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Over the past decade, open innovation has seemingly become the dominant approach for revitalising a company’s innovation process. Can open innovation improve firm performance? This study optimises ...

Technological innovation, as a collaboration among inventors and complementary knowledge professionals, requires the management of knowledge boundaries and the integration of specialised tasks. We propose that dense collaborations among inventors and professionals facilitate the process of collaboration by reducing coordination cost and by mitigating the uncertainties inherent in technological innovation. In the empirical context of university technology commercialisation, we find that the relational density of three main actors, i.e. inventors, technology managers, and patent attorneys, enhances technology licensing, a major milestone in commercialisation. This occurs especially when the technological field is less institutionalised. Our study contributes to the literature on technological innovation by highlighting the role of interpersonal relations between inventors and complementary knowledge providers as a coordination mechanism in the innovation process.

Renewable energy industries that replace fossil fuels with biomass-based alternatives are at the forefront of a shift to and an advanced bioeconomy. In the United States, government policies promote second-generation liquid biofuels that use non-food feedstocks like switchgrass to foster industry development. Although government policies and related industry activity created a market niche for switchgrass biofuels, geographic, technical, and institutional barriers limit industry development and regional branching. Policy alone has not been enough to disrupt an industry path dominated by corn-based production. Formation of a switchgrass-based biofuel industry depends on stabilisation of production around a series of inter-related process innovations. Unlike corn-based biofuels, switchgrass and other cellulosic biofuels have no single existing related industry value chain to use to resolve coordination problems. The experience with switchgrass sheds light on the innovation process in general by draw...

Despite repeated calls for novel forms of innovation and governance, including responsible innovation, anticipatory governance, and sustainability-oriented governance, nanotechnology continues to be mainly innovated following conventional schemes – with persistent shortcomings and negative impacts. Shifting these schemes towards sustainable and responsible innovation and fully utilising the benefits of sustainable nanotechnologies will necessitate difficult changes across all stages of and actors in the innovation process. We outline an agenda for intervention research in support of such changes. The article synthesises insights from four years of research on nanotechnology innovation, anticipatory governance, and sustainability in urban environments, with a focus on Phoenix, Arizona.

The process of innovation follows non-linear patterns across the domains of science, technology, and the economy. Novel bibliometric mapping techniques can be used to investigate and represent distinctive, but complementary perspectives on the innovation process (e.g., "demand" and "supply") as well as the interactions among these perspectives. The perspectives can be represented as "continents" of data related to varying extents over time. For example, the different branches of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in the Medline database provide sources of such perspectives (e.g., "Diseases" versus "Drugs and Chemicals"). The multiple-perspective approach enables us to reconstruct facets of the dynamics of innovation, in terms of selection mechanisms shaping localizable trajectories and/or resulting in more globalized regimes. By expanding the data with patents and scholarly publications, we demonstrate the use of this multi-perspective approach in the case of RNA Interference (RNAi). The possibility to develop an "Innovation Opportunities Explorer" is specified., Comment: Technology Analysis and Strategic Management (forthcoming in 2013)

The paper reports an action study of seven innovation projects with collaborative partnerships in inter-organisational networks that are facilitated by innovation intermediaries. It contributes to open innovation literature the understanding of innovation processes as nested processes of co-creation on the one side and economic exchange on the other side. While innovation project management and (online) market places are well researched as distinct strategic positions, our observations suggest a third strategic position for innovation intermediaries as process coordinators with strategic innovation capabilities. The paper identifies matchmaking and innovation process design, management of collaborative projects, project valuation and portfolio management as three such strategic capabilities and identifies directions for future research on this emerging phenomenon.

Open innovation (OI) is an innovation paradigm which argues that firms should use external knowledge in order to succeed in the innovation process. It is currently unclear however how firms are able to source external knowledge from external actors when attempting to innovate. In this paper we examine the relationship between absorptive capacity and firms’ ability to enter into innovation cooperation with external actors. Our econometric results show that internal R&D, training and an educated workforce, as core aspects of firms’ absorptive capacity, are positively associated with (the intensity of) innovation cooperation. An implication is that external knowledge does not enter the firm freely. The costs firms must invoke in order to be able to source external knowledge in the OI context is considerable. Without investing in internal R&D, training and recruiting workers with good educational qualifications, firms may not be able to follow the open approach to innovation.

In response to the increased complexity of innovation projects, tools and methods applied in the innovation process need to be able to support knowledge sharing across semantic and pragmatic boundaries. Despite evidence of the importance of these tools and methods – referred to as innovation practices – for the success of innovation projects, significant gaps exist in our understanding of the nature of innovation practices. It is not clear yet, how innovation practices address the challenges of knowledge sharing across semantic and pragmatic boundaries. This article therefore advances knowledge in this area by offering a systematic analysis of innovation practices. Existing streams of innovation practices literature across different domains are reviewed. Comparing the knowledge sharing processes when innovation practices are applied, it has been found that innovation practices comprise four distinct mechanisms to cross semantic boundaries and three to cross pragmatic boundaries. Moreover, we integrate the...

In this paper, we introduce a new framework that generates a list of strategic actions to support successful management of the innovation process as new technologies are taken to market. The framework links different stakeholders inside and outside the organisation to obtain an holistic view of the requirements necessary to develop the new technology. It integrates and synthesises existing frameworks into an inclusive set of guidelines. The framework is then tested in a case study located in a mid-size semiconductor organisation currently seeking new business opportunities in the emerging photovoltaic market. We conclude by reflecting on the usefulness of the model. Theoretically, the paper contributes to the literature on the management of the introduction of new technologies; practically, the framework provides a normative tool for practising managers.

Innovation is a costly, risky, and uncertain process, and one of its most central components is knowledge as has been emphasised in the innovation literature. Notably, such knowledge tends to be distributed across different internal and external sources. That is, innovation processes involve diverse relationships between knowledge that originates from a myriad of different sources such as customers, suppliers and universities. While such relationships are distinctive to modern – distributed – innovation processes, little is still known about their implications on the search for new knowledge. This paper proposes that since the innovation process is inherently an uncertain and costly activity, a deeper understanding on the relationships between knowledge sources can help firms to better master the risks and costs related to their search activities. In other words, given that not all knowledge is equally combinable with each other, it claims that complementarities among knowledge sources increase the likeli...

Research on networks of innovation has typically focused on relationships of competition and collaboration between firms in the network, sometimes extending the analysis to sources of new ideas such as universities. More recently, attention has been paid to the activities of intermediaries in such networks, which facilitate the innovation process, which are positioned between the sources and users of innovations. This paper focuses on the organization of a distinctive type of intermediary, which we have defined as an innovation broker, by providing an analysis of 10 case studies of organizations dedicated to innovation broking from around the world. Innovation brokers in our definition are organizations that are founded especially to undertake an intermediary role, rather than performing that role as a by-product of their principal activities. The results of this analysis suggest that the key role played by innovation brokers in the innovation process is the independent validation of new ideas, t...

This paper examines the role of local health systems in developing countries in health biotechnology innovation. The heath systems encompass the final users of health biotechnology products and services. In innovation studies in general, users have been identified as playing vital roles as sources for innovation and in shaping the innovation process. It is therefore of interest to cast light upon the role of users in the health biotechnology innovation in developing countries. This paper briefly reviews literature on science and technology based health innovation in both industrialised and developing countries. It then examines to what extent the focus of developing countries is on their local health problems and explores the linkages between the organisations involved in research and development of health biotechnology products and services with the local health system, and thereby identifies the main roles of their own health systems in the innovation process. The paper bases this analysis on r...

Alliances are becoming an increasingly common strategy for product development despite the intrinsic tension between alliance logic and innovation logic. This paper investigates the development of alliance structures during the exploration phase of the innovation process. Based on a study of five service development alliances in the telecom industry, three patterns are identified by which the alliance structure and the innovation are brought into alignment. Such alignment seems to be a necessary condition for the transition into commercialization. The patterns identified are: (1) Learning about the innovation may trigger changes in the alliance structure; (2) Learning about the innovation may suggest changes in the alliance structure that are impossible to implement, however, thus triggering changes in the innovation; (3) Planning the future alliance structure may suggest changes in the innovation. Based on these patterns, some conclusions and implications are identified, for both theory and prac...

Three case studies of user/client-architect interaction, and their implications for an understanding of the design and innovation process in capital goods projects, are considered in this paper. The studies presented include a major 'City Challenge'-funded social housing development programme in the UK, a housing co-operative-driven workplace and housing scheme associated with the same programme and a new building for the business school of a major UK university. Reflecting upon existing literature on user-producer relationships, the paper draws two key conclusions from the case studies that add to this literature. The first points to the need to account for the broader strategic motivations of agents within projects. Two of the case studies describe how innovation driven by the architects involved exceeded the original requirements of the client, and in so doing reveal architects to be oriented toward non-project specific goals. The second conclusion focuses on the user/client and points to the importanc...

Many car manufacturers recognize fuel cell vehicles as future substitutes for conventional cars with internal combustion engines. According to press releases and brochures, different strategic approaches of the automobile companies to fuel cell technology can be identified. These strategies match to a high degree the market entry strategies known from strategic marketing literature. A system dynamics model that reflects the beginning innovation process and the strategic approaches of a pioneer (first to market), an early follower (early to market) and a late follower (late to market) has been built. It examines the future prospects of the car manufacturers’ strategies in three different scenarios, which illuminate possible future developments of external influences like politics or fuel infrastructure.

The paper explores the specific challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry regarding the exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of developing new frameworks supporting knowledge activity and the wider innovation process. The paper seeks to provide a framework to view these changes but also highlights gaps in our current conceptualization of the role of ICTs in facilitating and effecting change within the pharmaceutical industry.

This paper is an historical review of the interaction of organizational and technological change in the chemical, agro-food and pharmaceutical industries. These sectors have at various times had strong linkages to each other, through ownership and technology, such that they have been described collectively as 'the chemicals and related products industry'. Convergence such as this and subsequent divergence are among the organizational changes examined in this paper. Specifically, we focus on mergers, acquisitions, de-mergers and divestments as the mechanism by which such changes have taken place in the boundaries of the industry and its firms. Another important organizational change is also mentioned here, though it is analyzed in more detail elsewhere, namely the increasingly networked nature of the innovating firm and the increasingly distributed nature of the innovation process, also a significant aspect of the changing face of the chemical industry. We trace the developing strategies of chemical and re...

This article reports the results of an empirical study on the innovation capabilities of a sample of 25 Italian small-medium car suppliers. The aim of the paper is to highlight the capabilities, the behavioural models and the factors determining innovation: technology transfer, the role of sub-suppliers, the relationships with external research institutes and the obstacles to innovation. Inter-firm differences in the innovation process will be examined using multinomial logit analysis. The homogeneity of the sample allows the testing of some operating strategies that may contribute to more rapid technological change in mature industries such as: diversity, consolidation and co-operation.

Technological innovation is widely accepted to be a complex learning proces through which firms try to acquire and develop distinctive technological competence. But there is a second dimension to such learning which relates to the ways in which the innovation process is managed, which also involves a developmental, cumulative progress. No all firms have the same level of skill in managing projects, in understanding user needs, in search behaviour, in managing inter-fin relationship, etc.; these are all abilities which are learned over time. This paper reviews the concept of capability development as it applies to the management of technological innovation. It illustrates this with the example of continuous improvement (CI)—a key capability which is associated with high levels of involvement in the innovation process through the contribution of regular incremental improvement ideas from a large proportion of th workforce. CI is a simple concept bus is proving very difficult to implement successful in pract...

The sources of ideas embodied uithln successful technological innovation have been a subject of interest in many studies since the 1950s. This research suggests that sources external to the innovating organization account for between 34% and 65% of the inputs important to the development of successful innovation. In addition, studies have long highlighted personal boundary-spanning communication as an important mechanism for the transference of such ideas. Despite this recognition, there has been little systematic evaluation of the role and importance of informal boundary-spanning communication in the innovation process. This paper provides the results of an empirical study, of the role and source of infomally derived inputs into the development products of 35 commercially successful innovations. It was found that inormal mechanisms were often enlployad to transfer ideas and information, as well as other resources, during the idea-generation, ,problem-solving and field-testing phases of these innovation p...