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Technology push and market pull innovation strategies are playing an important role for the effective management of ideas, technologies, and trends. The coexistence of these two approaches led to many debates and the focus switched several times from putting more effort into technology push aspects to fostering market pull approaches in the last decades. Still, there is no in-depth exploration of the interface of technology push and market pull and only few conceptual models are dealing with the connection between technology push and market pull in particular. Therefore, this study puts an exploratory focus on the innovation management processes of a global outdoor manufacturer with a special emphasis on the interface between technology push and market pull. From the case findings and our literature we conceptualise a non-linear innovation model that systematically integrates market pull and technology push activities. The model was tested for its practical applicability by reflecting it against the case company's organisational capabilities. Further research implications are discussed as well as implications for the management of the innovation process in practice, which highlights especially the importance of an innovation competence team.

This paper aims to provide a description of how different information and communication technology (ICT) sourcing strategies can impact on the organisational characteristics of the ICT department, its competences and on its continuous innovation. ICT sourcing can be a strategic lever to guarantee effectiveness and, at the same time, to increase an enterprise’s dynamic capabilities and foster continuous innovation. Innovation and learning can be enabled by collaboration with a network of specialised and integrated suppliers of ICT services and technologies. The work is based on a survey of 79 enterprises and an empirical study involving 40 cases. Evidence derived from the sample supports the identification of suitable sourcing models, coherent in terms of strategy, organisation and competence management, in order to manage suppliers as a potential source of innovation. Research results also pinpoint the barriers keeping ICT suppliers from carrying out their role as true innovators in an enterprise’s continuous innovation process.

This study examines which factors motivate small enterprises to realise product innovations and how these factors affect their innovation processes. In a multiple embedded case study of three small enterprises, 11 different innovation processes, both realised and unrealised, were discovered and analysed. Strategy, competition, profit, growth, source of innovation idea, innovation process size and novelty were not found to explain the motivation to innovate, but ten interdependent motivating factors did, of which four externally oriented factors were found conclusive for innovation to occur. The factors found, dealing with resource scarcity, technology and market uncertainty and risk, and cash flow, highly affected how the innovation processes were carried out. The findings further show that the need to maintain steady cash flow seems to be the overall motive for product innovation in small enterprises.

The literature on innovation highlights the interactive nature of the innovation process in which non-technological activities are essential. However, few works have taken into account the role of other innovative strategies such as marketing and organisational innovations. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to fill this gap. For the empirical work, we used firm-level data drawn from the Community Innovation Survey 2006 for Luxembourg. We find that the effects of non-technological innovations differ depending on the phase of the innovation process. Marketing and organisational innovations significantly increase the likelihood of innovation, but not the commercial success of innovation. The study also shows the differentiated effects of the two types of non-technological innovation in manufacturing and service firms.

Innovation is widely recognised as an appropriate ‘tool’ to gain competitiveness and it is often defined as an idea, process, service, product, etc., that is characterised as being new and commercially accepted. The description of the innovation process as a sequence of tasks is not new; but there is still no easy way to materialise these processes in the industry. Various authors have defined modelling as the most appropriate way to achieve this purpose. This paper compiles and summarises all of the most relevant models published during the last three decades. It also identifies their key factors, which are included in a questionnaire that will be used amongst relevant industrial firms in the Basque country in order to characterise a new innovation model. The originality of this work will be the joint development and validation of a new innovation model, suited to actual needs, flexible and customised to industrial companies.

The recent growth in inward and outward technology transfer, e.g., by means of technology licensing, reflects the new paradigm of open innovation. By actively acquiring and commercialising intellectual property in the technology markets, these open innovation processes contrast traditional closed innovation processes. Prior open innovation research has largely been limited to case studies and theoretical contributions, and other lines of research have focused either on inward or outward technology transfer without taking an integrative perspective. Therefore, I simultaneously consider inward and outward technology transfer as the two main directions of open innovation. On this basis, data from a survey of 154 industrial firms are used to test four hypotheses relating the size and quality of the corporate patent portfolio to a firm’s extent of external technology acquisition and external technology commercialisation. The results show that the corporate intellectual property portfolio constitutes a major determinant of opening up the innovation process.

A changing industrial and technological environment implies a need for a diligent acquisition of dynamic capabilities. While tackling exogenous discontinuities is imperative for success, the problem often lies in the firms' internal processes, where existing core competences might deteriorate to core rigidities. The presented contribution is two-fold: first, a conceptual framework for assessing knowledge-related rigidities along the innovation process is introduced, which is derived from the stage-gate model for new product development. The innovation process is evaluated within cases of four industry firms, with emphasis on identifying problem areas, core rigidities and resulting challenges along the entire way from idea to market launch. Secondly, the challenges are clustered, providing a basis for deriving optimisation approaches, as well as summarised and compared across the cases. In all phases of the innovation process, the benchmark with other firms seems to ease the process of creating awareness on rigidities and to provide a basis for managerial improvement.

This study attempts to elucidate the role of social network structure in moderating the relationship between knowledge management practices and innovation stimulators to derive competitive advantages during the innovation process. First, a literature review is made of theories regarding social network structure, along with a summary of the merits and limitations of each social network structure involved in knowledge transfer. Secondly, each social network structure facilitates different knowledge management practices. Finally, each knowledge management practice facilitates different innovation stimulators during each innovation period to advance corresponding competitiveness. The authors propose a framework to consolidate logic relationships above and present the framework by discussing two explanatory cases, Sun Microsystems and Amazon.com. These two enterprises can achieve competitive advantages by contingently managing an effective social network structure.

Product development is an essential part of the total innovation process. This paper describes some of the elements that are indispensable for successful product development. The advancement of the circuit breaker, a product that is used to make or break the flow of electrical current, is analysed over a period of almost 30 years. During this time, it becomes clear that continuous improvement in technology relies heavily on individual personalities – the internal entrepreneur – and the creative climate these personalities create. The following description of the processes used in research and product development sheds new light on the importance of the individual researcher, his motivation and passion – often underestimated in the technology management concepts presented in the last three decades.

This paper considers the impact of a specific patent structure on inventive behaviour. Drawing from the legal definitions and timepoints of the US patent system, a questionnaire was developed and administered to a sample of recent inventors. Their responses, including time length of the innovation process, critical activities, and the impact of variables such as organisational size, experience with patenting, and technological complexity of the underlying invention, are reported and analysed.

The experience, in the 1970s and 1980s, of the IDEON Science Park, located at Lund University, Sweden, illustrates the type of forces that shaped the institutional design of a science park. We review the literature on science parks and their evaluation, outlining the role of consulting and service firms. IDEON is a "technology window" with governance rules, which reduce the transaction cost at the industry - university interface. IDEON’s experience and its "incubator role" reinforce the role and function of service firms. Its organisational design overcomes market imperfections, reducing the costs of the innovation process. IDEON is an institutional innovation, which extrapolates traditional evaluation parameters.

This conceptual paper analyses the role of the contents of an organisational culture (i.e. values, norms and knowledge), its strength, and structure (i.e. dealing with the culture-subculture problem) as well as their interdependencies within the different stages of technological innovation processes. Issues such as hierarchical thinking, communication, conflicts, team diversity, strength of cultural values a.s.o. as well as their positive and negative effects on the various stages of innovation will be analysed. Finally, the paper will illustrate and integrate the presented concept by the example of the case of a Swiss hospital, which is introducing a new information system.

This paper reports the results of an empirical study that probed the adoption of early supplier involvement (ESI) in the product development process. ESI is defined as a form of vertical co-operation in which manufacturers involve suppliers at an early stage in the product development/innovation process, generally at the level of concept and design. Previous research has shown that Western automobile manufacturers obtained significant benefits by emulating the ESI practices of their Japanese competitors; the bulk of research knowledge is, in fact, located in this domain. This study focused on a group of assembly-based industries outside the automotive setting to determine if the adoption and benefits of ESI are found in other domains as well. Twenty-five companies in three non-automotive industries participated in the research. A model of ESI adoption was developed and tested, and an ESI index created to determine the degree to which this practice was applied. The results reveal, among other things, that the level of ESI practice is strongly related to a higher number of supplier base initiatives, lower product integration, broader supplier scope and a higher proportion of parts purchased. Significant results were also obtained in comparisons between industry sectors and geographic regions (USA, Western Europe and Japan). We suggest that promising directions for future research include broad-based samples across industrial sectors and industry-focused empirical study.