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The outsourcing of research and development (R&D) activities has grown rapidly in recent years. Outsourcing has major implications for how knowledge and R&D activities are organised and coordinated in a wider open innovation environment and creates major challenges for firms and their managers. This paper explores the implications of outsourcing and the increasingly distributed nature of research and innovative activities using primary survey data collected from the UK pharmaceutical industry. These issues are uniquely examined at both firm and activity level. This paper then seeks to set the findings of the study within the context of the wider debate and conceptual frameworks surrounding R&D outsourcing and offshoring in terms of the increasingly open and distributed nature of research operations. This paper concludes by exploring the implications for this for firm strategy and the open innovation agenda and for future research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Product platforms are applied in order to increase the stability of the product architecture and to reap benefits of scale and scope. However, many firms face a dynamic environment with quickly changing market demands. In such an environment, firms may have to continuously renew and improve their product platforms to achieve desired flexibility. The modifications comprise two types of innovations, component as well as architectural innovations. Combining these types to simultaneously achieve stability and strategic flexibility demands continuous innovation capability. This paper provides a viable approach to coordinate architectural and component innovations. The paper is based on a case study of an international truck manufacturer. Two major issues, decision-making and the management of knowledge, stand out as important for realising continuous innovation and improvement of product platforms. Moreover, product platform management needs to consider modularity and its related economies of substitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of the innovation process on organisational learning. To achieve this goal, we decompose innovation into two components, innovativeness and the capacity to innovate. This paper proposes theoretically the concept of Operative Real Options (OROs) and empirically seeks to measure their influence on the relationship between innovation and organisational learning. Using empirical data gathered from 204 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in European firms, the findings support the hypothesis that innovation and its two components improve the learning process in the organisation. However, we do not find support for the hypothesis that OROs moderate the relation between innovation and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the relationship among information, knowledge and technology management, with special emphasis on their applications in developing economies and how they relate to sustainable development. It also discusses the role of the national Information Technology (IT) policies in providing enabling environments for Knowledge Management (KM) for sustainable development. Finally, the paper appraises the national IT policies in two African countries (Nigeria and Ethiopia) to further provide insight into the provision of enabling environment that can lead to the process of KM for sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable growth and technological development are achievable. This is possible when there is good governance striving for a vibrant entrepreneurship, with innovation at its very centre. In this regard, North African countries' records are strikingly lagging. Progress has been made, but remains far from expectations and potentialities. As globalisation has now pushed innovation to the top of the development agenda, new policies and strategies are needed. Successful integration into the world business requires innovation-based growth using all qualified people and initiatives. In these countries, competencies and creative forces do exist, but their effective utilisation requires greatest attention. As little is written about the issue, this paper aims at discussing obstacles of innovation in the countries in question and proposes some feasible solutions. The paper will draw from published and unpublished work and make reference of some factual records. Policy implications will be identified and specific actions will be proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the development path of four knowledge management (KM) projects in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that lead to the emergence of dynamic capabilities. First, we empirically show how KM projects create a learning context in which KM routines emerge that function as dynamic capabilities for adaption, absorption, or innovation to enable SMEs to remain competitive in a dynamic environment. In particular, KM projects aiming at adaption and absorption (efficiency, transfer of knowledge and experience) achieve sufficient results for obtaining enough resources and attention for a further development. Once the structure of the KM routine is established, the content migrates towards innovation. Second, we also provide an in-depth description of the evolutionary learning path from establishment to routinisation of KM projects winding up as dynamic capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper is presented NUTEMA (Nuclear Power Plant Technology Management System) an IT innovative system dealing with the nuclear technology. The overall goal is to offer a framework capable to present in one room whatever is concerned with a Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) unit implementing together a multilevel and multi-view user access according to enterprise architecture models. The NUTEMA system assembles all together the competences needed for the construction, the design, the management of an NPP, and allows the training of nuclear industry staff and stakeholders. The concept of IAEA Design Authority has been the starting idea at the base of the NUTEMA design. It is primarily devoted to utilities, but any industry like regulatory authorities and research institutes concerned with nuclear technology can take benefits from its use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies have considered the concept of knowledge according to a cognitivist notion, that is, knowledge is associated with a set of viewpoints from the individual who handles it. This paper sheds light on the cognitive range and how it affects obtaining customer needs or knowledge conversion. The outcome of a questionnaire used with a large Japanese System-Integration (SI) firm shows that the cognitive range is related to the level of knowledge conversion but not to the impact of supporting factors. In contrast, in terms of obtaining customer needs, the cognitive range is related to the impact of supporting factors but not to the level of obtaining customer needs. Moreover, some factors consistently show positive relationships to obtaining customer needs and knowledge conversion under any conditions, meaning that they are necessary conditions for attaining knowledge creation and customer satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the linkages between Social Network Theory (Granovetter, 1973) and Organisational Knowledge Theory (Polanyi, 1966; Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka et al., 2001) as it relates to the diffusion of organisational innovation within large organisations. The focus is on examining these theoretical interrelationships in three case studies, delving into major change projects in three large telecommunications firms. The findings indicate that weak ties are vital when the focus is on explicit knowledge, while strong ties are vital when the focus is on tacit knowledge. Further, a model is posed to expand this theoretical interrelationship to include a third dimension: the knowledge source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a toolbox of elements which can be used to structure and characterise any Technology Intelligence (TI) system. The toolbox has been derived by reviewing what roles, activities and physical infrastructure companies adopt in practice to build their own TI capability, including social networks. The different choices of elements can be attributed to the four modes of searching from Kerr et al.'s (2006) model: mine, trawl, target and scan. With the exception of the trawl mode, which features just connector elements, all the technology intelligence modes are supported by coordination, source connectors, repositories of information and search elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue on managing knowledge and technology for sustainable development in Africa outlines the background to it and the technological transformation occurring in, and necessary for, African countries. It then discusses the papers presented and concludes with a section on the way forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the determinants of firms' external technology sourcing mode. Instead of focusing on opportunistic behaviour in knowledge transactions and assuming minimising transaction costs as a firms' objective, I focus on firms' absorptive capacity and emphasise gains from knowledge transfer in technology sourcing. I analyse how a firm matches a sourcing mode with its absorptive capacity to enhance knowledge transfer in technology sourcing, and I find positive relations between a firms' absorptive capacity and interactive technology sourcing modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores how learning mechanisms are adopted and function differently in the course of a managing technology based organisational change programme in Chinese and Norwegian large corporations. We operationalise the abstract organisational learning concepts into a series of learning mechanisms along the change programme implementation process. The results show that national culture, external environment and market status strongly impact the effectiveness of the learning mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the applicability of contemporary firm-level innovation concepts to a developing country context by drawing on the results of a survey of Malaysian manufacturing and service establishments. We build on Keith Pavitt's 'technology trajectories' framework to empirically test the effect of firms' structure, strategy, resources, and environment on the probability of their product, process, and organisational innovations across various sectors. We find that Malaysian firms possess relatively high process and organisational innovation capabilities, but lag in new product development. Further, they more frequently utilise a variety of 'soft factors' like employee training, knowledge management practices, and collaboration with market actors as inputs to innovation rather than formal R&D. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings about Malaysian firms' technology trajectories to innovation policy in that country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology is a key driver for innovation and sustainable business growth. Whilst industrial interest in the area is growing, from an academic perspective the conceptual basis of the subject of technology management is fragmented and poorly defined. This paper describes a framework that has been developed to support practical and theoretical understanding of the management of technological innovation. At the heart of the framework are two sets of business processes that are important for effective technology management, including the three 'core' processes of strategy, innovation and operations, together with a set of five supporting technology management processes: identification, selection, acquisition, exploitation and protection. The framework supports the integration of these processes by focusing on the 'pull' and 'push' knowledge flows that need to occur between the commercial and technological functions within the firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]