with Meyer’s (2006) key tenets, we extend his discussion of Asia management scholars’ need for self-confidence by exploring the role of context, collaboration, and constraints in global scholarly discourse. In particular, we highlight the need for consideration of multi-level context, the development of theories that are good for local stakeholders’ management practice and technology-facilitated and super-institutional collaboration. We illustrate our arguments for the development, legitimization, and institutionalization of Asia Pacific management research with examples from management and other scholarly disciplines in Australia, China, Europe, and North America.

Asian management research needs broader initiatives and focused incentives

Meyer (2006) has offered an interesting array of initiatives that scholars in Asia can pursue in enhancing their contribution to the body of management knowledge. While the objective of his agenda seems timely and relevant, it raises some fundamental questions that encompass issues such as the scope of research questions that Asian researchers could pursue, the debate over rigor versus relevance, and the role of established top tier journals in furthering the Asian management research agenda. This paper discusses some of these issues in the spirit of fostering a continued dialog on the important questions that Meyer raises.

The Intellectual Structure of Product Innovation Research: A Bibliometric Study of the Journal of Product Innovation Management, 1984–2004

Product innovation research has matured substantially in the last two decades. A great deal of knowledge has been produced on various aspects of the discipline, so it is of interest to assess the state of the art the scientific community has reached in this discipline and the route it has taken. This perspective is investigated through a bibliometric study of the Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM), arguably the most important specialized journal on this topic. The work reviews all journal paper contributions in JPIM from 1984 to 2004 in determined time frames, assesses the citations contained in these papers, identifies how the citations are related to the various topics of production innovation research (topic‐related citation variety, topic‐related citation consistency, variation in topic‐related citation pattern), and offers a retrospective examination of the evolution of the field. The overall analysis of citations shows that most papers in JPIM cite at least one of the top 50 works identified by this study. This testifies to the strong impact of the most influential works on the intellectual structure of product innovation research. The observed citation pattern suggests that the top 50 papers gained influence in product innovation research either because they represent a relevant contribution on a fundamental topic that already has been authoritatively studied or because they investigate in a relevant manner a new topic. The paper suggests that JPIM might benefit in its aim to consolidate its position as one of the top academic business journals if published papers increasingly drew on the most influential works to inform their research design and explicitly stated the theoretical underpinnings they draw on in their research design. Overall, the analysis of the subperiods (1984–1988, 1989–1993, 1994–1998, and 1999–2004) provides evidence for the maturation of new product innovation research. Books covering a wide range of topics are replaced by journal papers addressing a specific topic; over time, specific topics emerge and become influential for the discipline's intellectual structure; papers published in JPIM augment their methodological rigor and increasingly address contingency factors. The paper also notes that obtaining relevance for JPIM authors constitutes a necessary condition for being considered by management researchers at large as an influential contribution to product innovation research.     

The Impact of a Creativity‐supporting Work Environment on a Firm's Product Innovation Performance

Many scholars and practitioners have suggested that a creativity‐supporting work environment contributes to a firm's product innovation performance. Although there is evidence that such an environment enhances innovative behavior at individual level, very few studies address the effect of a creativity‐supporting work environment on product innovation performance at firm level, and the results are inconsistent. This paper examines the relationship between a firm's creativity‐supporting work environment and a firm's product innovation performance in a sample of 103 firms. For measuring a firm's creativity‐supporting work environment, a comprehensive and creativity‐focused framework is used. The framework consists of 9 social‐organizational and 12 physical work environment characteristics that are likely to enhance employee creativity. These characteristics contribute to the firm's overall work environment that supports creativity. The firm's product innovation performance is defined by two distinct concepts: new product productivity (NP productivity), which is the extent to which the firm introduces new products to the market, and new product success (NP success), which is the percentage of the firm's sales from new products. In most firms, different knowledgeable informants provided the data for the variables. The results show that firms with creativity‐supporting work environments introduce more new products to the market (NP productivity), and have more NP success in terms of new product sales (NP success). NP productivity partly mediates the relationship between creativity‐supporting work environment and NP success. The mediation model shows that the two paths from a creativity‐supporting work environment to NP success are about equally important: the direct path between creativity‐supporting work environment and NP success has a coefficient of .22, and the coefficient of the indirect path via NP productivity is .23. The creativity‐supporting work environment framework can be used in managerial practice to enhance employee creativity for product innovation. It allows applying a flexible and broad approach by influencing both social‐organizational and physical characteristics of the work environment.     

Managerial Political Behavior in Innovation Portfolio Management: A Sensegiving and Sensebreaking Process

By applying formalized innovation portfolio management systems, firms seek to ensure an alignment of their goals and strategy with their employees' different abilities, actions, and outcomes. However, research indicates that nonrational, political behavior also determines formalized innovation portfolio management decision‐making processes. Research on political behavior in respect of innovation portfolio management usually conceptualizes political behavior as a set of self‐serving activities, such as negotiation, bargaining, coalition building, and acquiring power, aimed at protecting, maintaining, or promoting an actor's self‐interest and power. Consequently, extant research tends to focus on political behavior's dysfunctional impacts on decision‐making processes and their subsequent outcomes. This paper challenges this negativity bias by exploring a novel, neutral specification of political behavior and its relation to innovation portfolio management decision‐making processes. By conducting an automotive industry case study focusing on the innovation portfolio management decision‐making processes, the paper analyzed the data from 43 interviewees. The conceptual model shows that managers' political capabilities determine their ability to behave politically. According to the results, political behavior comprises the activities that prepare the stage and orchestrate others in order to form a political coalition. Furthermore, results show that political behavior functions as a sensegiving and a sensebreaking process, with managers seeking to shape an innovation project's understanding according to their interests and to influence portfolio decisions. The resulting novel specification of political behavior extends the construct's scope and validity by investigating their functional and dysfunctional aspects, and by indicating that a political sensemaking process complements formalized innovation portfolio management decision‐making processes.     

A suicide survivor: the life of a Chinese worker

In 2010, 18 employees working for Foxconn in China attempted suicide. These shocking events focused the world's attention on the manufacturing supply chains of China's export industry and the experience of working within them. What had driven these young, migrant, assembly line workers to commit such a desperate act? This article provides a first‐hand account of the experiences of one of those who survived a suicide attempt, 17‐year‐old Tian Yu. Her personal narrative is embedded within the broader context of labour process, work organisation and managerial practice at Foxconn, the Taiwanese‐owned multinational that provides products and components for Apple and others. The factory conditions are further shaped by the company trade union and Chinese government policies. The paper concludes with additional contextualisation indicating the emergence of an alliance of workers, students, scholars and transnational labour movement activists who are campaigning for Chinese workers' rights.     

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.     

Research rankings of Asia Pacific business schools: Global versus local knowledge strategies

Despite the increasing recognition of the importance of the research mission of universities, no previous work has investigated the research productivity and research strategies of Asia Pacific business schools. This article fills this important gap by conducting the first study to rank the publication productivity of 130 Asia Pacific business schools. Drawing on data from the UTD Top 100 Business School Research Rankings™ and several additional sources, we rank Asia Pacific business schools’ research productivity in three areas: (1) twenty-four leading business journals, (2) seven top management journals, and (3) five Asia Pacific management journals. We also extend this analysis by documenting the distinct publishing strategies of various Asia Pacific business schools—global, local, or both.

Asian contexts and the search for general theory in management research: A rejoinder

“Asian Management Research Needs More Self-confidence” (Meyer, 2006) generated a surprisingly extended and diverse set of responses from Asia and beyond. In this rejoinder, I draw together a few lines of arguments that have emerged in that debate with the aim of moving the debate—and thus Asian management research agendas—forward. In particular, I argue that context is a crucial variable to explain management behavior, yet for practical reasons, it has been neglected in research published in top journals. Thus, I challenge management scholars in Asia and beyond to devise new research strategies to enhance our understanding of the contextual boundaries of our knowledge.

Process Innovation and Integration in Process‐Oriented Settings: The Case of the Oil Industry

Scholars have long argued that in new product development integrated innovation processes replace sequentially organized ones because of changing capabilities, integration of knowledge, and the increasing importance of market orientation. The intention of this paper is to study whether this also applies in process‐oriented industries. Process‐oriented settings are fundamentally different from product‐oriented ones as the emphasis is on efficiency, clear guidelines, and tacit knowledge, while radical innovation is less important. It is also less obvious why market orientation—a key driver of integration in new product development—should change the way the innovation process is organized, as there is no product to be developed in the first place. A Stage Gate Model could therefore be well‐suited to achieve more efficiency and effectiveness. In order to investigate process innovation in a process‐oriented setting, we decided to study the upstream oil and gas industry, a scale‐intensive, process‐oriented setting that substantially contrasts with traditional science‐driven industries such as biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, where patents are relevant. The particular advantage of this setting is that virtually no product innovation occurs, allowing the isolation of process innovation. Relying on five inductive case studies of major projects (BP's Prudhoe Bay, Chevron's Kern River, Conoco Philips's Ekofisk, ENI's el‐Bouri, and Shell's Troll field), we find that integration occurs in process‐oriented settings but does so for different reasons than in product‐oriented ones. Integration emerges from an innovation mode characterized by: (1) trial and error (not R&D) as the main mode of innovation; (2) the cooperation of experts from different knowledge backgrounds; (3) the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which facilitates this cooperation across disciplines and projects; and (4) the need to increase efficiency as demand outstrips supply. More precisely, demand shapes reward systems and determines whether new raw materials will be used (creating new supply that requires innovation of processes in periods when demand outstrips supply). Supply and reward systems therefore create the conditions where trial and error, integration of knowledge, and ICT development mutually enforce each other, leading to the integration of the innovation process. Besides contributing to the literature on innovation the paper also offers interesting insights for managers. In order to foster innovation in process‐oriented settings they need to provide specialists with room to experiment over extended periods of time, encourage cooperation across disciplines, and create both incentives and systems to facilitate this process. Finally, managers need to consider the ability of staff to cooperate at the outset, when they set up their recruitment process.     

Innovation Performance in New Product Development Teams in China's Technology Ventures: The Role of Behavioral Integration Dimensions and Collective Efficacy

In emerging markets, technology ventures increasingly rely on new product development (NPD) teams to generate creative ideas and to mold these innovative ideas into streams of new products or services. However, little is known about how behavioral integration (a behavioral team process) and collective efficacy (a motivational team process) jointly facilitate or inhibit team innovation performance in emerging markets—especially in China, the world's largest emerging‐market setting with collectivist and high power distance cultures. Drawing on social cognitive theory and behavioral integration research, this article elucidates the relationships between behavioral integration dimensions (i.e., collaborative behavior, information exchange, and joint decision‐making) and innovation performance and also examines how collective efficacy moderates these relationships in China's NPD teams. Results from a sample of 96 NPD teams in China's technology ventures reveal that information exchange is positively associated with innovation performance. Collaborative behavior positively but marginally influences innovation performance, whereas joint decision‐making does not relate to innovation performance. Moreover, collective efficacy demonstrates an important moderating role. Specifically, both collaborative behavior and joint decision‐making are more positively associated with innovation performance when collective efficacy is higher. In contrast, information exchange is less positively associated with innovation performance when collective efficacy is higher. This study makes important theoretical contributions to the literature on team innovation and behavioral integration in emerging markets by offering a better understanding of how behavioral and motivational team processes jointly shape innovation performance in China's NPD teams. This study also extends social cognitive theory by identifying collective efficacy as a boundary condition for the overall effectiveness of behavioral integration dimensions. In particular, this study highlights the condition under which behavioral integration dimensions facilitate or inhibit NPD team innovation performance in China.     

The Mediating Role of Strategic Orientations on the Relationship between Ambidexterity‐Oriented Decisions and Innovative Ambidexterity

Building on upper echelon theory and strategic process theory, this article analyzes the relationship between ambidexterity‐oriented decisions and innovative ambidexterity. While ambidexterity‐oriented decisions embrace the capability of top management teams to manage contradictory strategic directions, namely adaptability and alignment, innovative ambidexterity captures the ability of firms to simultaneously develop discontinuous and incremental innovations. In addition to the direct relationship between ambidexterity‐oriented decisions and innovative ambidexterity, it is argued that innovation orientation and cost orientation denote two cultural implementation mechanisms that mediate this effect. Using two top‐executive data sets collected in the United States (n = 83) and India (n = 78), the empirical analysis shows that innovation orientation and cost orientation partially mediate the direct influence of ambidexterity‐oriented decisions on innovative ambidexterity, thus further explaining how formulated decisions made by the top management team nurture ambidextrous innovation behavior. Hence, this article extends prior literature that emphasizes a positive influence of top managers on innovation through incorporating an organizational ambidexterity perspective. Second, this study contributes to ambidexterity literature through integrating strategic process theory. While ambidexterity‐oriented decisions primarily relate to strategy formulation, innovation orientation and cost orientation are associated with strategy implementation. The results show that both strategic subprocesses are vital in enabling ambidextrous innovation behavior. Third, an operationalization for the ability of top management to balance adaptability‐ and alignment‐oriented decisions is provided based on prior literature.     

Twenty Years of the Journal of Product Innovation Management: History, Participants, and Knowledge Stock and Flows

The Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM) serves as a marketplace for science‐based, innovative ideas that are produced and consumed by scholars and businesspeople. Now that JPIM has existed for 20 years, two intriguing questions emerge: (1) How has the journal evolved over time in terms of knowledge stock, that is, what are the characteristics of the growing stock of knowledge published by JPIM over the years; and (2) how has the journal evolved in knowledge flow, that is, how is JPIM influenced by other scientific publications and what is its impact on other journals? In terms of knowledge stock, over 35% of the articles published over the 20 years investigate processes and metrics for performance management. The next most frequently published area was strategy, planning, and decision making (20%), followed by customer and market research (17%). The dominant research method used was a cross‐sectional large‐sample survey, and the focus most usually is at the project level of the firm. The large majority of JPIM authors (60%) have a marketing background, with the remaining 40% representing numerous functional domains. Academics at all levels publish in JPIM, and though most authors hail from North America, the Dutch are a significant second group. JPIM was analyzed from a knowledge‐flow perspective by looking at the scientific sources used by JPIM authors to develop their ideas and articles. To this end a bibliometric analysis was performed by analyzing all references in articles published in JPIM. During 1984–2003 JPIM published 488 articles, containing 10,314 references to journals and 6,533 references to other sources. Some 20% of these references (2,020) were self‐references to JPIM articles. The remaining 8,294 journal references were to articles in 287 journals in the fields of management (25%), marketing (24%), and management of technology (14%). However, it should be pointed out that many domains were dominated by a limited number of journals. The second component of knowledge flow concerns the extent to which the ideas developed in JPIM are consumed by other authors. Again, bibliometric analysis was used to analyze data from the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) about citations to JPIM in other journals. For the period 1984–2005, the SSCI registered 7,773 citations to JPIM in 2,067 articles published in 278 journals (including the 2,020 self‐citations in JPIM). The functional areas most frequently citing JPIM are management of technology (25%), marketing (15%), management (14%), and operations management and management science (9%). Again, several domains were found to be dominated by a limited number of journals. At the level of individual journals the analysis shows a growing impact of JPIM on management of technology journals. The knowledge‐flow analysis demonstrates how JPIM functions as a bridge between the knowledge from various domains and the body of knowledge on management of technology. It suggests a growing specialization of the field of technology innovation management, with JPIM being firmly entrenched as the acknowledged leading journal.