Decision-makers’ underestimation of user innovation

In the past few decades, much research has documented the importance of users as sources of innovations. Over the last 10 years, Research Policy alone has published 56 research articles investigating this phenomenon. We ask to what degree the findings of users as innovators have been absorbed by decision-makers responsible for new product development (managers) and by those who shape the contextual conditions for innovation (policy makers and public administration). A realistic perception of the sources of innovation is important as it constitutes the basis for a rational allocation of resources and thus indirectly impacts the innovation performance of companies and societies at large.In a large-scale survey of n?=?1500 decision-makers, we found support for a substantial underestimation of users as a source of innovation: While the true proportion of user innovation among the most valuable 1678 innovations in nine industries is 54.4% (as established in existing research articles), decision-makers estimate it to be 21.7%. A content analysis of transfer media (450 academic textbooks, popular innovation books, and business articles) underscores this theory-practice gap: Of 3469 text paragraphs dealing with the sources of innovation, only 2.7% mention users as innovators. We develop six propositions on the reasons for and consequences of this underestimation that may serve as a starting point for future research and practical consequences.     

Challenging the “deficit model” of innovation: Framing policy issues under the innovation imperative

As innovation is increasingly becoming an imperative for policymakers around the globe, there is a growing tendency to frame policy problems as problems of innovation. This logic suggests that we are unable to address grand societal challenges and ensure economic competitiveness because our societies, institutions, scientific activities or individual predispositions are not sufficiently geared towards innovation. In this paper, we analyze this “deficit model” of innovation in which a lack of innovation is routinely invoked as the main obstacle to social progress. Drawing parallels to research on the deficit model of public understanding of science (PUS), we develop a theoretical framework that captures the dynamics and normative implications of deficit construction, highlighting five salient dimensions: problem diagnoses, proposed remedies, the role of expertise, implied social orders, and measures of success. We apply this framework to three empirical case studies of recent innovation strategies in Luxembourg, Singapore, and Denmark. Attention to this deficit framing around innovation is important, we argue, because it is an essential part of how innovation transforms societies in the 21st century: not only through new technological possibilities or economic growth, but also by shaping public discourse, narrowing policy options, and legitimizing major institutional interventions. The implied pro-innovation bias tends to marginalize other rationales, values, and social functions that do not explicitly support innovation. It further delegates decisions about sweeping social reconfigurations to innovation experts, which raises questions of accountability and democratic governance. Experiences from the history of PUS suggest that, without a dedicated effort to transform innovation policy into a more democratic, inclusive, and explicitly political field, the present deficit logic and its technocratic overtones risks significant social and political conflict.     

Users as innovators? Exploring the limitations of user-driven innovation

Considering users as innovators has gained considerable support over the past 30 years. Eric von Hippel’s work in this area forms a significant part of the theoretical underpinning and evidence behind this concept. Many further studies have been undertaken to support it. It has contributed to our understanding of innovation management in general and new product development in particular. Even so, Lüthje and Herstatt emphasise that empirical findings are scarce and that the most radical innovations of the last 35 years were not developed by users. Thus, in this paper we critically review the lead-user theory and focus on three specific areas of weakness of the lead-user concept (conceptual, methodological, empirical), and argue that improvement in these areas would considerably strengthen its standing. We conclude that although lead users can contribute to the innovation process, this contribution should not be overstated, and that insufficient attention has been paid to the limitations of this theory.     

Impact of scientific and technological innovation policies on innovation efficiency of high-technology industrial parks – A dual analysis with linear regression and QCA

Scientific and technological innovation policies play a critical role in the innovative development of high-technology industrial parks. However, it remains unclear how scientific and technological innovation policies impact the innovation efficiency of high-technology industrial parks and what the impact pathways are. An in-depth investigation of this topic can give an insight into the inherent relation between the scientific and technological innovation policies and technological innovation. By conducting a theoretical analysis, this study empirically analyzed the impact of scientific and technological innovation policies on the innovation efficiency of high-technology industrial parks. The main research methods applied in this study were linear regression and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The results showed that the policy targets drove innovation efficiency in a relatively minor way. Among all policy tools, the demand-based policy tools had the most significant influence on innovation efficiency. The supply-based and environment-based policy tools had notable positive impacts during the lag periods of policies. The policy mix pathways for scientific and technological innovation policies that impact innovation efficiency come in four forms, namely, the targets-directed, demand-driven, supply-dominated environment optimization, and environment-dominated comprehensive pathways. Therefore, this study put forward proposals on classifying and refining the scientific and technological innovation policies and optimizing the policy mix-driven models.     

International research collaboration: An emerging domain of innovation studies?

International research collaboration (IRC) has been increasingly important as an emerging area of innovation studies. This study reviews the intellectual base, main research trajectories and intellectual communities of the IRC research domain over the period 1957–2015. It integrates qualitative review and three quantitative analyses including co-citation network analysis, main path analysis and bibliographic coupling analysis. The results show that the IRC research has gone through three phases, namely, “emergence” (1957–1991), “fermentation” (1992–2005) and “take-off” (2006–2015) phases. The co-citation network analysis confirms that the IRC research field has been developed under the influence of two pioneering studies related to bibliometrics research. The main research trajectories in IRC studies over the three development phases and over the whole period are identified based on the main path analysis, which shows that co-authorship analysis is the main research method in IRC studies. A bibliographic coupling analysis suggests that the whole IRC research domain can be classified into five distinct intellectual areas: drivers of IRC, IRC patterns, IRC effects, IRC networks and IRC measurement. Seven topics for future research are also identified.     

How does openness affect the importance of incentives for innovation?

When firms open up to external resources for innovation, do internal incentives still matter? This paper investigates the moderating effect of open innovation on the relationship between incentives and innovation using a survey database of British firms. Whilst both openness and incentives are positively associated with innovation efficiency, a substitution effect is found between openness and incentives. Whilst long-term incentives appear to enhance efficiency to a greater extent than short-term incentives, the substitution effect of openness is stronger regarding long-term incentives.     

Junior researchers’ experience of innovation in a multidisciplinary team environment

This paper describes junior researchers’ experience of innovative research, with the aim of encouraging fellow junior academics. Through the experience, the team recognised that context and flexibility are key factors in the research process. These factors are discussed in the light of three specific features of this project. First is the type of research the team engages in: meta-research, which includes looking at how research is managed. Second, the team is embedded in a larger organisation that holds a broad range of perspectives, from molecular scientists to sociologists. Third, the organisation offers unique opportunities not available through the traditional academic paradigm. Identification of these factors influenced the learning associated with engaging in innovative research, not in the least was the lesson that research does not follow a linear path. These concepts are framed by Blumer's theory of Symbolic Interactionism.     

Do innovation measures actually measure innovation? Obliteration,symbolic adoption,and other finicky challenges in tracking innovation diffusion

Although innovation diffusion is a central topic in policy and strategy, its measurement remains difficult – particularly in cases where the innovation is a complex and possibly ambiguous practice. In this paper, we develop four theoretical mechanisms that may bias diffusion markers by leading to the understatement and/or overstatement of diffusion at different points in time. Employing the case of “green chemistry,” we then compare three different diffusion markers – keywords, database index terms, and domain expert assessments – and we demonstrate how they lead to differing conclusions about the magnitude and timing of diffusion, organizational demography, publication outlets, and collaboration. We also provide suggestive evidence of extensive “greenwashing” by particular organization types and in particular countries. Building on these findings, we point to potential challenges with existing diffusion studies, and we make a case for the incorporation of practitioners in construct measurement and for the integration of comparative metrics in diffusion studies.     

Internal innovation or external innovation? An organizational context-based analysis in China

The purpose of this paper is to explore how enterprises choose innovation pattern from the perspective of internal organization context. This article distinguishes between internal innovation and external innovation, such that human capital and information structure are the core factors affecting firm's choice decision for internal or external innovation. Based on a survey in China, this study analyzes the relationships among specific human capital, information structure and innovation pattern. Further we also examine the moderating effect of cooperative motivation including R&D motivation, technical learning motivation and strategy motivation. The results suggest that with the degree of specific human capital increase, enterprises tend to choose internal innovation pattern and with the information structure more dispersed/horizontal, enterprises more tend to choose internal innovation pattern. What's more, motives related to research and development, and technology learning are two relatively significant moderators in the relationships among specific human capital, information structure and innovation pattern.     

How do innovation systems interact? Schumpeterian innovation in seven Australian sectors

This paper analyses how and why different types of innovation systems interact through analysing seven Australian sectors. We find that there are sets of mechanisms or systems that ‘articulate’; i.e. structure and shape the interaction among sectoral innovation systems and other types of innovation systems. Drawing on the Schumpeterian and evolutionary legacy, we contribute a theoretical explanation of how interaction among innovation systems influences innovation. First, this interaction enables and enhances variety creation by expanding the new combinations of knowledge and resources a firm can achieve. Second, it allows for more efficient and effective scaling up of useful knowledge recombination to achieve increasing returns. Empirically, this is supported in that the more successful sectors have active articulation systems with alignment with other systems, while weaker sectors have unplanned and patchy linkages. No simple model seems to explain successful articulation. However, important factors are active receptor firms with the motivation and capabilities to absorb and use resources from external systems, high quality and responsive education systems, and international linkages. Public research, labour markets, and intermediaries varied in importance.     

Practicing secrecy in open innovation – The case of a military firm

In order to keep up with the pace of innovation, military firms have recently launched a series of open innovation (OI) initiatives to search for and integrate external knowledge into their internal development process. Adopting OI in such a secretive environment unlocks new possibilities to analyze how firms can pursue openness and secrecy. This article builds on a qualitative research conducted inside a large military firm that has implemented an inbound OI strategy. Relying on multiple case studies and interviews with individual players involved in the firm's OI initiatives, we analyzed how these players deploy secrecy practices when participating to OI projects. They actually combine cognitive practices (aiming at modulating the contextual depth of the knowledge revealed through reframing) with relational practices (aiming at controlling the visibility and exposure of this knowledge). We highlight how these combinations evolve during the lifecycle of OI partnerships. By emphasizing different modes by which individual actors practice secrecy in OI, we contribute to previous research addressing how organizations navigate the paradox of openness. Besides, this study proposes new theoretical insights on the role and features of secrecy practices in innovation activities, and thus contributes to the emerging research field of managerial secrecy.     

Partly risky,partly solid – Performance study of public innovation loans

In this paper I attempt to measure the ability of a Norwegian publicly subsidized loan program to identify innovative firms that are victims of market imperfections. I apply three complementary control groups, which all have in common that they address specific unobservable characteristics of the program participants. The program participants perform better on a variety of growth measures compared to the firms rejected by the program. Compared with firms that receive private credit financing, I do not find that the program participants perform better in the upper quantiles of the contingent performance distribution despite a lower survival rate. The latter result suggests that the program does not seem to succeed in identifying a target group of firms with a sufficiently high growth potential. Firms with innovation loans are not outperformed by venture portfolio companies with respect to sales growth. The venture portfolio companies do, however, have higher survival rates as well as stronger growth in employment and assets. The latter result possibly indicates that the venture portfolio companies are more likely to succeed in the long run. The overall results indicate that the selection competency of the bureaucrats administrating the program is at level with that of private banks, and possibly also of that of venture funds. Still, in order for the program to provide the same level of welfare improvement as regular business credit provided by the private market, I find that the positive externalities from the program must be sufficiently large to compensate for the direct public subsidy element including risk adjusted return on equity and social costs of public funds.     

How open is innovation?

This paper is motivated by a desire to clarify the definition of ‘openness’ as currently used in the literature on open innovation, and to re-conceptualize the idea for future research on the topic. We combine bibliographic analysis of all papers on the topic published in Thomson's ISI Web of Knowledge (ISI) with a systematic content analysis of the field to develop a deeper understanding of earlier work. Our review indicates two inbound processes: sourcing and acquiring, and two outbound processes, revealing and selling. We analyze the advantages and disadvantages of these different forms of openness. The paper concludes with implications for theory and practice, charting several promising areas for future research.     

Technology strategies and standard competition — Comparative innovation cases of Apple and Microsoft

This paper analyses the technology strategy and standard competition of the most outstanding innovation cases of Apple and Microsoft. The objective of the study is to understand innovators' pursuit of strategies in securing the benefits from an innovation, based on the innovation life cycle model. The study develops a new methodological framework of platform for analysing the case studies. It is argued that the ability to establish an industry standard and lock-in customers enables an innovator to create a competitive advantage. The study offers important lessons in strategic innovation management.     

Which types of knowledge-intensive business services firms collaborate with universities for innovation?

Drawing on data from an original survey of UK and US publicly traded knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) firms, we investigate what types of KIBS firms collaborate with universities and consider the collaboration important for their innovation. First, we find that science-based KIBS firms (those engaged in a science, technology, and innovation [STI] mode of organizational learning), like science-based manufacturing firms, are active collaborators with universities for innovation. This relationship is further enhanced if these firms also provide highly customized services. Second, in contrast to the existing literature suggesting that firms engaged in a doing, using, and interacting (DUI) mode of organizational learning do not regard collaboration with universities as important for their innovation, we find that KIBS firms engaged in a DUI mode of organizational learning and offering highly customized services are active collaborators with universities for innovation, despite the fact that they may not possess highly formalized scientific knowledge. These findings suggest that KIBS firms co-create knowledge with universities differently than manufacturing firms. Moreover, the findings highlight the wide variety of roles that KIBS firms play in innovation networks with universities.     

The state of innovation system research: What happens beneath the surface?

Since its emergence in the 1980s, the concept of “Innovation Systems” (IS) has inspired research and shaped discussions in academia and policy alike, leading to a cascading development of approaches and extensions at various analytic levels. IS research has expanded far beyond its initial focus by generating new knowledge within but also attracting increased attention from adjacent fields. As a result, the broad understanding of IS and its diversity in applications has resulted in blurry boundaries of the field, making its contemporary delineation, synthesis, and assessment of its progress challenging. Using a combination of data-driven techniques from bibliometrics, natural language processing, and network analysis, this paper maps and analyzes the structure of knowledge production and the process of knowledge integration in current research. We find an overall growing tendency toward increasing diversity in the knowledge bases from which the field draws, accompanied by a decreasing coherence of collective research efforts. We point to the crucial role of institutions and academic entrepreneurs in shaping these developments in interdisciplinary and diverse fields, illustrating this by the role of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).     

The “human side” of open innovation: The role of employee diversity in firm-level openness

The use of external knowledge for innovation (i.e., inbound or outside-in open innovation) has received substantial attention in the innovation literature. However, the “human side” of open innovation is still poorly understood. We consider the role of employee characteristics with respect to predicting firm-level openness. Drawing on the human capital, learning and creativity literatures, we theorize that knowledge diversity of the firm’s employees is positively associated with employees’ ability to identify and absorb external knowledge, which aggregates to increased firm-level openness—that is, firms’ use of external knowledge in their pursuit of innovation. Based on a combination of three data sources, namely, two survey data sources and register data, we find support for our hypothesis that employees’ educational diversity is positively associated with firm-level openness. However, we find no direct association between employees’ work history diversity and firm-level openness but rather—as also hypothesized—a conditional relationship based on educational background, which implies that diverse work history only has a positive impact at higher levels of educational diversity. To reduce endogeneity concerns, we undertake a series of robustness checks.     

How and when information proactiveness leads to operational firm performance in the banking sector of Pakistan? The roles of open innovation,creative cognitive style,and climate for innovation

Utilizing the assumptions of the Resource-based theory, this study examined how and why new, rare, and inimitable resources in the form of information proactiveness motivation influence operational firm performance. We hypothesized open innovation as a mediator between information proactiveness motivation and operational firm performance. We also hypothesized the interactive effects of an individual’s creative cognitive style and information proactiveness motivation on open innovation whereas climate for innovation and open innovation jointly influence operational firm performance. A temporally segregated data (n = 260) was collected in three-time intervals from employees working in the banking sector of Islamabad, Pakistan. Utilizing the PROCESS approach, the findings of the study indicate that open innovation mediates the relationship between information proactiveness motivation, and operational firm performance. Moreover, the creative cognitive style was found to moderate the relationship between information proactiveness motivation and open innovation whereas climate for innovation emerged as a moderator between open innovation and operational firm performance. This research focused on unique information and contextual resources which directly and indirectly play significant roles in promoting the firm's open innovation and subsequent operational firm performance.     

Deciphering the black box of HPWS–innovation link: Modeling the mediatory role of internal social capital

This study investigates the impact of High-Performance Work Systems (HPWS) on radical and incremental innovation in the services industry. Insights from the Social Exchange Theory (SET) and Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) Framework have been used to assess the role of social capital (SC) as a mediator between HPWS, radical innovation (RI), and incremental innovation (II). By using a simple random sampling technique, 328 responses were received from respondents in Pakistan's banking sector firms. For data analysis, structural equation modeling was applied. The results of the study show that HPWS is a significant driver of II, but not RI, in banking sector firms. Moreover, SC plays the role of mediator in the HPWS-innovation link. Outcomes of the study extend the understanding of the “black-box” (i.e., the transmission mechanism between systems of human resources(HR) practices and innovation). It also contributes to understanding HPWS, SC, II, and RI in the context of Pakistan's banking sector. This study expands on earlier research in the areas of HPWS, SC, and Innovation. It supports the view that internal SC enables RI and II. Prior studies indicated that HPWS drives innovations, yet there has been no clear explanation about the mechanism of this effect. By providing empirical evidence on the mediating role of SC, this study expands on existing literature. Empirical validation of an association between HPWS RI, and II contributes to theory by supporting the tenets of the AMO Framework. Unlike prior research that focused on short-term financial outcomes, this study used RI and II as alternate indicators of organizational performance. Our study expanded the literature into the services sector. Furthermore, we contributed to the methodology by conceptualizing HPWS as a high-order formative construct, resulting in significant model parsimony. Insights from our study are relevant to managers because it shows that HPWS implementation not only helps banks to attract, develop, and retain talent but also facilitates the development of SC, which is critical for enabling the innovation capability of the firm. Top managers need to consider internal SC in the design of HPWS because carefully designed HPWS drives SC. This enables idiosyncratic relationships among members of the organization. Thus, the firm gets a competitive advantage that is harder to be copied by competitors. First, data were collected from a single industry. It will be useful to know the effects of multiple industries in future research. Second, this study did not differentiate between different dimensions of SC, i.e., structural, cognitive, and relational. It will be interesting to see how these dimensions relate to HPWS and innovation in future research.     

Is open innovation imprinted on new ventures? The cooperation-inhibiting legacy of authoritarian regimes

Extant research explores the role played by individuals and, in particular, founders in defining open innovation strategies at the firm level. We join this discussion by combining insights from imprinting literature that explores the enduring impact of a founder's personal history, with inputs from literature that stresses the impact of past experience on trust formation. We suggest that founders are less likely to engage in open innovation if their experiences engender a generalized lack of trust. We use a unique database that includes East and West German founders to identify regional differences in activities conducted by authoritarian regimes that could inhibit trust. We find that founders who were exposed to high levels of secret police surveillance in the former socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) are less likely to engage in interfirm R&D cooperation. We contribute to the literature on open innovation by exploring how a founder's social, political, and cultural backgrounds influence strategic decisions related to open innovation, and to recent imprinting literature by showing that variation in oppressive enforcement practices in authoritarian regimes, such as surveillance activities, can leave an enduring imprint. Our findings complement recent insights on ideological imprinting effects on young firms’ decision-making.