Search

This research, based on four in-depth case studies, probes an overlooked unit of analysis in innovation management literature, namely, management action and cognition, and offers a new qualitative contribution into resource allocation approaches that support radical innovation. The interpretivist approach revealed that a management team's resource and path dependencies and prevailing mental models underpin resource allocation routines, which prevent managers from pursuing radical innovations. Of particular interest were the innovations that disrupt and re-shape the existing terms of economic engagement in established industries. It was found that managers with restrictive mental models will adopt up to five disruptive innovation rejection strategies: rewarding incrementalism; ignoring the positive aspects of disruptive innovations; focusing on historical perceptions of success; creating perceptions of success with high effort; and holding beliefs in the face of disconfirming information. Initial longitudinal data suggests that rejection strategies can be overcome with holistic portfolio approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mastering continuous change has become an important issue for an increasing number of organisations. However, the management of innovative performance is hindered by the lack of measures that could enable the reliable assessment and effective development of organisational capabilities for continuous renewal, learning and innovation. The objective of this paper is to describe the development of a survey instrument, the Organisational Renewal Capability Inventory, for measuring organisational renewal capability, and to assess its validity and reliability. This paper contributes to the literature on innovation by providing a systematic technique for collecting, analysing and interpreting data about organisational capability for continuous renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative improvement is a purposeful inter-company interactive process that focuses on continuous incremental innovation aimed at enhancing the partnership's overall performance. Considering that in such an environment the capability to learn jointly and individually is crucial, this paper takes a learning perspective on collaborative improvement and addresses the question: How do organisational learning and collaboration interplay and affect improvement performance? Based on an analysis of three dyads of the same Extended Manufacturing Enterprise, this paper concludes that a robust learning environment (willing and able to learn) creates operational, relational and learning outcomes - a self-reinforcing process. A weak learning environment (some willingness but limited ability to learn) creates operational outcomes but is sensitive to 'accidents' and thus at risk of actually producing negative relational and learning outcomes. A 'blocked learning' environment (no willingness to learn) may create good operational outcomes, but will not produce learning and relational outcomes. Consequently, it is doubtful if such situations are sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's business environment poses a significant challenge to many firms, namely to continuously innovate, combining operational excellence with both steady-state and discontinuous innovation. At a closer look, it can also be seen that a number of leading firms today seem to be able to handle the resulting situation quite well, revealing good operational and innovation performance over time. At the same time, the bulk of management theory still approaches this problem with a trade-off perspective, implying that these aspects of business are analysed separately, and that efficiency and innovation have to be regarded as mutually excluding things to strive for - suggesting that firms can be good in one of the two abilities but not in both simultaneously. This points to a gap in existing research that scholars need to fill. Building on management literature about paradoxes and dualities, and using some examples from practice, this contribution stresses the 'practicability' of the duality perspective for Continuous Innovation research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the challenging area of R&D performance analysis. Our purpose is to increase the understanding of the essential factors and dimensions related to R&D performance analysis, and to introduce and facilitate a process of choosing applicable metrics of R&D performance for a specific need, context and situation. The research results show the linkages of the measurement dimensions to the selection of R&D measures, which is ultimately a case-specific process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]