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Business accelerators play a key role in the initial critical stages of assessment of commercial viability, offering mentorship provision of funding and protection of intellectual property (IP) for product development and refinement. However, little is known about the decision-making criteria and detailed analysis of the underlying criteria and interdependencies between the key factors used by accelerator organizations to fund start-ups. This article focuses on the decision-making criteria utilized by a leading £21M accelerator program, largely funded by the European Regional Development Fund for initial stage funding and IP protection for product and innovation commercialization. We incorporate a multimethodological interpretive-based approach based on Day's “Real-Win-Worth” framework to develop the interrelationships and ranking between the factors. The results highlight the significance and weighting attached to the factors associated with the technical competency of the proposer and evidence of demand existing for the product. We propose a new framework that models the key factor interrelationships offering additional insight to accelerator-based decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation is seen today as an indispensable practice if an organization wishes to achieve competitive advantage and sustainable success in the marketplace. The development of new products and services and new technologies that enable those products and services seem to be the crown jewel of innovation. The management of these technologies, more specifically the process through which technologies are transferred, has been the focus of scholarly debates and studies for several decades. Currently, there are no quantitative, comprehensive, and easily applicable models in the literature that researchers and practitioners can use to assess organizations’ technology transfer capabilities. This article has sought to delineate important factors and perspectives applicable to technology transfer, and to use those in order to assess an organization's capabilities, through the application of a hierarchical decision modeling model to create a technology transfer score. The research model is applied to a utility company in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and the results provide insights on how to measure and interpret technology transfer capabilities as well as a starting point for technology managers to improve those capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do global value chains (GVCs) affect a firm's innovation impact? Working as international communities, GVCs are rich in knowledge and resource interchange. The prior literature has focused on knowledge absorbing or internal knowledge transfer within firms for in-house innovation. However, scant research has focused on promoting innovation across interfirm networks in a GVC context. This article develops a new concept of interfirm transformative capacity as a firm's ability to transfer developed technology knowledge across time, space, and firm networks. In this article, we explore three mechanisms of interfirm transformative capacity in GVCs: 1) choosing knowledge intermediaries, 2) transmitting and maintaining knowledge over time and space, and 3) reactivating and synthesizing knowledge. We predict that engagement in a lead firm's GVC, structural holes, and network centrality will affect a focal firm's innovation impact as a result of interfirm transformative capacity. Integrator suppliers have higher innovation impacts than modular suppliers. To test these three mechanisms, we build a novel dataset from a five-year panel of Apple suppliers and their patent impacts. The results support our hypotheses related to the mechanisms of interfirm transformative capacity. Our theoretical elaboration and empirical findings have significant implications for innovation policy within, and governance of, GVCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Servitization by manufacturing firms has been a growing trend in recent years. However, the literature is unclear on whether servitization improves firm performance. Using survey data from 334 Chinese manufacturing firms, we examine how servitization affects firm performance. We also investigate the contingent role of platform-based innovation. Our results show that servitization enhances latent needs identification and worsens dominant logics conflict. Platform-based innovation is effective in mitigating harm from dominant logics conflict, but it also limits the transfer of latent customer needs. This article contributes to the literature by identifying underlying mediating effects between servitization and firm performance to explain how servitization affects firm performance. The findings also address the “service paradox.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to understand the effect of firms’ application development activities when introducing new technologies from universities or public institutes on the success of commercialization and corporate growth. Technology itself does not guarantee corporate growth; instead, it is commercialization that contributes more to achieving a sustainable competitive edge, as it offers economic value. We collected samples on the commercialization performance of start-ups that adopted the technology of universities or public research institutes and measured the intensity of the firms’ application development activities as the gap between the technology readiness levels (TRLs) at the time of technology acquisition and the firms’ current TRL. Our findings show that the process of transferring technology to firms is mediated by the firms’ application development performance. Most notably, we first observed that firms’ investments in commercialization have no significant direct effect on commercialization success; instead, we found that this relationship is mediated by the TRL gap. This article suggests that it is necessary to consider the entire process—from the technology transfer to firms to successful commercialization—to form a mechanism under which universities and research institutes can create substantial additional value and allow their research to realize their full potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The smart specialization strategy (S3) introduces a new “policy-prioritization logic” according to which regional strategies should target interventions in those research and innovation domains in which the region has a competitive advantage. In other words, the adoption of an S3 strategy has shifted the regional innovation strategies’ focus from privileging exclusively high-tech sectors to including also those lower tech domains that are recognized as a source of regional competitive advantage. As a consequence, this shift calls for a rethinking of university–industry relationships for innovation, which have traditionally privileged high-tech sectors. In this light, this article aims to analyze how the introduction of the S3 has changed the role of universities by comparing patterns of academic engagement with local entrepreneurs in both low-tech and high-tech domains. To this purpose, we conduct an empirical study in the Region of Campania (South of Italy) to analyze differences in terms of university–industry channels and motivations in different S3 technological domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the effects of three channels of technology transfer—global value chain participation (GVCP), foreign technology import (FTI), and domestic technology purchase (DTP)—on innovation efficiency by using 11 years of data from Chinese manufacturing industries. Empirical results show FTI and GVCP significantly facilitate innovation efficiency, whereas DTP decreases it. Further, absorptive capacity (AC) positively moderates the relationship between FTI and innovation efficiency. Moreover, in the high-tech industry, we find that GVCP positively affects innovation efficiency, and AC positively moderates the effect of GVCP on innovation efficiency. This finding is informative from a strategic perspective as firms can make strategic decisions in the selection of technology transfer channels. In addition, firms may also absorb and apply external technologies while developing AC to improve enterprises' ability according to their own organizational and strategic contexts in order to achieve and maintain competitive advantages. This finding provides convincing empirical evidence on the relationship between technology transfer channels and innovation efficiency and valuable lessons to other developing countries for the selection of technology transfer channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the evolutionary game theory, this paper explores the evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) of university–industry collaborative innovation. By utilizing MATLAB software, the analysis of the influence of agent coupling degree, group size, and government policies on the stable evolution of university–industry collaborative innovation is taken into account, while simulating. Our findings indicate that, first, agent coupling degree is positively and nonlinearly related to the stable evolution of university–industry collaborative innovation; second, when an enterprise's size is equal to university's, group size is more significant to the stable evolution of university–industry collaborative innovation than agent coupling degree; third, when a group size of an enterprise and university is different, the combinations of agent coupling degree and group size have various effects on the stable evolution of enterprise group and university group; and fourth, government policies have a significantly positive impact on the stable evolution of university–industry collaborative innovation, and incentive measures are more effective than punitive ones. Research conclusions have developed the relationship among university–industry collaborative innovation agents, expanded the boundary of the stability study of collaborative innovation, and provided new ideas for improving the effectiveness of government innovation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of decision makers are required to assess business opportunities, as new technologies have been developing at an astonishing rate and technology transfer has been facilitated in numerous institutions. We present a partially observed Markov decision process model of the assessment. At each point in time, a reward-maximizing decision maker chooses to either accept the opportunity, reject it, or gather costly, imperfect information and update her belief on the status of the opportunity. The resulting optimal policy balances the costs and benefits of decision accuracy, information gathering, and the window of opportunity closing. We show that the optimal policy is characterized by a pair of probability thresholds, derive bounds for these thresholds, and investigate their sensitivity to changes in information cost, the payoff structure, and information quality. Our approach unifies and contributes to three distinct streams of research: technology adoption, partially observed optimal stopping, and comparison of experiments. We also articulate how real decision makers can implement this opportunity assessment framework and offer implications for those who fund these opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to acquiring external technology, firms have started to actively commercialize technological knowledge, which represents the opposite type of technology transactions. The strong interactions with a firm's environment contrast the traditional closed approaches to innovation. Therefore, this new paradigm has been termed open innovation. Prior research into this field has mostly been limited to theoretical considerations and case studies. More general work has usually focused either on exterbal technology acquisition or on external technology exploitation. Accordingly, I take an integrated perspective and regard the two types of technology transactions as the main dimensions of a firm's strategic approach to open innovation. Drawing on these dimensions, I use data from a questionnaire-based study of 154 middle and large companies to identify groups of firms that pursue homogeneous strategies regarding open innovation. Accordingly, this analysis is the first large-scale study that describes the current state of open innovation in practice. Moreover, it is the first work that identifies strategic approaches of firms to technology transactions along the innovation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the role of research universities in explaining interciuster innovation differentials. Drawing on the knowledge production function, our baseline hypothesis is that cluster innovative performance is determined by the cluster's endowment with financial, intellectual, and human capital. Leveraging fine-grained, longitudinal panel data tracking the population of medical device clusters in the USA over a 12-year time period (1990-2001), we demonstrate strong support for the notion of spatial heterogeneity in cluster innovative performance. In particular, research universities, which play a critical role by serving as a source of knowledge spillovers and producing graduates who disseminate tacit knowledge within a cluster, are a critical ingredient for innovative performance in a regional technology cluster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the implementation of design reuse and buffers in developing the infrastructure of high-tech production facilities Design reuse entails using the same systems architecture from one project to the next. Design buffers involve building slack into a proven systems architecture to absorb foreseeable change requests. Choosing the appropriate amounts of reuse and slack is dependent on the uncertainty in the manufacturing technology over the infrastructure life cycle. While proven infrastructure designs can economically accommodate incremental changes in technology, adaptation costs escalate when sufficient buffers are not built-in and changes are radical. We uncover opposing stakeholder interests in determining the extent to which reuse or buffers are used. Design reuse is attractive to the client to reduce the risk that a facility fails to perform, but limits the designer's job to tedious customization work. Design buffers are attractive to the designer to do original problem-solving and limit the risks of being unresponsive to uncertainty, but not to the client who is not guaranteed that the investments will pay off. We find that inequalities between the two stakeholders in the governing power on design decision-making compound the difficulties in assessing and implementing the reuse versus buffers tradeoff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounded in the technology acceptance model (TAM), this study examines the influence of technology trust and interorganizational trust on postadoption utilization. This study extends the innovation diffusion literature by drawing upon past diffusion research and considering trust-based determinants in facilitating technology usage. Field interviews were conducted to develop an understanding of the user population and the unique challenges the individuals experienced while working with the new system. The results of the interviews enabled the author to identify which variables to investigate further through the use of a survey data collection protocol. In the present study, 273 first-tier supply chain members of the second-largest U.S. automotive service-parts logistics operation, who were recently introduced to a new supply chain management technology, were surveyed. Using a structural equation model, nine hypotheses were tested. As hypothesized, an individual's technology trust and interorganizational trust have an effect on perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, which further influence postadoption technology utilization behavior. The results suggest that even in supply chains where usage is mandated, the presence of technology and interorganizational trust can increase individual utilization of new technologies. Implications of this study along with suggestions for future research are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the knowledge-based view of the firm as our theoretical underpinning, we study partnerships between industrial firms and university research centers (URCs) in order to identify facilitators of knowledge transfer, particularly focusing on how firms learn from URCs. Data for this study were obtained from senior-level executives from a random sample of one hundred and seventy-three firms located in the northeastern US. Results indicate that social connectedness, trust, URC technology transfer-intellectual property policies, technological relatedness and technological capability are significant facilitators of knowledge transfer. We also found that the type of knowledge transferred, i.e., explicit versus tacit, moderated these relationships. We conclude with implications for future research and R&D policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge transfer and technology transfer are often used interchangeably and while both knowledge transfer and technology transfer are highly interactive activities, they serve different purposes. Knowledge transfer implies a broader, more inclusive construct that is directed more toward understanding the "whys" for change. In contrast, technology transfer is a narrower and more targeted construct that usually embodies certain tools for changing the environment. Grounding our work in the 7-S framework, we examine the role of key organizational factors in facilitating knowledge transfer and technology transfer activities. Survey data for this study were collected from 189 industrial firms representing 21 different industrial sectors. Results show that there are differences in the types of firm structures, cultures and university policies for intellectual property rights (IPR), patent ownership, and licensing that facilitated knowledge transfer activities compared to those that facilitated technology transfer activities. Specifically, firms with more mechanistic structures and more stable direction-oriented cultures were associated with higher levels of knowledge transfer. Conversely, finns with more organic structures, more flexible change-oriented cultures, and more customized university policies for IPR, patent ownership, and licensing were associated with higher levels of technology transfer. The firm's trust in its university research center partner was equally important for both activities. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for future research and management practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores relationships between types of innovative capabilities of firms in the semiconductor industry, the amount and nature of technical alliance usage, and the extent and types of associated problems. Results which show that firms need radical and/or incremental product and process innovation capabilities to compete successfully; Conclusion that firms have more problems acquiring product innovation capabilities through alliances meant for new technology development than they do acquiring process innovation capabilities.

In this article editor gives an introduction of various articles published in the February 2004 issue of the journal "IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management." According to the editor, this issue of the journal includes eight research papers. One of the paper is written by R. Balachandra on "The Evolution of Technology Generations and Associated Markets: A Double Helix Model." Similarly, M. Bommer and D. S. Jalajas, writes on "Innovation Sources of Large and Small Technology-Based Firms." S. Gopalakrishnan and M. D. Santoro writes on "Distinguishing Between Knowledge Transfer and Technology Transfer Activities: The Role of Key Organizational Factors."