Collaboration ‘Engineerability’

Collaboration Engineering is an approach to create sustained collaboration support by designing collaborative work practices for high-value recurring tasks, and transferring those designs to practitioners to execute for themselves without ongoing support from collaboration professionals. A key assumption in this approach is that we can predictably design collaboration processes. In this paper we explore this assumption to understand whether collaboration can, in fact, be designed, and elaborate on the role of thinkLets in the engineering of collaborative work practices. ThinkLets are design patterns for collaborative interactions.     

An Analysis of Technologically Radical Innovation and Breakthrough Patents

Abstract

Breakthrough innovations – commonly defined by innovations with patents surpassing a critical threshold of forward citations – generate benefits for innovators, businesses, and society. Analyzing more than five million patents and citations from 1976 to 2017, this paper adds to the existing literature by examining whether the radicalness of a patented good – that is, the more technology classes cited as contributing prior arts not identified in the patent’s own technology identity – impacts the likelihood an innovation is a breakthrough. In essence, the paper tests the common belief that it is beneficial to “think outside the box” when innovating. The results show that increased radicalness increases the likelihood of a breakthrough up to a certain threshold, after which increased radicalness decreases the likelihood of a breakthrough. Additionally, established innovators and university ownership of a patent each extend the range for which increased radicalness increases the probability of a breakthrough, while joint patent ownership decreases the range.     

There will be exports and licensing: The effects of patent rights and innovation on firm sales

Previous work has focused on how intellectual property rights affect inward technology transfer. This paper is among the first to study whether patent rights contribute to outward technology transfers. Patent protection can affect the ability of firms to be sources of technology through its effects on innovation and commercialization. Using micro data, this paper finds that patent rights and innovation are positively associated with the exporting and licensing of firms, controlling for other determinants of technological capacity, although the effect is not symmetric across firms in all countries. Patent rights have a strong impact on the export and licensing activities of firms in developed countries, and only on the licensing activities of firms in developing countries. Moreover, transfers of technology develop sequentially – namely, exporting before licensing – due to the differing sunk costs of each type of entry. The results have implications for how innovation policies and activities contribute to the outward orientation of firms.     

The role of customer contact employees as external customers: A conceptual framework for marketing strategy and future research

Existing streams of literature in marketing, management, and organizational behavior are integrated to propose a conceptual framework that highlights the customer contact employee's dual role as employee and external customer of the organization. Several iterative “cycles of success” are proposed whereby job satisfaction, the employee's patronage of the company's products (i.e., goods or services), and job performance (as customer contact employees) are all enhanced, ultimately leading to long-term relationships (with customers and employees) and profits for the organization. The framework highlights the role of internal marketing as a tool for enhancing the competitive advantage gained by strategically considering the customer contact employee's role as external customer.