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This paper develops a conceptual model for finding key factors for new product development (NPD) evaluation. It builds on the work of the most cited and published authors on innovation management, but transfers attention from advertising aspects and efficiency, to factors identified within the NPD process such as new product project definition, a firm’s resources, organisation-product fit, and commercial entity, that would lead to success with “Information acquired” being identified as the underlying key factor. This paper presents a summary of the results of correlation coefficients calculated between the factors identified and outcome measures, derived from the leading authors’ work. Further, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to evaluate the results of the correlation coefficients of sub-factors, which were modified by considering the ranking of each author.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hits Portugal in early March 2020, medical doctors, engineers and researchers, with the encouragement of the Northern Region Health Administration, teamed up to develop and build, locally and in a short time, a ventilator that might eventually be used in extreme emergency situations in the hospitals of northern Portugal. This letter tells you the story of Pneuma, a low-cost emergency ventilator designed and built under harsh isolation constraints, that gave birth to derivative designs in Brazil and Morocco, has been industrialized with 200 units being produced and is now looking forward to the certification as a medical device that will possibly support a go-to-market launch. Open intellectual property (IP), multidisciplinarity teamwork, fast prototyping and product engineering have shortened to a few months an otherwise quite longer idea-to-product route, clearly demonstrating that when scientific and engineering knowledge hold hands great challenges can be successfully faced.

This article advances the relevance of a narrative approach in studies of collaborative innovation. The narrative approach outlined is based in translation theory, developed within science and technology studies (STS) and organizational studies. The research is based in a case study of an innovation initiative in municipal elderly care in Norway. The case study follows the implementation processes of the initiative in three elderly care institutions. Various forms of resistance were encountered in the implementation process, and the analysis shows how narrative strategies worked as brokering mechanisms in negotiations of this resistance. The article explores how a collaborative innovation process evolves through interplays between strategic narratives and counter narratives and contributes by demonstrating how narratives may work as important brokering mechanisms in collaborative innovation processes. The article discusses finally how and why narrative approaches may contribute to research on collaborative innovation, and it outlines managerial implications.

The female perspective of implementing failure learning orientation is explored through the analysis of interviews with Canadian female executives of technology firms. The results of this study established several strategies for executives to use for creating an organizational culture that learns from failure. The strategies include, reimagine failure to mitigate negative emotions, focus on the root of the issue, openly discuss strategies and failures, be proactive, encourage risk-taking in experimentation, and finally, provide a calming presence.

Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only in memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter’s colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments. Elbert Hubbard At a very early age, we start to develop a sense of playfulness. We touch things, we build things, we break them apart. Soon after we begin to utter words. We babble, we squeal, we try to imitate. Music begins to inform our bodily movements. What develops last and continues to develop throughout our waking lives is connections of words. The essential and characteristic features of words used to describe things within and around us are the hardest to grapple with. The same word can be expressed in different ways and could mean different things in different contexts. Literature, being the written expression of words in its various forms, has progressively shaped our world view. Liberal news outlets around the world have been stressing recurrently that words matter, as the imagination of some politicians’ is set loose and boundaries to what one may say seem not to exist. However, despite this current societal struggle to adhere to facts, namely amid the current pandemic, science has remained irreducible in its systematic approach supported by the scientific method where facts and doubt do co-exist as a process towards the discovery and construction of new knowledge. (...)

Competitiveness results from factors beyond the structural conditions and organizational boundaries, such as interorganizational cooperation. Evidence gathered in Brazilian credit unions suggests there is a social process in the firm for generating organizational capabilities and economic goods to satisfy needs defined by social structures in charge of solving market failures and structural deficiencies in the productive system. An exploratory and descriptive multiple case study with longitudinal qualitative data implemented using a systematic, computer-supported Process Tracing technique can refine a mathematical model of social phenomenon relying on a sequence of decision-making events of deterministic nature. Two case studies revealed that firms maintain relationships of cooperation and contribution with partners and structures in their organizational and environmental surroundings whenever their economic performance is constrained by competitive problems of systemic nature, for which there is no solution based on the mechanisms of market price and state intervention.

With almost one third of the world on a lockdown, the corporates and the offices have now rapidly shifted to working from home. Since no specific treatment has been suggested by any medical institution so far, World Health Organization has recommended that the only possible solution to be safe is to self-isolate and stay home. Due to this, the world has come to a screeching halt and the businesses have to be shifted to remote work. Work-from-Home is a very new experience for most of us and hence the perception of the people ranges from being very excited to very hopeless. This study aims to examine the sentiments of the people regarding Work-from-Home concept by analysing twitter activities posted on social media. Total 100,000 tweets were analysed for this study. Results indicate that Work-from-Home concept was taken positively by the people. The emotions associated with most of the tweets were of trust and anticipation indicating that this concept is being welcomed by the people.

To guide future discussions about managing artificial intelligence (AI), this article suggests an AI management framework with five maturity levels, which are comparable to the five levels of the autonomous driving framework from no automation to complete automation. If companies move beyond Isolated Ignorance (Level 0), they are characterized by an Initial Intent (Level 1), which typically evolves towards an Independent Initiative (Level 2). A more advanced management leads to Interactive Implementation (Level 3) and Interdependent Innovation (Level 4). On this basis, a close combination of AI and human knowledge enables a sustainable competitive advantage with Integrated Intelligence (Level 5). This framework draws on the intelligence-based approach to company performance, and it provides the basis for an AI maturity assessment in organizations. It further helps to identify many firms’ managerial challenges as well as major organizational limitations even in those firms that are often considered as AI leaders.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) objects represent buildingproducts in design, simulation, and procurement processes. This paper explores how BIM objects could be created and exchanged to enable the diffusion of innovative products with enhanced sustainability performance. Two BIM library platforms were examined by taking a new approach that integrates the concepts of sustainable value, diffusion of innovations, information, software usability, and platform ecosystems. The findings show that the diffusion of sustainable products can be inhibited due to problems with the mechanisms for creating and exchanging BIM objects, quality of BIM objects, the usability of BIM library platforms, and participation on the platforms. This study deepens understanding of the problems by focusing on ventilation products in Sweden. Identified shortcomings in the current practices of BIM platform owners and participants would be reduced by effective platform strategies, certification schemes for BIM objects, and BIM object creation processes integrated with product lifecycle management.

Sustainability is about the world we need but are not quite sure how to garner consensus about what it should be. As it is yet to exist, we can always imagine what it could be and design networks for this transition. Such innovation networks fueled by imaginaries could offer countless opportunities for transition incentivized through applications like tokens, available through decentralized ledger technologies (DLTs).

Enormous research has focused on investigating innovation process in organisations but only a few are devoted to employee innovation process, thus limiting our understanding of how to organise, foster and successfully manage employee innovation process in organisation. Drawing from the literature, this study extends the two-phase model of innovation process comprising creativity and innovation by proposing a three-phase employee innovation process model that integrates innovation adoption. Using stratified sampling technique and structured questionnaires, data were collected from 430 middle managers of four mobile telecommunication companies in Nigeria. Results of the regression and path analyses to test the hypotheses and model fit support a revised three-phase employee innovation process model showing that employee creativity has direct causal effect on employee innovation and employee innovation adoption, and employee innovation has direct causal effect on employee innovation adoption. Dispositional factors have stronger direct causal effect on employee creativity than contextual factors and contextual factors have stronger direct causal effects on employee innovation than dispositional factors. Both dispositional and contextual factors have similar direct causal effects on employee innovation adoption, though dispositional factors have a stronger causal effects. The study has provided new, empirically based insights into the study of innovation process from employee unit of analysis by extending the innovation process with adoption as a phase concluding the innovation process. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

In Europe, the creative industries (CIs) are experiencing growth rates well above the average of the EU’s total economic growth. However, a lack of consensus regarding how these industries work impedes the development of effective policy. In our research, we suggest a process approach to characterize the CIs. This characterization is more flexible in comparison to existing definitions. This process model can be used to easily identify job functions that are important for the development of innovative and creative products or services. Twenty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted with key players in CIs in the Netherlands. After analysis of these interviews, a process model of CIs was developed that consists of the following six steps: (1) problem analysis, (2) concept generation, (3) provisional design, (4) final design, (5) production/execution, and (6) product introduction. This model was supplemented with job functions for each step of the process. For future research, the model should be further developed to provide a greater differentiating effect between the CIs and other industries. However, the model can be very useful for characterizing the CIs in a manner that is more adaptable to the ever-changing nature of the industries.

This article focuses on the paradigm shift of the global biopharmaceutical sector’s utiliza- tion of open innovation models to optimize drug development. Leveraging four exemplars, this review highlights that traditionally propriety, non-collaborative biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies increasingly use principles, processes, and structures of open innovation to increase drug R&D effectiveness and efficiency. We discern three essential elements in the successful creation of open innovation partnerships: (i) culture, (ii) collaborative management skills, and (iii) strategic capability alignment. This analysis provides guidance for business leaders and scholars interested in the managerial and strategic dimensions of applying open innovation to the drug development environment. Theoretically, the article contributes to the growing stream of research integrating the concepts of knowledge economy, open innovation, and Enterprise 2.0. We discuss the specific ways in which open innovation holds potential to improve quality, increase speed, and lower costs and thus yield positive benefits for global health.

This article seeks to show why and in which way a combination of the MLP with typology of innovations based on diffusion research can be fruitful for practical application of the MLP, as well as for refining the conceptual view on regime/niche interactions resulting from innovations from long established market niches. Application of the MLP to the example of absorption chiller innovations in the changing socio-technical refrigeration regime demonstrates that characterisation of innovations only by criteria offered by MLP authors can lead to inconclusive results. I argue that this is because they are innovations from market-niche technologies for which the distinction between radical and incremental innovations is not sufficient, as it neglects the changing character of innovations over time. It is important, I conclude, to clearly distinguish incremental innovations to market-niche technologies which perpetuate the radical character of their origin from incremental innovations of regime-dominant technologies. To enable a characterisation independent from the criterion of novelty that the MLP focuses on to distinguish radical and incremental innovations, I propose a more detailed classification based on theoretical and practical findings from diffusion research. Beyond facilitating a much more differentiated characterisation, this combination also opens up possibilities to reconsider and refine understanding of interdependencies of innovations from long established market-niche technologies and patterns of regime development.

Some might argue that ever so nimble and responsive innovation paradigms can rarely be managed scientifically. We propose a more inclusive perspective. Science of managing for innovation has certain characteristics which we identify through the acronym “ROTRUS”- Real-world, Observable, Testable, Replicable, Uncertain and Social. Real-world refers to the notion that innovation happens in practical settings, be bound by resources and capabilities. This real-world is the context in which the observable events occur. To progress the understanding of formative predictors and their impact on innovation, the innovation events need to be observable. This may be challenging if we are to believe that much of the innovation is driven by heuristics (see e.g. Lopez-Vega, Tell and Vanhaverbeke, 2016; Nisch and Veer, 2018). Observable evidence in our perspective does not mean it needs to be capable of being observed but includes events or phenomenon that were observed. In this sense, managerial heuristics once actioned become observed evidence, such that observable evidence is any evidence that can be or has been experienced by one or many, regardless of whether this can be observed by a third party. (...)

‘Our mind-set will be to avoid the moonshot’ said Boeing CEO James McNerney at a Wall Street analysts meeting in Seattle nearly 5 years ago (see Gates, 2014). The ambitious, exploratory and risky endeavour dubbed as moonshot project of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner had sunk billions of dollars in an industry where end-users demanded more comfort and convenience for less cost. According to McNerney, moonshots do not work in a price-sensitive environment. It is argued that they also tend to take the focus away from more immediate value capture opportunities as seen through Google’s loss on its core Cloud Platform to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Google’s parent company Alphabet which oversees Google X (a semi-secret moonshot project lab) more recently reported that it had incurred a US$1.3billion in operating loss on moonshot projects with a sizeable increase in compensation of employees and executives working on these projects (Alphabet, 2018). Notably, none of the Google X lab spin-outs (e.g. Loon – a balloon-based internet project, Waymo – self-driving car project, Wing – drone delivery project) have been identified as commercially viable. Despite the uncertainties and failures, the focus on moonshot innovations continues to proliferate in academia (Kaur, Kaur and Singh, 2016; Strong and Lynch, 2018) and practice (Martinez, 2018). Yourden (1997) even wrote an interesting book on perseverance and tenacity to keep going even after failed projects. Proponents of moonshot thinking have claimed that it can help solve society’s biggest challenges (e.g. cure cancer, see Kovarik, 2018) with some suggesting to encourage such thinking by paying failure bonuses (Figueroa, 2018). Yet others remain sceptical, positing that moonshot is ‘awesome and pointless’ (Haigh, 2019, p.4). A proverbial question, thus, emerges: are moonshot innovations simply wishful thinking or can they be part of business-as-usual? In part, the answer may be two-fold – 1) understanding the value of moonshot thinking, and 2) understanding moonshot challenges. (...)

Case studies of well documented, great innovations were performed with focus on their underlying, basic ideas. In retrospect, these ideas may seem obvious, but at the time of conception, they were considered utopian, here defined as imaginative, unexpected, counterintuitive, or unrealistic by most people, including experts. The build-up of the utopian ideas in each of the case studies is shortly described along with a critical analysis about their roles, importance, and risk exposure in the individual cases. The ideas were ranked according to defined criteria of importance, risk, and utopian potential, and this ranking was compared to the ranking of the overall impact of the analyzed innovations. The results suggest that the utopian idea potential correlates with the overall impact. The World Wide Web and the smartphones are prominent examples of great innovations driven by utopian ideas. The significance of these findings is discussed in view of current innovation models and in recognition of the heuristic character of the reported investigation.

Reviews of literature including systematic meta-analysis are invaluable to advance science and guide directions for future research. The premise for conducting reviews is well established (Dickersin & Berlin, 1992; Glass, 1976). Systematic reviews in a field gather scholarly efforts on a topic, theme, population, setting and treatment conditions to identify peculiarities and generalizations across subsets. Reviews thus increase power and precision of causal inferences and estimates of relationships between constructs and help manage literature “blind spots” by increasing reliability and validity of results from widely dispersed regional and global studies. The advantage of reviews is thus especially noticeable in cases where occurrence rates of conditions or events are particularly low or where small effect sizes equally matter (e.g. in medical research) (Lau et al., 1992). The cumulation of diverse perspectives in a review offers nuances that cannot be found from a single study. This is mostly because each study is shaped by researcher’s cognitive capabilities and is influenced by the characteristics of research design including selection criteria for participants, research context including treatment conditions and sophistication of methods employed (Light & Pillemer, 1984). A formal meta-analysis of reviews in this view is more likely to detect small but significant effects than a single review performed by a researcher using traditional methods (Rosenthal, Cooper & Hedges, 1994). (...)

Innovation has evolved into a core management function for most organizations. Business managers, regardless of sector or firm size, now require an understanding of and practice with the innovation process in order to develop a competence with navigating its winding path. To effectively engage in innovation processes, individuals require a distinct set of knowledge, aptitude and skills, or key innovative competencies. This paper examines a broad multidisciplinary literature focused on how innovation happens and the normative elements of its process, to inform key innovative competencies across its many phases. Through document analysis, empirically-based innovation process theories and models are examined with the intent to discover and propose a normative framework. The literature review provides a broad classification of innovation process descriptions and phases reflecting Everett Rogers’ original innovation-development process (IDP). Rogers’ IDP is proposed as a normative framework from which individual innovative competencies are identified and classified. Both the framework and typology are proposed as guides for innovation process understanding, participation and management. For innovation researchers and educators, this article suggests an innovation process normative framework may act as a recipe for further research on innovative competencies and innovation management pedagogical models.

The process of technology transfer represents a type of social phenomenon that becomes a black box after its completion. That is, access to the process becomes invisible and obscure. The reasons that lead a public researcher to participate in the technology transfer process represented the main concerns to support the research question, whose derived analysis was based on the theoretical-methodological assumptions of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT). This research contributes to understanding the transfer of technology as a complex phenomenon that features the participation of actors with complex and diverse interests; that is, each technology transfer process is singular in its understanding.

Organizations find themselves in a fast-paced and increasingly complex and uncertain environment. Hence, they engage in foresight to understand weak signals and developments that may affect them in the medium to long run and build up "strategic preparedness". Literature on open and user innovation has described methods to tap into external knowledge sources and some have potential to enhance foresight results, but research has not yet fully benefitted from these insights. Thus, the aim of this article is to synthesize findings from both literatures and explain why users and user collectives are a valuable knowledge source for foresight. The contributions of the paper are twofold. First, the paper provides a typology of methods, which are suitable for drawing on user knowledge. Second, the identified methods are compared with regard to their advantages, disadvantages and boundary conditions.

This research explores the impact of the firm’s characteristics of size and age on organizational innovation. The study is based on data gathered from a sample of industrial companies from central region of Russia, and reveals that there is a relation between the size and age of a firm and its organizational innovation activity. To make the research more specific, the organizational innovation is broken down into a few organizational innovation subtypes that are analysed independently. Each organizational innovation subtype of a firm demonstrates a different level of dependence on its characteristics. The conclusion was made that each subtype of organizational innovation must be analysed based on the specified context being considered.

This paper draws attention to the emotional and social intelligence of individuals - encompassing self- and social awareness, empathy and social skills; when applied to innovation, it can boost employee creativity, diversity, risk taking, learning, adapting, and strategic decision making which is deemed as critical in meeting the challenges of the 21stCentury. Meanwhile, Design in business and innovation have become increasingly synonymous in both meaning (e.g. design and futures thinking) and reach (e.g. products, services, business models, and systems), placing renewed focus on creative human capital as the organizations’ greatest asset. Expanding the conversation of Design in business as a strategic role to develop user-centered innovations through ‘inclusivity for all’, it is proposed that an organization’s emotional and social intelligence may well bear the 'magic key' toward competitive resilience and long-term survival.

Source at https://doi.org/10.24840/2183-0606_006.002_0008. This systematic review revealed and discussed empirical evidence generated from 21 international user-driven innovation studies in the public health and social care. We used PRISMA guideline to ensure a transparent and replicable research process. With the guide of relevant theoretical models, we identified the distinct characteristics of user-driven innovation in current public social care sectors, in respect of its strategic innovation process and user-oriented, empower-based objectives. We categorized different end- and intermediate user groups and discussed how them directly and indirectly engaged in various innovation phases via the support of different methods, and how their participation helped to fulfill users’ roles for exploration, experiments, test, and innovation. We also took a closer look at technological options addressed via included studies and in particular discussed how technologies interact with users in the innovation process.

With an ever-changing market environment, converging industries are constantly trying to compete innovatively using commercial and scientific acumen to create advantage. Previously, successful strategy employed a set of robust steps which now need to change so that these firms can ensure their ability to be competitive. In this day and age, strategy now involves balancing a desired end goal, a recognition of the actual skills and having digital lens to overlay any and all recommendations. Using technology as an enabler, firms can ensure that its goals and its people are in the best possible position to deliver.

"Digital life", intended as the consequence of being connected to any device, anytime, anywhere and the "sharing economy" phenomenon are impacting and changing both business and individual activities. Mass collaboration is emerging through multiple new tools for people and companies, generating a clear advantage in terms of effectiveness, creativeness and competitiveness. In this paper, we analyze how individuals are engaging the evolution of personal (peer) economics to identify the best cases of the most remarkable crowd-based start-ups. Moreover a new model is described on how big companies could leverage the crowd, with an open innovation approach.

This paper reviews the literature from diverse disciplines in order to trace historically, the emergence of financial innovation and its governance. It starts with a charting of the occurrence of financial innovations throughout history, followed by a chronological mapping of the introduction of mechanisms to govern these innovations. It then discusses findings from the review in order to shed light on the extent to which financial innovation governance approaches used throughout history were sufficiently robust to ensure the emergence of responsible financial innovation. Findings show changing drivers of financial innovation across history with no evidence of specific governance mechanisms for the process of financial innovation itself. What exists are mechanisms for governance of the financial sector, in the form of legal frameworks, policies and self-regulatory mechanisms that place emphasis on regulation of the products of financial innovation after these have been developed and implemented. The paper is concluded with a brief discussion on implications for theory.

Horizon 2020 is the name of the European Union’s research and innovation programme. In the first three years of the programme (2014-2016) over 100,000 proposals were received. 10,456 proposals were selected for funding. This success rate (11%) sounds very low and can discourage researchers from applying to the programme. This article argues that this success rate is not a reliable indicator for researchers. This article will show that a more realistic success rate is 29%. In one sub-programme (Energy) a success rate of 47% was measured. The message from this paper is that the chances of success in Horizon 2020 depends on two main criteria: a) having an excellent scientific idea; and b) having a thorough understanding of the evaluation process.

Innovative companies are increasingly creating new open innovation functions and employing open innovation specialists to facilitate innovation processes. However, research that explores these emerging jobs remains scarce. This study examines the worldwide job market for ‘open innovation’ specialists as per job title and/or job description, and analyzes 100 job advertisements related to ‘open innovation’ specialists published during two periods in 2014 and 2016. The findings identify the key responsibilities of dedicated open innovation specialists and associated skills, and the competencies that companies seek in candidates. In addition, the findings indicate that companies need open innovation specialists to not only work in R&D departments. In addition, the ability to influence others and prior start-up experience have become basic requirements to apply for open innovation specialist positions.

This study presents a program for increasing students´ motivation to be creative, innovative and entrepreneurs, based on interventions in business firms for improving employee performance through the use of critical and creative thinking. Results showed that the program was effective both for workers and students, and that the most important factor to be considered for enhancing creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship is intrinsic motivation. People are more creative when they do what they like, instead of just doing what they know or what they are told to. The more creative people are, the better performance and higher productivity could be expected. This is an opportunity for educational institutions to set links with business firms and take a more active role in human and business development.

This paper describes the financial innovation approach and process adopted by large commercial banks operating in China. Data are collected from three case firms using a qualitative case study method. The research shows that regulation can be a catalyst or a hindrance to financial innovation, depending upon the degree of coherence between a bank’s innovation strategy and local government policy. Performance pressure helps drive innovation, whereas organisational bureaucracy and trajectory are major barriers to innovation. Banks adopt different approaches to the innovation process due to differences in institutional arrangement and institutional environment. Practitioners should consider the institutional effects when engaging in financial innovation. This research contributes to current practice by pointing out an integrated approach to financial innovation and regulatory dialectic.

This article focuses on experiences of presence and their potential to increase creativity. The question posed is about whether singular experiences of presence are constituents of creativity and innovation, and if so, what we can learn from them. The material studied includes descriptions of the experiences of presence of 418 around in Finland. Certain main characteristics were found between the experiences, such as finding new perspectives, being connected, and meaningfulness. Many experiences recalled in the descriptions, and the three main themes, seem to be related to the inner shift, which is the necessary part of the new approaches of creativity introduced in this paper. Due to the interconnectedness of the founded themes of the experiences of presence and also to the more broad and multifaceted approaches of innovation, it is possible to think that the experiences of presence could be one of the key factors towards more creative, and more sustainable future.

The very nature of the energy sector, as a highly regulated and capital-intensive sector, as well as the challenges imposed by the global transition to renewable energy, have made the emergence of innovation ecosystems, which are necessary for the development and commercialization of new solutions, rather challenging. We examine the emergence of energy services ecosystems from a policy perspective, suggesting the scenario method as an enabler for focusing the attention of relevant actors and identifying triggering events that guide their activities toward a shared future. We illustrate our arguments using three case examples from Finnish public policy. Our study contributes to the nascent literature of ecosystem emergence and public innovation policy in the field of energy services.

Different frameworks for New Service Development (NSD) practices have been suggested by prior conceptual research. We have assessed three frameworks frequently referred to in extant research, and exposed how these three cover different dimensions of NSD practices. By exploring the practices of NSD empirically, this paper continues the ongoing discussion of what the relevant aggregated dimensions of NSD practices are. The detailed practices identified by interviewing 25 employees, all with key roles in relation to NSD in five large Scandinavian service firms, about their NSD practices, are clustered into three aggregated overarching dimensions of NSD practices: 1) identifying needs, 2) assuring support and 3) dividing work. The findings suggest that the NSD process is the prime focus of NSD practices and that different resources are integral parts. The findings provide both managerial implications and implications for further research.

This paper examines public procuring, aiming to increase understanding on how living lab approach and end-user involvement create innovativeness and enhance public procurement results, providing effectiveness and better solutions. Empirical findings are based on a real-life unique public procurement in the healthcare field where living lab approach was used through product testing phase which was included in the procurement procedure. Selected group of users performed product testing in a real homecare environment. Quality of the product formed on the basis of product testing was in significant role for the first time in public healthcare related procurement of City of Oulu, Finland; the winning solution was not the most affordable but the one obtaining highest scores by users. The findings of the study suggest that product testing as a part of public procurement should be more widely taken into use, however, considering the right balance of price-quality ratio to ensure innovativeness. Based on the study, we propose a framework for product testing as a part of public procurement through open procedure.

Delivering impact is nowadays on top of the agenda of universities, worldwide. But what exactly does that mean? Universities' primary mission is to educate the young generations, by providing them with basic knowledge on a wide array of topics and disciplines and most importantly, by training them how to continuously learn - learn by doing, by reflecting, by challenging facts and perceptions, critically and constructively. Yet, the education mission, which can be seen as a long term investment from nations into the development and nurturing of their capabilities, competitiveness and growth, is increasingly complemented and supplemented by another role: supporting economic growth in the short run. This pressure to generate and disseminate actionable knowledge, and support its application and immediate implementation into real life, contemporary businesses, entails a tremendous shift in the way universities operate, both in terms of time and space. And this undeniably creates tensions: it is common knowledge that universities and private sector firms are not sync in the way they think, act and deliver. (...)

An innovative idea launched in the wrong place at the wrong time may not deliver the outcomes hoped for. Based on 55 empirical studies, Bowen, Rostami and Steel (2010) suggest ‘timing is everything’ if innovation is to enhance organisational performance, but there is also a need to understand contextual factors. The paper presents a theoretical model representing the interaction of idea, place, resources and temporal factors that draws on the Ancient Greek notion of Kairos linking events in time and timely action. Longitudinal studies of four intermediary organisations intended to enhance SME innovation capabilities are compared at different stages in their evolution. The cases highlight the context-sensitive nature of innovation: an idea that has been successfully implemented in one place at one time may not be successful at another place or another time.

Traditional models of innovation are predominantly linear, featuring only very limited feedback loops. This paper builds on a high-level cycle of feedback between technical innovation and social change. In this grand cycle, technological innovation brings about new products but also new ways of using products and services. These in turn change our organizations and social interactions. The new structures generate new unfilled needs, spurring still more technological innovation. The Circle of Innovation is a simple idea. Yet its implications for companies and for researchers have remained unexplored. This paper discusses the Circle of Innovation’s implications. We find the Circle of Innovation (i) implies a new way to classify innovations; (ii) should change how firms assess innovations; (iii) gives a new view of target marketing; and (iv) has implications for sustainable product planning. We conclude in a more conjectural vein that the Circle of Innovation provides a frame for other nonlinear innovation models.

Although coopetition studies often focus on innovations and knowledge creation, these studies often ignore three perspectives: coopetitive micro-activities, short-term coopetitive activities and short-term coopetitive micro-activities, especially as sources of innovations. This study takes the initiative to fill this gap using a case study example of the first (elevator) pitch event held in Finnish Lapland. The outcomes imply that management and innovation studies should also consider the importance of short-term innovation events and micro-activities in the coopetition and knowledge creation processes. These types of short-term collaborative and coopetitive micro-activities and practices might have long-term effects in the innovation paths of business.

There is a growing consensus about the urgent necessity to green the economy and to decouple economic growth from environmental pressure. Against this background, the article explores three questions: (1) What are key factors influencing diffusion dynamics of sustainable product and service innovations? (2) To what extent do diffusion processes of sustainable product and service innovations differ from each other, and can different groups of diffusion processes be identified? (3) Which factors, actors, and institutional settings are characteristic of different groups of diffusion processes? While diffusion research on sustainable innovation so far has been limited to case studies with just one or a small number of cases or has been focused on individual sectors, the empirical data presented here cover a large number of cases from a broad variety of product fields. This allows for generalizations as well as relevant insights and conclusions for sustainability, environmental and innovation policies. The empirical investigation of 100 sustainable product and service innovations revealed that diffusion processes of sustainable innovations differ substantially: The cluster analysis showed that five groups of sustainable innovations can be differentiated which differ significantly in terms of the factors influencing the diffusion process. The empirical results thus both support the assumption that different types of diffusion paths do in fact exist and also permit characterization of the various types of diffusion paths. The evolutionary concept of diffusion paths develops significant explanatory power on the basis of which faster or slower cases of diffusion and the success or failure of sustainable innovations can be better understood.

Value is generated through the whole service innovation process in a complex collaborative networked ecosystem. This study aims to enhance understanding of value generation in digital service innovation process with an emphasis on information technology by developing an extended value generation process framework and evaluating on how it is applicable in a real-life networked retail service innovation context. The findings of the study suggest that multiple information technology (IT), process and business related factors affect value creation during the digital service innovation process. The role of information technology is multifaceted, providing both new opportunities and challenges in the service innovation context. The extended framework for exploring the service innovation process provides a more structured way to examine the complex, networked, service innovation ecosystems.

This Spring Issue will discuss about big data and multiple aspects of its usability and applicability. Many of us have seen blockbuster movies Back to the future (premiere in 1985), The Terminator (1984) or Minority report (2002). The unifying element of the above mentioned movies is that manuscripts are introducing a superior competitive advantage factor. The protagonists create an advantage by having either real-time data (sometimes from the future) or all relevant (big and historical) data with enormous computing capacity over competitors. A bit after first two of those movies premiered, NASA scientists Cox and Ellsworth (1997) published an article where term ‘big data’ appeared first time (Press, 2014). Intelligence needs to be topped up in a way to create advantage. Data has been there for a long time, in all forms and sizes. It is applied in almost single every business sector and it is getting faster in sense of usability. The data storage capacity has been exponentially increasing over time, but the usability of this wealth of data remains a critical issue.(...)

In a rapidly evolving online environment where the inter-relationship between information and innovation is evolving from primarily closed and inward structures to much more open and networked governance arrangements, the public sector faces growing pressures and new opportunities to reform and adapt. Open data and big data are now widely embraced initiatives to spur innovation both inside of and outside of the public sector. Their capacity to foster innovation is nonetheless shaped by critical tensions between traditional government structures and culture on the one hand and more open and participative notions of governance on the other hand. Within such a context, this article examines the current Government of Canada Open Government Action Plan and its three main dimensions: information, data, and dialogue. The analysis reveals that despite some progress in the realm of open data, information and dialogue are constrained by the aforementioned tensions and the need for wider reforms to various architectural facets of the public sector – administratively, technologically, politically, and socially. Across each of these layers, we consider the sorts of wider reforms required in order to facilitate systemic innovation within the government and across sectors.

Big data is an emerging research area where common terminology is still evolving. Different perspectives to the research area and terminology exist, but a common definition for big data does not exist. We have performed a systematic mapping study in order to identify different big data definitions and their perspectives. As a result, we present a state-of-the-art review of the current status in big data definitions, discuss the shortcomings of the current definitions, and propose possible solutions for the shortcomings. The paper contributes to the emerging big data research by analyzing current definitions of big data from different perspectives, suggesting enhancement to the terminology as well as pointing out new research avenues. In addition, the article helps new researchers and practitioners to understand what big data is, and bridges the knowledge between theory and practice.

Application of Big Data in agriculture could both contribute to economic gain and to reduction of environmental impact. Especially at the farming level, the high cost of measuring actual operations as they occurred historically restrained decision making in the sector. Currently several sensing technologies associated with Big Data are being evaluated and adopted within the sector. Their adoption offers the opportunity to alter that historic benefit/cost relationship. Combined with advanced analytics, measurement and analysis of diverse sources of data promise to create value for sector decision makers and society. While consumers likely will continue to be the ultimate beneficiaries of such advances, the pattern by which value is captured by entities in the sector remains uncertain. Factors such as organizational collaboration and the application of rules associated with intellectual property will have significant impact upon the evolution of Big Data’s implementation within agriculture.

As stated by the Cambridge on-line dictionary, Editorial, as a noun, is “an article in a newspaper that expresses the editor's opinion on a subject of particular interest at the present time”, whereas/and as an adjective, Editorial is “relating to editors or editing, or to the editor of a newspaper or magazine“. On the other hand, about the definition of a Journal, the same dictionary says “a serious magazine or newspaper that is published regularly about a particular subject”. This means that, in the Editorial, the editors express their perspectives or opinions “on a subject of particular interest at the present time“. It is in this context that we came across the idea of talking about Winter, as this issue was being prepared, Winter was indeed coming and this led to the title of this editorial. (...)

Our paper performs a systematic literature review on academic and non-academic studies on “wisdom of the crowds” or “collective intelligence” and its possible usage to enhance innovation, with or without financial compensation for the member of the crowd. We aggregate and critically compare contributions since 2004, when the concept was coined, in a conceptual framework meant to assist innovation professionals in sourcing various types of knowledge from the crowds. Key dimensions point towards different approaches according to the type of information/knowledge required, different types of target-crowd, according to company goals and phase of innovation process where knowledge is to be used.

This Fall Issue will discuss about the power of technology and Internet. Innovation is taking place everywhere through new and emerging technologies changing the way we think, live, breathe, travel, and do shopping to name a few areas. Funny enough is that some of us believe that the most important technologies are on the market available to please customers and users, and nothing more important will show up later. We, as humans, systematically underestimate the power of technology and its impact on daily life. There are several well-known quotations from very smart people which have turned ridiculous after some time by basically shifting initial assumptions into market knowledge. Whatever is too expensive and complex today becomes a commodity in no time and shortly after doesn’t bring competitive advantage any longer (the S-curve effect, see e.g Bayus, 1998 or Rogers, 1962, for different explanations). Several notable studies illustrate (like the well cited and used BCG tools) how rapidly diffusion is influencing production costs and consequently, accelerates the speed of diffusion itself. The question here stems from where the balance between the minority of ‘crazy’ developers and the majority of pioneering consumers willing to try something new lies. (...)

The paper explores the relationship between leadership, culture and innovation. Through an analysis of four enterprises, voted by their peers as having strong innovation-friendly cultures, we explicate the assumptions embedded in these innovation-supporting cultures, and outline the leadership practices that have created them. By locating the study within the interpretivist research paradigm and adopting the 'practice turn' perspective that has characterised recent leadership research, this study has been able to acknowledge and address the political dynamics involved in the creation of innovation-conducive cultures.

Service based economies face significant challenges to drive innovation. These are even larger for distant and isolated regions, suffering from different market failures due to such circumstances. Capitalizing on smart specialization alongside with the transformative power of services, through the deployment of large-scale demonstrators, could be a sound policy option for many regions to turn structural weaknesses and threats into strengths and opportunities. The specific case of the Canary Islands, an outermost European region, is discussed in the context of its RIS3 Smart Specialisation Strategy.