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With the discovery of the Pre-Salt reserves, exploration of oil and gas is being strongly extended in Brazil, contributing to the recent increase of the demand for drilling capabilities. This paper discusses the impact of this oil discovery by assessing the relationship among the growth of proven reserves, the financial position of firms, and patent applications in the Brazilian upstream oil and gas industry. We provide empirical evidence indicating that firms with a lower financial performance prior to the pre-salt discovery were more aggressive in increasing the number of patent filings addressing technologies of the upstream oil and gas domain.

The term "Deep Tech" is prevalent in industry but ill-defined. In this extended letter, we define Deep Tech (technology that is difficult to develop today, with the potential to become a pervasive and easy-to-implement basic need in the future) and consider its role in evolving businesses. We suggest how organizations can position themselves to take advantage of a coming wave of innovation, with emphasis placed on Creative Destruction's role (cannibalizing product lines) in creating sustaining enterprises. Understanding the diffusion of technical innovation from hard-to-implement exciter to commodity basic need will encourage leaders to rethink their current offerings to play in a future-thinking space setting these companies apart from the competition. We provide examples drawn from successful organizations.

Distributed ledger technologies are emerging as important tools that can positively impact almost all major industries and activities in our society. They are increasingly used in various supply (value) chain applications including financial, governance, regulations, health, logistics, and other industrial sectors. In this letter, we are presenting various ongoing work related to different distributed ledger technologies and their applications in postal sector. In particular, we will highlight some of the innovations in the inclusive financial services for the underbanked and unbanked populations using distributed ledger technologies.

This paper examines the practice of open innovation by Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the food industry. We adopted a multiple case study approach and conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with four food SMEs in the Flanders region of Belgium. The results of the analysis show that food SMEs practice open innovation mostly through inbound open innovation activities rather than outbound, mainly due to lack of sufficient resources. Food SMEs typically lack sufficient financial capital, technology, and human capital. Within inbound open innovation activities, collaboration with organizations is found to be a key element for food SMEs’ internal development and innovation of new products.

We initiated this series with a view to catalyse and extend the focus on conceptualisation and application of behavioural science methods for managing innovation, albeit from a whole human perspective. We started with the notion that how to increase individual (human) creativity, collaboration productivity and innovativeness in innovation projects is a common concern for most firms. After discussions on the brain-mind-behaviour triad in the beginning, the interim editorial highlighted behavioural experiments as one plausible method to further the science of managing for innovation. In this final piece on the series, we conclude with a caveat on using experimental methods in examining the human side of innovation (Salampasis and Mention 2017) and discuss avenues for future research in innovation management, which increasingly reflects a collaborative affair (Bogers et al., 2017; Heil and Bornemann 2018). (...)

This paper seeks to make a particular contribution in what are the roles of consultancies as key innovation intermediaries in service industry. In line with previous literature, the research purposes to test the application of Pinto et al (2016) framework within service companies, triangulating the findings of Pinto et al (2017). Four in-depth case studies of service companies were developed, resulting on detailed descriptions of the phenomenon using constructs to order the data and relate to earlier literature. Key findings highlight changes in motivations for consultancy engagement, from an initial focus on knowledge (output) to a focus on methodology (process). The adequacy of the framework proposed by Pinto et al (2016) is confirmed, and a new function of intermediaries arises from this study, related with “evaluation of innovation outcomes”. The study highlights the contribution of consultancies in preparing companies to innovate.

The common approaches to innovation deployed by many corporations are ineffective and associated with a collection of well defined risks including hype driven and biased decision making, risk aversion, and disruption. In contrast, open innovation programs reduce these same risks and deliver a variety of substantial benefits ranging from increased innovation speed, reduced costs, and increased probability of success.

This paper aims to understand about how uncertainty emerges in the innovation process. Since uncertainty is embedded in the innovation process, to understand how uncertainty emerges in the process one needs to understand how innovation process unfolds over time. Since an innovation process involves various resource recombination activities occurring in several phases, to understand how innovation process unfolds one needs understand “how do various resource recombination activities occur over time for the creation of novelty?” This knowledge would enable us to understand the conditions under which vital activities of resource recombination can/cannot be undertaken and coordinated as well as would allow us to understand the underlying decisions made by the innovators for their efficient undertaking and coordination. This paper investigates the innovation process in two companies through performing qualitative study. The innovation processes are analysed in the light of a conceptual model developed based on the Dubois’ (1994) End-product related activity structure model, Håkansson’s (1987) “ARA model” and Goldratt’s (1997) “Critical chain concept”. The findings suggest that uncertainty emerges in the innovation process in a cycle of interaction with resource void, activity void and actors’ limited cognition due to lack of knowledge, undue optimism, and rationally justified reason for disregarding information. Accordingly, a great deal of compromises is made while undertaking the activities.

Many firms from diverse sectors increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) to strengthen their efficiency by replacing human work. However, many of these advanced automation procedures will become standard tools in the future, and their relatively isolated application will not enable companies to gain a competitive advantage. Drawing on the distinction of data, information, knowledge and intelligence or wisdom, this paper suggests an intelligence-based view of firm performance as an extension of the knowledge-based view and the resource-based view. An intelligence-based perspective underscores the need to integrate AI applications with specific human expertise to complicate imitation by competitors. To sustain a competitive advantage over time, companies further need to develop a meta-intelligence to dynamically renew and recombine their intelligence architecture with multiple types of human and artificial intelligence. An intelligence-based view provides a systematic framework for assessing a firm’s possibilities to profit from AI by generating growth and innovation beyond optimization and efficiency.

It has been recognized that innovation drives the long-run economic growth of nations and increasingly governments are placing innovation at the center of their economic growth strategies. International variation in the investment on innovation presents an opportunity to examine key enablers of innovation-driving policy choices. Countries find themselves at different stages of economic development and innovation performance and so their relative levels of innovation inputs and outputs are likely to be different. In this study we employ a systems of innovation approach to examine what enables improvements in innovation potential among developed countries. Using data from the 2017 Global Innovation Index (GII) Report, we subjected 770 data measures to an analysis of 242 relationships involving changes in the GII’s innovation inputs/outputs scores and overall innovation potential of 35 OECD countries over a five year period (2012 to 2016). Our findings suggest that instituting policies that improve access to open and competitive markets is the most significant enabler for raising a developed country’s innovation potential.

Considering, as main reference, Donald Schön’s proposal (1983, 1987) on reflective professionals’ training, and on action competencies development adjusted to solving problems in dynamic and uncertain contexts and volatile circumstances, we intend, in this letter, to resume the reflection on system thinking, considering that its singular design, by the non-standard nature that characterizes it, constitutes the foundation of innovation and development processes. Taking into account the difficulties that resistance to change necessarily brings to the training processes, we also reconvene, on the thread of history, the concept of deviation, by means of an epistemic and (multi)referential examination of the importance of divergence, in its contours, contributions and boundaries, as a vital way to refresh and reinvent perceptions, knowledge and meanings. We highlight the possibility of choice within decision-making processes, understanding it not only as a means to escape from mimetic repetition, but also as an outlet to the uncertain, the unpredictable, and the novel. That is, we intend to reflect on the nature of the creative act as poiesis, in its deep and seductive relation with the creator’s emancipation, the ethics underlying a compromise with human values, the aesthetics of adventure, and the appeal of the open work.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a quantitative, integrative and systematic literature review of the moderating effects of dynamic capability associated with radical innovation and incremental innovation teams in the global pharmaceutical biotechnology industry. This paper utilizes a conceptual framework of dynamic capability and socio-technical theory to underpin the study. The study includes 250 articles which were originally surveyed, and then a final selection of 66 articles was based on a structured coding system. The study outcome reveals that knowledge sharing strengthens existing professional knowledge and enhances internal work coordination and consistency in employees’ behavior, and effectively integrates diverse team knowledge and experience. Open innovation has a positive effect on radical innovation and enables knowledge acquisition to form a symbiotic relationship with knowledge sharing. Learning orientation has a stronger effect on incremental innovation than on radical innovation. The limitations of the study are related to a systematic literature review for this research does not establish causality. The mediating effects of dynamic capability on teams are not explored for this research. The implications for management are as follows, teams must be given the autonomy to make decisions from a technical perspective. Tacit knowledge, open innovation, knowledge acquisition and learning orientation are areas in which priority must be given during and after acquisitions in the pharmaceutical biotechnology industry.

In this conceptual paper, we review the literature spanning the Strategic Planning, Foresight and Design disciplines with the emphasis placed on how innovation stakeholders may engage with the future in order to explore the challenges to decision-making they highlight. From this review, and a series of facilitators identified by the authors in previous design and futures thinking field research, critical perspectives are presented that illustrate how systematic futures thinking can inform decision-makers concerning the innovation challenges and opportunities emerging over medium and longer-term (5-15 years) time horizons of social and technology environments. Combining Foresight and Design in an approach we call “Foresight by Design”, as part of Strategic Planning processes, can help the emergence of new and more creative possibilities, foster the inclusion and alignment of diverse stakeholders, and provide for ongoing learning through prototyping and experimentation by using design tools and approaches to achieve deeper insight and alignment around current reality, to facilitate a more productive conversation across difference, to aid in specifying a portfolio of desirable futures, and to engage ecosystem partners in active experimentation that generates new knowledge and learning.

This research develops the understanding of the innovation facilitator’s (facilitator) role for inexperienced innovation teams in an industrial context. Qualitative data was collected from X-functional Innovation teams’ members and their sponsor to identify requirements of a facilitator. Forty characteristics were identified and charted in an innovation process. Significant findings, contributing to prior research, are that the facilitator’s presence and involvement in the innovation teams was crucial in the pre- and first phase of the innovation process due to the very high complexity, where personal characteristics as well as e.g. facilitating-, teaching-, coaching-, group dynamic- skills were central. The importance of the pre-phase was unexpected, resulting in an extended innovation process: The Extended Innovation Process (EIP), for which the traditional innovation process was extended with a preparation-phase before the initial ideation-phase. This knowledge is applicable when e.g. creating and educating new innovation teams within an organization. Future research is suggested.

The story of societal progress has long been acknowledged to involve two brothers - management research and management practice (Beyer, 1982). Although, reared by the same knowledge core (Poole and Van de Ven, 1989; Wallin and von Krogh, 2010), the brothers in a display of their contrasting lives behave independently, often disparately. Their distinct behaviour has prompted scholars to report that ’most of what management researchers do utterly fails to resonate with management practice’ (Bansal et al., 2012, p. 73). Those observing the relationship unfold have been concerned of this disconnect for decades (Banks et al., 2016; Hambrick, 1994; Shapiro, Kirkman and Courtney, 2007). Gordon and Howell (1959) posited that universities and business schools need to be ’better informed and more scholarly faculties that are capable of carrying on more significant research, and with greater appreciation of the contributions to be made to the development of business competence’ (p.425). (...)

Though data is largely recognized as a new form of capital in the digital era, little research has been done on how innovations related to finding health professionals and using health services are evolving in smart-city-based, preventive healthcare service delivery networks. How does digital data affect preventive healthcare practices in service delivery networks? Evidence is provided from a smart city service delivery network on how data and ICT usage impact preventive healthcare innovations. The research is based on a case study highlighting the transformations continuously occurring in such a network. The results suggest that using data from different sectors will enable individuals and health professionals to communicate via intelligent personalized services, which will act as agents, guiding and coaching individuals to change their lifestyles to avoid chronic diseases. This study provides new knowledge on how continuously using health data can produce novel routines and innovations in healthcare networks over time.

Were you ever asked by a manager to ‘do what you want’, where you felt free to innovate? Did it feel like freedom? Maybe you felt encouraged since you could now experiment your idea, but did it mean that your performance was now on the radar? Could you then stay true to your vision or did you feel the need to compromise so that the ‘numbers lined up’? Either way, you should know that you are not alone. Arguably, we are in an age of paradox1 where simultaneous contradic- tions are all too common. Innovation paradox arises when “the aggressive pursuit of operational excellence and incremental innovation crowds out the possibility of creating ground-breaking innovations” (Davila & Epstein, 2014, p.2). Often these contradictions are meaningful on their own merit but when interdependent on each other, they create tensions in economic, social, environmental and ethical decision-making. In previous editorials, we have shared how digital innovations and societal disparity across the world are influencing strategic decision-making and shifting the innovation mindset. We now stretch the boundaries by suggesting that paradigms relying on economic trade-offs and shared-value that have shaped conventional organisational strategies are no longer sufficient to guide paradoxical tensions in decision-making. (...)

Have you ever been a tourist or a traveller? How did you plan that? What experiences did you collect? Ask a tourist and they will tell you that it is all about maximising time and money – see as many things as possible, take a picture and move on. Ask a traveller and they will tell you all about the hidden secrets of the land, how they felt when they met “that person” and how the experience has changed their worldview. So, question for the budding globe trotter is – what would you rather have – efficient quick wins or productive shifts in mindset? Maybe the plan is to have both at the same time and if so, you share similar sentiments to those who are either contemplating or already are on the journey of innovation. Yes, innovation is a journey in which destinations are often temporary. Where, journey is that of collecting knowledge and learning from experiences and destinations are the ‘photo-opportunities’, the time to sharpen up, go-to-market and get smarter. Destinations are temporary as the quest to get to the ‘next best thing’ keeps the senses active. Scholars in innovation call this the circular path of innovation: research-development-commercialisation-feedback-reflection (and repeat). (...)

When planting our human print in a new technology-driven world we should ask, remembering Neil Armstrong in 1969, “after many small steps for AI researchers, will it result in a giant leap in the unknown for mankind?” An “Artificial Intelligence-first” world is being preached all over the media by many responsible players in economic and scientific communities. This letter states our belief in AI potentialities, including its major and decisive role in computer science and engineering, while warning against the current hyping of its near future. Although quite excited by several recent interesting revelations about the future of AI, we here argue in favor of a more cautious interpretation of the current and future AI-based systems potential outreach. We also include some personal perspectives on simple remedies to preventing recognized possible dangers. We advocate a set of practices and principles that may prevent the development of AI-based systems prone to be misused. Accountable “Data curators”, appropriate Software Engineering specification methods, the inclusion, when needed, of the “human in the loop”, software agents with emotion-like states might be important factors leading to more secure AI-based systems. Moreover, to inseminate ART in Artificial Intelligence, ART standing for Accountability, Responsibility and Transparency, becomes also mandatory for trustworthy AI-based systems. This letter is an abbreviation of a more substantial article to be published in IJCA journal.

Innovations that counter professional and conventional ways meet barriers to acceptance in communities of experts. How small businesses meet and seek to overcome these barriers may determine the ultimate success of their innovations. A collective case study of 32 firms involving 40 innovation projects revealed that this initial opposition from scientific and professional groups may overwhelm entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs lack strategies to deal with and move beyond this opposition to gain entry and acceptance in professional communities. Interpreting the findings through the lens of practice theory, we find that entrepreneurial practices pose challenges to professional practices, to professional authority, to accepted methods and to the imagination. Successful entrepreneurs demonstrate flexibility, aligning their practices to the practices of the professional groups. Mutual alignment of practices will serve both entrepreneurs and professions.

In the last issue of 2015, the editorial was titled “Winter is coming: The dawn of Innovation?“ As almost 2 years have gone by, this topic was revisited. So why not wonder how innovation was going around this same time of the year? In trying to answer this question, a visit to Google© Trends revealed an interesting and possibly unexpected chart that is illustrated in figure 1. (...)

Short-message service (SMS) has disrupted several communications ecosystem stakeholders. With this new technology, consumers have adopted new ways to communicate with each other and companies have radically improved their existing processes and ways to deliver their services. Furthermore, SMS has enabled the emergence of machine-to-machine type services. The Disruption Framework is a theoretical model that can be used for identifying the process of technology diffusion from a scientific level to a level of social norms. SMS is found to fit within the model of Disruption Framework. The study reveals that the service has progressed to all levels in the model thus the service has been diffused at an almost maximal manner through the ecosystem. Shifts from one level and an industry to another level can be pinpointed and diffusion into different ecosystem layers can be identified. SMS reached its maturity phase in the early 2000s. However, there are clear indications that novel technologies are starting to disrupt SMS ecosystem stakeholders since early adopters of those new technologies are abandoning SMS.

Multiple forms of digital transformation are imminent. Digital Twins represent one concept, where we may use tools and technologies to “map” data (bits) from objects (atoms). It is gaining momentum because the “map” can act as a “compass” to reveal the status of atoms (things, devices, components, machines, people), process visibility and real-time transparency. Adoption of digital proxies, or digital duplicates, may face hurdles due to lack of semantic interoperability between architectures, standards and ontologies. The technologies necessary for automated discovery are in short supply. Progress depends on the convergence of information technology, operational technology and protocol-agnostic telecommunications. Making sense of the data, ability to curate data, and perform data analytics, at the edge (or mist, rather than in the fog or cloud) is key to value. Delivering algorithm engines to the edge, are crucial for edge analytics, if latency is detrimental. The confluence of these, and other factors, may chart the future path for Digital Twins. The number of unknown unknowns, and the known unknowns, in this process, makes it imperative to create global infrastructures and organize groups, to pursue the development of fundamental building blocks. We need new ideas and research in new domains to generate creative and innovative solutions.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) are increasingly becoming an important component of economic development. Luxembourg’s ICT sector is usually characterized as performing admirably - it is often at the top-end of different indices and international league tables. Nevertheless, headline statistics and high-level assessments often disguise the complexities of dynamic relations. Ecosystems are one way of understanding complex interactions and relationships. It is in this respect that this paper deploys the concept of ecosystems to investigate Luxembourg’s ICT sector. The layered ecosystem model, devised by Martin Fransman, was utilized to map key actors that comprise Luxembourg’s ICT ecosystem, following which a program of unstructured interviews were conducted. This empirical material, combined with documentary analysis, provides the basis for an analysis of the interrelated elements that are shaping the development of Luxembourg’s ICT ecosystem.The study has identified the main forces that affect the ICT ecosystem and concluded that Luxembourg’s strengths are related to its well-developed ICT infrastructures such as international fiber and national ultra-high broadband connectivity and high quality datacenters and its political vision for ICT that has led to a supportive policy environment. Its main weaknesses are related to an inappropriate educational system in which technical and scientific training is less developed, missing e-skills such as coding, application development, technical IT know-how as well a non-entrepreneurial mind-set and a risk averse culture. The paper highlights the importance of the different socio-economic, political, strategic and technological forces that shape the ICT ecosystem of a small country in order to provide a comprehensive basis for its policy makers. An empirical focus on a small country helps to redress the research imbalance, whereby small countries are often overlooked by scholars. Nevertheless, we contend that such “smallness” engenders a unique opportunity for research engagement with a majority of primary actors in ecosystems, which might be unfeasible in larger countries.

Design thinking has been adopted widely as a tool for innovation by companies and other organizations. However, statements by researchers and practitioners about what design thinking is are often seemingly conflicting with each other. This paper aims to improve our understanding of what design thinking for innovation is and under which conditions it can be implemented successfully. It discusses design thinking for innovation in the broader perspective of organizational culture. A framework of nine innovation culture dilemmas or ‘tensions’ is used as an organizing device to analyse the existing literature on design thinking for innovation and accounts of using design thinking for innovation in practice. It is argued that the power of design thinking is in the tension between seemingly opposite ways of thinking, such as analytic thinking versus intuitive thinking, and linear thinking versus thinking in iterative processes. For design thinking to flourish, it needs to be embedded in an organizational culture capable of maintaining a dynamic balance on a number of fundamental tensions in innovation processes. It is shown that the innovation dilemmas framework can be used as an analytical tool to evaluate to what extent organizations are equipped to benefit from design thinking for innovation.

Innovation and innovation management are essential topics for any organizational system nowadays. Public services, commercial and industrial corporations are pressured to study, plan and promote innovations as strategic pillars for their activities and reputation in their competitive scenario. This paper analyzes the efforts on building and improving cultural factors that can foster innovation and innovation management in a critical, competitive and technology-driven sector of electrical power production in Brazil, examining records from ANEEL, its regulatory agency. From these records, values and facts concerning Brazilian program for investment in innovation were evaluated, together with related projects data, showing results that indicated: (a) Investments were conducted in mandatory fashion, not following strategic policies; (b) Expressive amount of investments were also done in the basic and applied research, not offering fair perspectives on more qualified or value-aggregated innovations and; (c) This investment program, executed by the regulatory agency, is opportune to sponsor innovation in this important economic sector. Methodological aspects, such as indexes choice, comparisons and analysis applied in this paper can also build a basis for other studies around the same context, allowing further comparisons to other sectors – such as those in this value-aggregated chain or even with other countries, with perspectives of richer results that can provide another level of innovation investments programs comprehension.

This paper reviews academic journal articles and scholarly books focusing on organizational creativity and constructs a schematic representation of the antecedents of organizational creativity, i.e. of the associated drivers and barriers. The literature on organizational creativity is reviewed using a traditional review technique. The focus is especially on more recent developments of the discourse, and therefore this work can be labeled as a state-of-the-art review. The review shows that drivers have clearly been studied more extensively than barriers. It was also recognized that the predominant approach among organizational creativity scholars is to dichotomize the factors influencing organizational creativity, more specifically to discuss the antecedents of creativity mostly from the viewpoint of drivers. In some cases, the antecedents are discussed from the perspective of barriers, but only rarely has it been recognized that the very same factor may either enhance or inhibit creativity. In this paper, such factors are called ‘either-or factors’. The paper suggests that the organizational creativity discourse should acknowledge that it is not enough to understand what enhances organizational creativity but also which kind of issues inhibit it and, especially, which factors may work either against or toward creativity under different circumstances. The review suggests that the majority of factors are most likely either-or by nature, although it has been overlooked in the discourse due to the dichotomizing tendency.

In the editorial, Revisiting Openness: A Must for Society (Mention, Ferreira & Torkkeli, 2016), the authors addresses the issue that despite predominance of openness in contemporary organizations – porous boundaries, virtual and agile teams, as well as interconnectedness, - Western Societies and some of their elected leaders are currently advocating closeness. They raised the questions: How we can build an inclusive society while rejecting difference? How can we achieve innovation when turning our backs on variety and diversity? And could the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs help the mechanics of these trends? This paper shows how Abraham Maslow, before he died, identified a sixth tier of need – self-transcendence – and how a worldwide focus among academia, organizational leaders and political leaders of countries can prevent closeness and isolation among countries and cultures all over the world.

Open Innovation collaborations often pit academia against industry. Such inter-organizational collaborations can be troublesome due to different organizational backgrounds. This paper investigates what kind of knowledge a multinational high tech company and a research institute share with each other, how they collaborate to innovate and what role trust plays in this process. Linguistic ethnography is used to analyze the relationship from within, based on the interaction between the parties during project meetings. Tracing the knowledge status of the topics discussed during project meetings and interviews with participants across social time and space, we tease out how (dis)trust develops and shapes the ongoing interaction. Debating which knowledge can be project harvested, reveals an interactional dynamic of distrust. The company tries to control the proceedings of the meeting and expresses distrust in the research institute. Its project management minded approach pushes the institute in a position where the latter has to prove its value. This dynamic is due to the level of operational secrecy, the short time to market, and the exploitative nature of the collaboration. Openness is highly valued by the participants, yet the type of knowledge that is allowed to be harvested as project knowledge determines how open – or closed – the collaboration process is in real time. Finally, flexibility and dedication are found to not necessarily lead to more trust, openness or sharing.

The importance of entrepreneurship for economic development and overall social well-being is widely recognised by researchers, experts, and policy makers. Researchers have identified a variety of endogenous and exogenous determinants, such as individual-level factors, external macro-level factors, and country-level cultural factors, which can moderate the raise in entrepreneurial activity. From the other side, there is a feedback loop between entrepreneurship affecting economic growth and being, in turn, affected by country wealth. The main objective of this study is to build a model to capture the relationship between entrepreneurship and external macro-level determinants, and to explore the possible effects of changes in entrepreneurship supply-and-demand factors. The research applies system dynamics simulation and proposes a dynamic macro-level model of entrepreneurship. The model equations are developed based on regression analysis. The results show that although entrepreneurship does have a positive impact on the economy, this effect can be mitigated by other factors. Furthermore, even though an improvement in the external determinants level results in increased entrepreneurship activity and consequent economic growth over a longer period, the effect may depend on factors such as overall country population development, and especially the proportion of adult populations, institutional factors, and individual intentions towards entrepreneurship.

Knowledge builds on itself. Scientific progress is achieved through piecewise advances, and is based on the enlightenment of prior evidence and discoveries. Accessing prior information has been a tremendously complex venture for centuries, and restricted to the privileged few. Technological progress and namely, the advent of Internet have opened a world of possibilities, including the instant sharing and diffusion of information. Reaping the full benefits of technological advances has however been prevented by the prerogatives of the publishing industry, which have been increasingly challenged over the last two decades. Major historical milestones include the creation of ArXiv.org, an online repository of electronic preprints in 1991; the launch of SciELO in Brazil in 1997 and its extension to 14 countries; the foundation of PLOS by the Public Library of Science, established as an alternative to traditional publishing and nowadays known as PLOS ONE, which is by far the world’s largest series of journals with over 30,000 papers published in 2015; the Budapest Declaration on Open Access in 2002; the campaign Access2Research and the US Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act, a foundational piece in the establishment of Open Access in the USA; and the initiative of the European Commission to require all research publications funded under Horizon2020 to be openly accessible, free of charge. All these initiatives converged towards the same aim: fostering free and unrestricted access to publications, so as to ensure the widespread and rapid diffusion of research findings within, across and outside scientific communities. (...)

The Consortium for Research and Innovation in Aerospace in Quebec (CRIAQ) and the Consortium for Aerospace Research and Innovation in Canada (CARIC) are organizations whose missions are to facilitate collaboration of researchers from the aerospace industry, academia and research centres, and to launch initiatives whose primary purpose is to promote responsive, impactful R&D. This letter presents the distinctive characteristics of these models and their impact on Quebec and Canada’s aerospace innovation culture.

Universities play a crucial role in the systems of innovation by transferring the results of R&D activities to society and industry. This contribution is even more important in the Ibero-American countries given that the other critical ‘player’ (i.e., the industry) exercises a less active role in the development of innovation compared to the OECD countries. The aim of this paper is to analyze the knowledge transfer activities of the Ibero-American Higher Education Systems over the period 2000-2010. Using that database by Barro (2015), this study provides an accurate diagnosis of the Ibero-American universities’ performance in knowledge transfer, suggesting a number of practical implications for university decision-makers.

The advent of technology has allowed for the capture of large volumes of data from a variety of sources. This has led to an ever-increasing number of firms collecting large amounts of data with the belief that this will give the firm an advantage over its competitors. However, the question is, does big data by itself really lead to firm advantage? And if not, how can firms gain an advantage from big data? This paper investigates the role that big data plays in innovation and firm advantage. Using the Resource-Based View and Dynamic Capabilities framework, this paper looks at how a firm can gain an advantage from big data. Through the analysis of a case-study concerning a global information/media analytics company, this paper provides an example of how to build a capability in Digital Data Generation that can lead to improved product or service innovation, and possibly help a firm gain an advantage over its competitors.

Complex industry partnerships, innovative strategies, and cross-cutting industry competition, challenge business leaders in making strategic and operational decisions that support growth and competitiveness. Companies seeking to inform their business decisions by leveraging “big data” face challenges in processing and analyzing such large and rapid datasets. However leveraging big data can create value for businesses. Although various frameworks exist for implementing analytics, few accommodate the implementation of big data analytics. Our goal is to develop a framework by studying big data on a micro and macro level and examining how companies can use big data to boost revenue through creating value. This research is augmented by an in-depth examination of industry giant Amazon.com. Our results provide a framework that enhances traditional analytical frameworks through the integration of big data analytics. Our findings indicate that an integrated framework provides enhanced insights to decision makers seeking to create value for their businesses.

Time pressure is not usually seen as an advantage in front end innovation (subsequently referred to as “FEI”), but rather it is believed that ideas should be left to develop freely without a tight schedule. Instead of strictly formalized operations, creating ideas generally necessitates a certain level of freedom. The starting point for this research was to challenge this general view by imposing severe time pressure in FEI. The FEI process was reviewed from recognizing problems/creating ideas up until the selection of the best concept for further development. The research was executed as a qualitative in-depth investigation of a case. In the case, FEI took place over a three-week period, and the target for the FEI was to generate concepts of digital jewelry with business potential. The time pressure was seen as appropriate – with certain conditions – in FEI. The results also present the advantages and disadvantages of time pressure, combining it to the stress theory.

This letter from academia reviews the academic literature and provides an overview of the trends in spin-outs from universities in the UK. We argue that it is important to develop a more comprehensive ecosystem for academic entrepreneurship that includes a wider range of actors and mechanisms. We outline a framework of such an ecosystem and accompanying research agenda.

Firms increasingly outsource their R&D activities to external actors, but little is known about how this R&D strategy relates to the value of their research output (in terms of invention quantity as well as quality). To study this issue, I analyse a pooled cross-sectional dataset of German manufacturing firms. The results obtained from the data analysis suggest that R&D outsourcing as well as the interaction between this strategy and internal R&D are significantly and positively associated with invention quantity but not with invention quality. Furthermore, the estimation results show that manufacturing rather than service companies are more likely to explore both internal and external R&D strategies to generate inventions. Besides that, the data analysis indicates that R&D outsourcing is more important innovative input for firms operating in science-based industries than in scale-intensive and specialized-supplier sectors.

This paper reviews the insights that research offers on the impact of different leadership styles on innovation. To do so, we develop a framework, structuring research insights into four dimensions: people, means, effects, and goals/outcomes for innovations. Based on this framework, we review publications on: directive and participative leadership, interactive leadership, charismatic leadership, transformational leadership, transactional & instrumental leadership, strategic & CEO leadership, and shared & distributed leadership. We find strong indications that different innovation stages and types raise different demands on leadership. Against this background, transformational leadership is not the only style to lead innovations, but different leadership styles fit differently well with different innovation types and stages. However, the specification of this fit is still very incomplete and the answer to the question of how to lead innovations remains sketchy. In result of the review of this paper we map existing insights and research needs.

There is a growing political consensus about the necessity to decouple economic growth from environmental impacts. For a transition towards a green economy radical innovation plays a central role. Start-ups are key marketin the development and market introduction of radical sustainable innovation, but so far there is little research on the specific challenges and opportunities of “green” start-ups. In this conceptual paper, we bring together research and theory on entrepreneurship and innovation as well as sustainable business practice and ask why and how different types of “green” start-ups may encounter specific financing challenges and opportunities when developing their products/services. As existing typologies are too unspecific to properly explain the financing challenges and opportunities of green start-ups, we elaborate on these and develop a new typology of green start-ups. This typology will enable further empirical exploration of specific challenges and opportunities that such start-ups have when looking for finance.

The discipline of Innovation is constantly evolving and we are now arguably at a strategic inflection point where a new paradigm of innovation is emerging. In the last century often it was a brilliant scientist at a Bell Lab or IBM lab which drove new inventions and subsequent innovations. Then along came Open Innovation which was neatly conceptualized by Henry Chesbrough (2003) and concerns a systematic process where ideas can pass to and from different organizations and travel on different exploitations vectors for value creation. Open Innovation was based on the idea that not all of the smart people in the world can work for your company or organization and that you also have to look outside the organization for ideas. At this point Open Innovation was still seen a linear process which had an emphasis on licensing of technologies. (...)

Open Innovation has been attracting an increasing interest from academics and practitioners alike over the last decade. Companies are increasingly prone to engage in Open Innovation journeys, yet they face a myriad of challenges, including the fact that their workforce is not endowed with skills that are required to smoothly implement Open Innovation. Interestingly, despite the growing interest of all communities, education in the field is clearly lagging behind, as the analysis of existing innovation curricula reflects. While universities should empower young generations with tomorrow’s required skillsets, they apparently disregard an essential component and neglect to adopt a foresight approach on their core business. In this Academic Letter, we argue that this may relate to the fact that Open Innovation is not yet recognized as a discipline per se and we discuss six forces that may help elevate it to this stage. Overall, we also aim to demonstrate that the journey to establish Open Innovation as a field of education is only beginning.

Innovate or die. This observation is nothing new; yet it is probably more true and topical than ever. Over the last decades, innovation has expanded in an unprecedented manner and is now part of most firms’ strategies, if not the nexus of their strategies. Originally, mainly centred around the introduction of manufactured novelties, innovation is now perceived and depicted by as many adjectives, categories and attributes as one can think of: service, organisational, process, marketing, social, environmental, strategic, business model, and so on. This extension of the nature, types and forms of innovation goes hand in hand with the development of the academic literature focusing not only on the tangibility nature of novelties, but also on the intangibility character of some, or even most, of those. Moreover, and, as the analysis of leading-edge companies shows, innovation is nowadays never restricted to a single specific form. Innovation now embraces bundles of products and services, which are subject to new business models, distributed through new channels increasingly benefitting from an accrued interaction with customers, enrolling them in the development and marketing processes. The boundaries between goods and services innovations have blurred over time, leading to an abundant literature stemming from the convergence or synthesis streams, aiming at building a unified theory for innovation, and highlighting the convergence between the typical features of product innovation (such as the tangibility and the standardization) and those of service innovation (customer-centric, less structured, intangible), as argued by e.g. Evangelista (2006) and Gallouj and Savona (2009). (...)

The collective volume entitled “The Entrepreneurial Rise in Southeast Asia, The Quadruple Helix Influence on Technological Innovation”, edited by Stavros Sindakis and Christian Walter, published by Palgrave Macmillan, contributes to the examination of the phenomenon of the entrepreneurial activity grow in the Southeast Asia region. This volume sheds light into the implications of this phenomenon by interconnecting it to particular contextual characteristics, such as the level of innovation, the particular political regime, and economic and social development. Regions seeking to achieve economic and social development aim to create a dynamic framework composed by strong entrepreneurial activity and high levels of innovation. The Southeast Asia is a well chosen geographical area to be researched in order to find evidence to answer questions having to do with the creation of such a dynamic network. This is because during the last decade the Southeast Asia region has evolved into a prime example of a developing area characterized by entrepreneurial growth and increasing levels of innovation. (...)

Underlying the scientific structure of a field is the network of informal communication linkages established among the most influential scholars within the area. These groups of mutually interacting and prolific scientists who exchange knowledge through communication channels are named “invisible colleges”. In this study, we perform a two-stage analysis to identify invisible colleges in the field of entrepreneurship using three core journals: Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ETP); Journal of Business Venturing (JBV), and Small Business Economics (SBE). Using bibliometrics, a in depth analysis was conducted on the most influential authors, their professional affiliation and educational training, in order to map the informal links between the most-cited authors. Based on over 90 thousand citations from these 3 journals two invisible colleges emerged: ETP and JBV have similar intellectual groundings, targeting especially corporate and entrepreneurship venturing, while SBE gives emphasis to more economics-oriented research, namely innovation, growth and policy, and industrial dynamics.

Horizon 2020 will be the financial instrument implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe's global competitiveness. Planned to run from 2014 to 2020 with an €80 billion budget, the EU’s new Programme for research and innovation is part of the drive to create the conditions for new growth and jobs in Europe. It has been approved on 3rd December 2013, with many interesting new initiatives supporting the whole innovation process. Interlinking the new Horizon 2020 actions with the findings of the Dublin Open Innovation 2.0 conference findings and the Dublin Declaration for new European narrative for innovation we end up with very interesting new opportunities for all stakeholders in the innovation, including the societal dimension. In this short article I will elaborate some of the findings from Dublin Declaration and interlink those to the responses we see in the Horizon 2020 Programme.

Innovations are significant source of competitive advantage for firms. They are also a major source of dynamics that forces firms to adapt their capabilities to sustain competitiveness. In this study we analyzed how firms manage their technological portfolio in mobile phone industry. Our first finding is that firms have focused differently their technology portfolios. Then we identified that most firms change their technology portfolio over time. And finally we conclude that firms in mobile phone industry have different levels of dynamics where some firms change their technology portfolio faster than others. This research identifies new challenges in dynamic capabilities research related to the appropriate level of dynamics in technology management. This information is crucial in practice in order to correctly manage the firm’s dynamic processes.

Cyberphysical system design automation utilizing knowledge based engineering techniques with globally networked knowledge bases can tremendously improve the design process for emerging systems. Our goal is to develop a comprehensive architectural framework to improve the design process for cyberphysical systems (CPS) and implement a case study with Axiomatic Design Solutions Inc. to develop next generation toolsets utilizing knowledge-based engineering (KBE) systems adapted to multiple domains in the field of CPS design automation. The Cyberphysical System Design Automation Framework (CPSDAF) will be based on advances in CPS design theory based on current research and knowledge collected from global sources automatically via Semantic Web Services. A case study utilizing STEM students is discussed.

What impact do visual and auditory sensory cues as retailing innovations exert on shopper’s approach and touch behaviour at point-of-purchase in a grocery retail setting? The presented research depicts shopper’s behavioral response in relation to the influence of sensory cues for an appealing and attracting store atmosphere and design. The author presents a review of theoretically relevant work and a field study through experimental and observational methods in examining the effects of visual and auditory sensory cues as innovations in a retail setting. In the reported study, the author finds significant behavioral effects of introducing visual and auditory sensory cues on shopper’s approach and touch behaviour. The findings offer guidelines for retail managers in applying sensory cues as retailing innovations in relation to the human senses in creating successful in-store experiences at point-of-purchase.

Today innovation can be so radical and futuristic that common models of innovation diffusion might not be enough. The success of an innovation relies on the functional features of the new product, but also on how consumers shape the meaning of that innovation. Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) can help managers by focusing on the cultural determinants of consumer behaviour. The work provides a preliminary analysis of how consumers elaborate the cultural platform that will determine the degree of success of the upcoming innovation Google Glass.