Explorative search for a high‐impact innovation: the role of technological status in the global pharmaceutical industry

Extant studies suggest that the potential benefits arising from exploration are associated with access to diverse and distant knowledge across organizational and technological boundaries. However, exploration is not sufficient to assure if innovation actually occurs. Our study identifies exploration into two types, organizational and technological, and argues that the innovative effect of a firm's explorative search beyond organizational and technological boundaries is best leveraged by its technological status in an industry. Data derived from the global pharmaceutical industry indicate that a firm's search across organizational boundaries has a positive effect on its innovation impact, and such effect is strengthened when the firm is high in its technological status. However, the firm's search moving beyond its technological boundary increases innovation impact only for the group of high technological status but decreases it for the low‐status group. It appears that, in the global pharmaceutical industry, a firm's technological status is most critical to exploit knowledge from distant technology domains.     

Aligning Knowledge Assets for Exploitation,Exploration, and Ambidexterity: A Study of Companies in High‐Tech Parks in China

There is little research that has explored the effects of how knowledge assets are aligned with each other in exploitation and exploration innovation strategies. This study uses alignment theory to explore the effects of aligning knowledge assets on facilitating a firm's ability to pursue ambidexterity, which is defined as the simultaneous pursuit of explorative and exploitative innovation strategies. We also explore the relative influence of organizational and human capital in fostering an exploitation innovation strategy on the one hand, and an exploration innovation strategy on the other. Using a primary survey sample of 127 companies in two high‐tech parks in China, we found that greater reliance on relatively more organizational capital versus human capital has a significantly positive impact on the success of an exploitative innovation strategy. The amount of organizational capital relative to the amount of human capital has a stronger positive association with exploratory innovation strategy when social capital is greater. We also found that the combination of organizational, human, and social capital fosters ambidexterity, i.e., the simultaneous pursuit of exploration and exploitation. This study extends alignment theory and examines the effects of aligning these knowledge assets on a firm's ability to foster organizational ambidexterity.     

Life‐Cycle Flexibility: How to Measure and Improve the Innovative Capability in Turbulent Environments*

Managing innovation in rapidly moving environments, such as Interned‐based services, is a major challenge for the consolidated theories on product and service development. The innovation management literature identifies flexibility as the right way for coping with these challenges. By increasing the development process flexibility, it is possible to reduce the development time as well as the time and cost needed for last‐minute concept changes. But this is not enough. The product or service must also be flexible after it has been released: A life‐cycle flexibility (LCF) must be pursued. Focused on the Italian on‐line discount brokers industry, this article is a result of a two‐staged research process that started with a qualitative explorative phase (i.e., case‐study methodology) and ended with a quantitative explorative one (i.e., questionnaire methodology). It identifies three different LCF dimensions—frequency of adaptation, rapidity of adaptation, and quality of adaptation—and it defines a metric for each of them. Subsequently, it identifies five managerial and organizational practices that increase at least one of the three LCF dimensions: (1) to manage the back‐end technological competences; (2) to share the front‐end technological competences with external suppliers; (3) to utilize open and standard technologies; (4) to have a low formalization of the new service development (NSD) procedures; and (5) to have high formalization of the NSD organization.     

Learning Capability,Technological Parity,and Innovation Mode Use*

The purpose of this research was to examine whether a firm's learning capability interacts with industry technological parity to predict innovation mode use. Learning capability is conceptualized in the current research as a firm's ability to develop or acquire the new knowledge‐based resources and skills needed to offer new products. Industry technological parity is conceptualized as the extent to which similarity and equality exist among the technological competencies of the firms in an industry. Three generic modes of innovation are considered: internal, cooperative, and external innovation. These modes reflect the development of new products based solely on internal resources, the collaborative development of new products (i.e., with one or more development partners), and the acquisition of fully developed products from external sources, respectively. The premises of this research are that (1) technological parity can create incentives or disincentives for innovating in a particular mode, depending upon the value of external innovative resources relative to the value of internal innovative resources and (2) firms will choose innovation modes that reflect a combination of their abilities and incentives to innovate alone, with others, or through others. Survey research and secondary sources were used to collect data from 119 high‐technology firms. Results indicate that firms exhibit greater use of internal and external innovation when high levels of industry technological parity are matched by high levels of firm learning capability. By contrast, a negative relationship between learning capability and industry technological parity is associated with greater use of the cooperative mode of innovation. Thus, a single, common internal capability—learning capability—interacts with the level of technological parity in the environment to significantly predict three distinct innovation modes—modes that are not inherently dependent upon one another. As such, a firm's internal ability to innovate, as reflected in learning capability, has relevance well beyond that firm's likely internal innovation output. It also predicts the firm's likely use of cooperative and external innovation when considered in light of the level of industry technological parity. A practical implication of these findings is that companies with modest learning capabilities are not inherently precluded from innovating. Rather, they can innovate through modes for which conditions in their current environments do not constitute significant obstacles to innovation output. In particular, modest learning capabilities are associated with higher innovative output in the internal, cooperative, and external modes when industry technological parity levels are low, high, and low, respectively. Conversely, strong learning capabilities tend to be associated with higher innovative output in the internal, cooperative, and external modes when industry technological parity levels are high, low, and high, respectively.     

Networking as a Means to Strategy Change: The Case of Open Innovation in Mobile Telephony

The purpose of this article is to investigate how innovation networks can be used to deal with a changing technological environment. This study combines different concepts related to research and development (R&D) collaboration strategies of large firms and applies these concepts to R&D alliance projects undertaken by Nokia Corporation in the period 1985–2002. The research methodology is a combination of in‐depth semistructured interviews and a large‐scale quantitative analysis of alliance agreements. For the empirical analysis a distinction is made between exploration and exploitation in innovation networks in terms of three different measures. As a first measure, the difference between exploration and exploitation strategies by means of the observed capabilities of the partners of the contracting firms is investigated. The second measure is related to partner turnover. The present article argues that in exploration networks partner turnover will be higher than in exploitation networks. As a third measure, the type of alliance contract will be taken; exploration networks will make use of flexible legal organizational structures, whereas exploitation alliances are associated with legal structures that enable long‐term collaboration. The case of Nokia has illustrated the importance of strategic technology networks for strategic repositioning under conditions of change. Nokia followed an exploitation strategy in the development of the first two generations of mobile telephony and an exploration strategy in the development of technologies for the third generation. Such interfirm networks seem to offer flexibility, speed, innovation, and the ability to adjust smoothly to changing market conditions and new strategic opportunities. These two different strategies have led to distinctly different international innovation networks, have helped the company in becoming a world leader in the mobile phone industry, and have enabled it to sustain that position in a radically changed technological environment. This study also illustrates that Nokia effectively uses an open innovation strategy in the development of new products and services and in setting technology standards for current and future use of mobile communication applications. This article presents one of the first longitudinal studies, which describes the use of innovation networks as a means to adapt swiftly to changing market conditions and strategic change. This study contributes to the emerging, but still inconsistent, literature on explorative and exploitative learning by means of strategic technology networks.     

Inbound open innovation for enhanced performance: Enablers and opportunities

Open innovation, defined as a firm's purposive pursuit and integration of external inputs for new product development, offers an alternative perspective on innovation. Drawing on resource-based and capability theories, this study identifies key factors that enable inbound open innovation and increase its efficacy in a business-to-business context. Because open innovation relies on external connections, relational capability—that is, the firm's ability to make and manage relationships with other firms—should enhance the effects of inbound open innovation on firm performance. Two key resources may further enhance the moderating effects of relational capability: network spillovers that indicate knowledge-rich surroundings, and flexibility that allows for responsiveness and adaptability. The authors test these relationships with data from managers in 204 business-to-business high-tech firms, as well as secondary data pertaining to firm performance and flexibility. The results support the expectations that the ability to build interfirm relationships in a knowledge-rich environment increase the efficacy of inbound open innovation for gaining superior financial performance. Interestingly, additional analyses suggest an unexpected nonlinear interaction effect with flexibility. When firms possess strong relational capabilities and adopt an open innovation approach, they achieve higher financial performance if they have a low or a high level of flexibility. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

基于创新协同理论的企业技术创新能力评价指标体系研究

企业是技术创新的主体,在科技高速发展的今天,企业该如何提高自身的技术创新能力,使其能够持续、快速、健康地发展,便成为一个不可忽视的问题。本文在对企业技术创新能力研究综述的基础上,从协同的角度进一步完善了企业技术创新能力评价理论基础,给出了企业创新协同系统的概念和企业技术创新能力要素。遵循科学性、系统性、可操作性和代表性的原则,从研发能力、财务能力、协同能力和产出能力四个方面,选取了15个有代表性的评价指标,构建出了基于创新协同理论的企业技术创新能力评价指标体系。     

城镇化背景下中小城市发展路径及对策研究

在现代经济中,城市是经济的重要载体,中小城市是构筑科学、合理的城镇化体系的重要支撑。要实现中小城市城镇化的科学发展,其经济增长方式必须由粗放型向集约型转变。本文基于对中小城市发展的动力机制及影响因素分析,分别从3个方面探索性的提出,城镇化背景下中小城市发展的路径在于：产业优化升级、就业协同增长和城乡统筹发展,并突出强调了产业优化升级的主导作用。     

Technological capability, social capital and the launch strategy for innovative products

The Launch strategy for innovative products is a crucial strategic typology adopted by many high tech firms, and which has been identified in prior research focusing on new product introduction to the market. However, the nexus between launch strategies and firm resources has gained little research attention. This article therefore aims to investigate the influence of technological capability and social capital, two key resources for innovation in high tech firms, on the adoption of a launch strategy for innovative products. Furthermore, prior research has revealed that market characteristics play a moderating role on the relationship between firm resources and company strategies; thus, this study also examines the moderating effect of market characteristics. This study takes Taiwan's integrated circuit design firms as the analytical sample. Based on a sample of ninety companies, two interesting findings have been found. First, both technological capability and social capital are associated positively with the launch strategy for innovative products. Second, while the market growth rates increase, the positive relationship between technological capability and the launch strategy for innovative products becomes weaker.     

Configurations of Innovations across Domains: An Organizational Ambidexterity View

How do firms balance explorative and exploitative innovation for superior firm performance? While most prior studies have approached this issue by focusing on technology‐related innovation, the role of balancing exploration and exploitation in other important organizational domains, i.e., marketing, and the interaction effect of ambidexterity across different domains have been overlooked. This study contributes to this line of research by investigating how firms simultaneously balance exploration and exploitation across two critical domains, namely technology innovation and market innovation. The study distinguishes four types of configurations: market leveraging (technology exploration and market exploitation), technology leveraging (technology exploitation and market exploration), pure exploitation (technology exploitation and market exploitation), and pure exploration (technology exploration and market exploration). From an organizational ambidexterity perspective, the current work investigates whether and how these different combinations exert distinctive effects on firm performance. Specifically, the article posits that (a) technology exploration and market exploitation complement each other, and (b) technology exploitation and market exploration also complement each other, such that both market leveraging and technology leveraging strategies have positive effects on firm performance. The article also maintains that such positive relationships are fully mediated by differentiation and low cost advantages. Conversely, it is argued that (c) technology exploration and market exploration conflict with each other, and (d) so do technology exploitation and market exploitation, such that both pure exploration and pure exploitation have negative effects on firm performance. Hypotheses were tested using survey data collected from 292 manufacturing and service firms in China. The results supported most of the hypotheses, except that pure exploration demonstrated no significant relationship with firm performance.     

Radical Product Innovation Capability: Literature Review,Synthesis, and Illustrative Research Propositions

Product innovation is a key to organizational renewal and success. Relative to other forms of innovation, radical product innovations offer unprecedented customer benefits, substantial cost reductions, or the ability to create new businesses, any of which should lead to superior organizational performance. In other words, a radical product innovation capability is a dynamic capability, one that enables the organization to maintain alignment with rapidly evolving customer needs in high‐velocity environments. Extensive research has been conducted on the antecedents to an incremental/general product innovation capability, and meta‐analyses have been conducted to integrate the results from the various studies. However, whether and how a radical product innovation capability differs from an incremental product innovation capability is also critical. The purpose of this work is to develop a testable model of the antecedents to radical product innovation success. Based on an extensive literature review, a comprehensive set of organizational components that comprise a firm's radical product innovation capability is identified. These organizational components include senior leadership, organizational culture, organizational architecture, the radical product innovation development process, and the product launch strategy. Of course, each of these components has subcomponents that provide even more texture. This review highlights how the components of a radical innovation capability function differently from those for an incremental capability. In addition, this review strongly suggests that the direct effects models that dominate this literature underestimate the complexity of the interplay of components that comprise a radical product innovation capability. Thus, a model to demonstrate this interplay of these organizational components is provided. Illustrative research propositions are offered to provide guidance to researchers. Suggestions for executives and managers who are involved in the product development process and for scholars who seek to advance the state of knowledge in this area are offered in the conclusion.     

The fit between market learning and organizational capabilities for management innovation

This paper examines how market learning (both explorative and exploitative) interacts with organizational capabilities (technological capabilities and marketing capabilities) to affect management innovation. Drawing upon data from a sample of 272 firms each of which contributed two key informants to the study (resulting in a total of 544 respondents), we find that both exploratory and exploitative market learning have a positive effect on management innovation. The effects of exploratory and exploitative market learning on management innovation are contingent on technological and marketing capabilities. Specifically, technological capabilities enhance the positive effect of exploratory market learning and weaken the positive effect of exploitative market learning on management innovation. Marketing capabilities enhance the positive effect of exploitative market learning and weaken the positive effect of exploratory market learning on management innovation. This study contributes to the literature by integrating organizational learning theory with the absorptive capacity perspective to explain management innovation.     

Diversity of Board Interlocks and the Impact on Technological Exploration: A Longitudinal Study

Scholars have given increased attention to organizational networks as an important component of technological innovation. Although a significant body of research has examined the implications of organizational networks on knowledge diffusion, researchers know little about the impacts that diverse network interlocks have on corporate innovation outputs. To address this gap in the literature, this article draws upon insights from organizational learning and social network theory and argues that interlocked networks affect corporate innovation. Further, interlocks differ in terms of both the heterogeneity of tied‐to firms—ties created through shared board directors—and the directors who create these ties. Accordingly, this study proposes that more diverse interlocks will have a greater impact on corporate technological exploration. To test this proposal, data from multiple sources were analyzed, including historical records of board appointments and data on technological innovations from U.S. public companies. Empirical results from generalized estimating equations suggest that the industrial diversity of interlocked firms increases the likelihood of technological exploration. Moreover, interlocks with R&D‐intensive firms are more important for technological exploration than those created by firms that do not invest heavily in R&D. There is no empirical evidence demonstrating that the ratio of interlocks created by directors with output‐oriented experience enhances technological exploration. Overall, this research reveals that diversity of leader‐created board interlocks can be an important mechanism for fostering corporate entrepreneurial activities such as technological exploration.     

The effects of knowledge interaction for business innovation

The objective of this paper is to examine the effects of knowledge interaction on different types of business innovation. We first identified three indicators that reflect on the quality of the interaction between customers and technological knowledge, and then classified business innovations as product innovation, problem-solving innovation, or general innovation capability. Hypotheses about the impact of different qualities of knowledge interaction on business innovations were tested by collecting data from 178 high-technology firms in Taiwan. The results revealed that product innovation requires both wide-ranging and deep interaction between customers and technological knowledge, that problem-solving innovation requires either wide-ranging or deeper interaction between customers and technological knowledge, and that wide-ranging knowledge interaction is the most important driver for building general innovation capability. The research results enhance our understanding of knowledge interaction, with a special focus on the content and quality of the knowledge interactions within an enterprise. It also helps business managers in allocating resources and facilitating interorganizational communications for different situations related to innovation.     

The impact of competition strength and density on performance: The technological competition networks in the wind energy industry

Technological competition plays an important role in technological development and innovation. However, technological competition networks have long been ignored in research. Based on the social network theory, we proposed that the innovation of an organization is greatly affected by the technological competition networks that it is embedded in. We introduced International Patent Classifications (IPCs) information to construct technological competition networks of organizations, and explored how competition network characteristics influence the organizational competitive capability and innovation performance.Based on the wind energy patent data between 2005 and 2014, we synthetically investigated the technological development and competition networks in the industry. Our findings show that (1) the evolutionary trends of patents and technology elements growth exhibit similar patterns (i.e., increasing before 2011 and decreasing after 2011); (2) the burst detection algorithm detects that 140 technological elements and 132 organizations experienced a sudden growth in production; (3) wind energy organizations intensively compete with each other, and in each year, only 10% of organizations can improve their technological competitive positions in the following year; (4) competition density in a competition network increases the technological competitive capability and innovation performance of firms. Additionally, competition strength has an inverted-U shaped relationship with both the aforementioned outcomes.     

企业R＆D商业化能力研究

知识经济的飞速发展凸显出技术创新的重要性，企业R＆D商业化能力作为企业技术创新能力的重要组成部分越来越被人们所重视。本文认为，企业R＆D商业化能力的强弱在很大程度上影响着R＆D投入的收益多少．企业可以从多个层次来改善其R＆D商业化的水平．不同的商业化途径对R＆D的盈利水平亦有着显著影响。企业应该重视其R＆D商业化能力的改善．因为．它为企业在技术创新活动中实现真正意义上的自主提供了必要的资源支持．是企业实现自主创新战略的必然选择。     

基于创新协同理论的大中型工业企业技术创新能力评价研究

在科技高速发展的今天,大中型工业企业该如何提高自身的技术创新能力,使其能够持续、快速、健康地发展,成为一个不可忽视的问题。本文从研发能力、财务能力、协同能力和产出能力四个方面,选取了15个有代表性的评价指标,构建出了基于创新协同的企业技术创新能力评价指标体系。然后搜集了2011年东部和中部十九个省市大中型工业企业的指标数据,运用因子分析法进行综合分析。研究结果表明,我国大中型工业企业技术创新能力呈现出明显的从东部沿海地区向中部地区由高到低的递减分布。     

Cooperation with competitors and product innovation: Moderating effects of technological capability and alliances with universities

The relationship between cooperation with competitors and product innovation performance was investigated along with the moderating effect of the innovating firm's technological capability and its alliances with universities. The hypothesis that cooperation with competitors has an inverted U-shaped relationship with product innovation performance was tested using data on new product introductions from 1499 Chinese firms. The results support the existence of a bell-shaped relationship between co-opetition and product innovation performance. Technological capability and alliances with universities were shown to weaken the relationship. The findings add significantly to the emerging literature on dynamic co-opetition.     

Design Inertia: Designing for Life‐Cycle Flexibility in Internet‐Based Services*

Managing innovation in rapidly moving environments, such as Internet‐based services, is a major challenge in theory and in practice. Most of the existing literature focuses on the development process as the main area in which innovation takes place. However, in environments where the pace of change of technology and market needs is extremely high, managing service innovations means not only being able to design a good service but also, more importantly, continuously redesigning and adapting the service in order to deal with frequent exogenous changes and opportunities. A high number of innovations therefore must be introduced throughout the entire life cycle of a service. This capability of introducing incremental and radical innovations during the service life cycle (i.e., to adapt a service to contextual changes and opportunities after it has been first released onto the market) at low costs and in the shortest possible time is what is defined here as service life‐cycle flexibility. This process of service adaptation and upgrading implies significant challenges that can be traced back to when a service is first conceived and designed. In fact, many decisions made during the first design process (i.e., the choice of a given database environment) involve a low reversibility rate and may reduce the possibility of taking advantage of future unpredictable opportunities, creating what is called inertia toward innovation. In other words, service life‐cycle flexibility largely depends on how a service has been first designed. This article analyzes two in‐depth case studies of Italian online newspapers and identifies five possible inertia factors that may influence service life‐cycle flexibility, namely (1) technological inertia; (2) internal organizational inertia; (3) external organizational inertia; (4) customer inertia toward changes in the service package; and (5) customer inertia toward changes in the service interaction design. These inertia factors are traced back to the service development process in order to suggest design practices that may increase the service life‐cycle flexibility.     

Complements or Substitutes? Internal Technological Strength,Competitor Alliance Participation,and Innovation Development

While a firm can choose to develop an innovation internally or externally, the internal knowledge development and external knowledge acquisition tend to interact with each other in the innovation process. The present study examines whether internal technological strength and external competitor alliance participation serve as complements or substitutes in innovation development. Built on the knowledge‐based view, this study offers a contingency perspective on the nature of knowledge integration between internal technological strength and external alliance relationships, and how they jointly influence radical and incremental innovation differently. Adopting a random effect negative binomial model specification, a panel data set of 64 pharmaceutical firms over a 15‐year period were used to test the hypothesized effects. The findings indicate that internal technological knowledge strength has an inverted U‐shaped relationship with radical and incremental innovation. More importantly, the findings also demonstrate that the combined effect of internal and external sources of innovation can have differential effects on radical and incremental innovation development. Specifically, competitor alliance participation strengthens the effect of internal technological strength on incremental product innovation while it weakens the above effect on radical product innovation. This suggests that internal and external sources of innovation may complement each other for incremental innovation while they may represent trade‐offs for radical innovation development. The above findings provide empirical evidence for the complexity of pursuing organizational ambidexterity in innovation generation and highlight the importance of balancing the internal and external knowledge sources in pursuing innovation.