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.     

How does late-career entrepreneurship relate to innovation?

In this paper, we present an explorative study that develops our understanding of the relationship between late-career entrepreneurship and innovation-driven business activity. Based on observations of 2903 solo founders of new ventures in Germany in 2008–2017, we offer first and robust evidence that late-career entrepreneurs (~50 years and above) are more likely than younger founders to introduce product/service innovations that are ‘new to the market’. Our explorations specifically reveal that older founders who draw on personal financial resources and combine their innovation orientation with prior managerial experience are most likely to generate the types of innovations that bring new products or services to the market. We conclude by discussing how our study's insights contribute to the research agenda on innovations in late-career entrepreneurship.     

Closed or open innovation? Problem solving and the governance choice

Scholars have recently highlighted the promise of open innovation. In this paper, we treat open innovation—in it's different forms and manifestations—as well as internal or closed innovation, as unique governance forms with different benefits and costs. We discuss how each governance form, whether open or closed, is composed of a set of instruments that access (a) different types of communication channels for knowledge sharing, (b) different types of incentives, and (c) different types of property rights for appropriating value from innovation. We focus on the innovation “problem” as the central unit of analysis, arguing for a match between problem types and governance forms, which vary from open to closed and which support alternative forms of solution search. In all, the goal of this paper is to provide a comparative framework for managing innovation, where we delineate and discuss four categories of open innovation governance forms (markets, partnerships, contests and tournaments and user or community innovation) and compare them with each other and with two internal or closed forms of innovation governance (authority and consensus-based hierarchy).     

How does digital piracy affect innovation? Evidence from software firms

Despite digital piracy's well-documented impact on firm revenue, the relationship between piracy and firm innovation, including the creation of new intellectual property (IP) rights, is not well-understood. To fill this gap, this paper estimates the impact of piracy on innovation through a quasi-experimental design and explores the mechanisms driving this relationship using data on software firms. Leveraging a 2001 technological shock that suddenly enabled rising software piracy, we find increases in subsequent R&D spending, copyrights, trademarks, and patents for large, incumbent software firms. Furthermore, firms with large patent portfolios appear to disproportionately increase copyrights and trademarks following the piracy shock. After considering alternatives, our analysis suggests that impacted firms perceive piracy as a form of product-market competition that causes them to increase innovation and balance their IP portfolios.     

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.     

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.     

Financial constraints in innovation projects: When is less more?

This article aims to reconcile the seemingly contradicting arguments put forth in different literatures regarding the role of financial resource constraints as inhibitors or enablers of innovation in organizations. Recognizing that innovative endeavors are regularly carried out through team projects, we examine when, i.e., under what conditions, financial resource constraints enable, rather than inhibit, the performance of innovation teams. Specifically, we propose that the relationship between financial constraints and innovation project performance is moderated by a bounded creativity approach, a team process that leverages the team's domain-relevant skills, an engaging project objective, strong team cohesion, and team potency.     

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.     

Coherence or flexibility? The paradox of change for developers’ digital innovation trajectory on open platforms

Innovation is a cumulative process in which past knowledge created by others can be both a source for predictable outcomes and also a barrier to significant change. The recent literature on digital innovation suggests that open platforms, which encourage their developers to build upon each other's knowledge when innovating their add-on apps in the periphery, face a related paradox. Developers face the tension of either being coherent with the past, or flexible to adjust to the future. In this paper, we examine how the trade-off between coherent and flexible search mechanisms affects the individual developer's choice of innovating a certain app as well as his or her cumulative impact, i.e., the degree of modifications to the app. We study an open platform in the multi-disciplinary field of nanotechnology, in which 480 developers perform more than 30,000 problem-solving actions over a period of 10 years. We use relational event modeling to differentially assess the effect of the coherent and flexible search strategies. We find that developers are significantly more likely to choose a certain app that is consistent with both a coherent and flexible strategy. However, a coherent strategy leads to greater cumulative impact on an app compared to a strategy of being mutually coherent and flexible. Thus, our findings indicate both a complementary and a contradictory logic in how the tension between coherence and flexibility unfolds. We make contributions to the recent literature on digital innovation as well as the innovation literature more broadly. Further, our results inform innovation policy and platform design.     

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.     

How can we know a self-driving car is safe?

Self-driving cars promise solutions to some of the hazards of human driving but there are important questions about the safety of these new technologies. This paper takes a qualitative social science approach to the question ‘how safe is safe enough?’ Drawing on 50 interviews with people developing and researching self-driving cars, I describe two dominant narratives of safety. The first, safety-in-numbers, sees safety as a self-evident property of the technology and offers metrics in an attempt to reassure the public. The second approach, safety-by-design, starts with the challenge of safety assurance and sees the technology as intrinsically problematic. The first approach is concerned only with performance—what a self-driving system does. The second is also concerned with why systems do what they do and how they should be tested. Using insights from workshops with members of the public, I introduce a further concern that will define trustworthy self-driving cars: the intended and perceived purposes of a system. Engineers’ safety assurances will have their credibility tested in public. ‘How safe is safe enough?’ prompts further questions: ‘safe enough for what?’ and ‘safe enough for whom?’

     

How beneficial are relational capital and technology orientation for innovation? Evidence from Mexican SMEs

Globally, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are engines of economic growth and job creation. After the pandemic, innovation activities have become more critical than ever as a generator of competitiveness. Therefore, we need to better understand the factors that lead to innovation in SMEs. This study aims to analyze the role of relational capital and technology orientation in innovation to appreciate its final impact on firm performance. The main results reveal a strong positive effect of relational capital on innovation, but the effect is not so strong as firm performance. We also found a strong positive effect of relational capital on technology orientation. Finally, we offer some clues in the debate on technology as a source of innovation and how relational capital and technology orientation are related to a firm’s performance. The results reveal significant implications for innovation policies and relational capital strategies for SMEs.     

How does co-authoring with a star affect scientists' productivity? Evidence from small open economies

There is increasing policy interest in the recruitment and integration of star scientists as a mechanism to catalyse research productivity. We use rich data for three Small Open Economies (Ireland, Denmark, and New Zealand) on publications, citations and co-authorships to examine how co-authorship with a co-located star scientist affects the co-author's productivity, both including and excluding the output directly co-authored with the star. The latter effect provides a measure of the extent to which star collaborations crowd out/in other output. Event-study analyses reveal that star co-authorships are associated with economically and statistically significant increases in co-authors' output (measured by field-normalized total citations). Output in the three years after the initial star co-authorship is increased by 89.6 % when star co-authored publications are included and by 16.2 % when they are excluded. The results are robust to using an alternative measure of quality-adjusted output based on journal publication quality. We find co-authoring with a star increases the quality but not quantity of output when star co-authored publications are excluded. We explore heterogeneity by period, field and whether the authors have multiple star co-authorships. We conclude that policymakers' and institutions' efforts to promote access to star scientists may have substantial direct and indirect effects on the productivity of incumbent scientists within departments.     

Does income redistribution impede innovation?

Economic inequalities have increased in many countries since the 1980s, provoking calls for more income redistribution. One argument against increased redistribution is that it could hamper innovation and technological progress. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that empirically investigates the relationship between government redistributive policies at the top of income distribution and innovative activity using new, high-quality, cross-country comparable panel data on income redistribution from the Distributional National Accounts. This study analyzes data from 34 advanced and emerging countries between 1980 and 2010. We find that redistribution has no negative impact on innovation in the cross-country setting. This result is robust to various measures of income redistribution and patent-based indicators of innovation, including patent counts, patent citations, and patent originality.     

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 you mean `global'? An empirical investigation of innovation networks in the multinational corporation

Literature on technological activity in the multinational corporation has recently emphasized the overall advantages from establishing internationally dispersed technological capabilities. This paper builds a taxonomy of innovation networks in the multinational corporation, differentiating between international duplication and international diversification of advanced technological capabilities. Cluster analysis of major Swedish multinationals suggests significant differences in the geographical dispersion of technological capabilities, implying different approaches to the upgrading of competitive advantage and unequal pre-conditions for becoming engaged in internationally integrated research efforts.     

开放你的思维,开放你的公司--《open innovation》述评

哈佛大学教授Henry Chesbrough在2003年5月哈佛商学院出版社出版的《开放式创新》(open innovation)一书中,提出了一个富有原创性的见解：解释了为何那些老式“大实验室式”的公司创新模式结果是无效或者失败,他提出了另一个可信的替代模式——开放式创新模式。     

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.