Innovation Management Literature Research Articles

Red, blue, and green? The association between CEOs' political ideologies and green new product introductions

AbstractNot all firms exhibit the same level of commitment to green new product introductions (GNPIs), yet our understanding of the factors underlying these disparities remains incomplete. Prior research has primarily focused on firm‐level factors, paying little attention to individual‐level antecedents of GNPIs. This imbalance in the GNPI literature contrasts with the broader innovation and general management literature, which displays an ever‐growing interest in the “human side of innovation,” acknowledging the relevance of Chief Executive Officers' (CEOs') political ideologies for organizational outcomes. Addressing this imbalance, our study examines the relationship between CEOs' political ideologies and their firms' GNPIs, along with the conditions that shape this influence. Grounded in social identity theory, our study first argues that the more liberal CEOs are, the more GNPIs their firms are likely to generate and that this association is amplified by CEO power. It then proposes that the more liberal CEOs are, the more likely they are to respond to adverse situations beyond their control (a Republican presidency or lower levels of consumer green sentiment) by initiating more GNPIs. It finally posits that the more liberal CEOs are, the fewer GNPIs they tend to initiate in response to adverse situations for which they are accountable (involvement in sustainability‐related scandals). We integrate data from seven databases into a longitudinal dataset comprising 89 firms and 192 CEOs over the period 2010–2020 to test our theoretical framework empirically. Time‐lagged panel regression analyses strongly support our theoretical arguments. Our findings contribute to the emergence of an individual‐level, microfoundational perspective on sustainable innovations, our knowledge about the organizational implications and boundary conditions of CEOs' political ideologies, and the treatment of multiple identities within social identity theory, especially the relationship between political and occupational identities. The implications of our findings extend to business practitioners, offering valuable insights for CEOs, boards of directors, and investors.

Translating agile management practices into a traditional industry context

AbstractThis study explores the translation of agile management practices (agile) into a traditional industry context. Using a case study of agile adoption in a development project in a large traditional company of the aerospace and defense industry, this research investigates how the translation process unfolds by studying how both idea and context are adapted to create shared meaning. This research makes two main contributions. First, this research introduces translation theory to the innovation management literature and details its applicability in explaining variations in outcomes of applying management practices in new organizational contexts. Our research suggests that this constitutes a complementary theoretical lens to diffusion theory, enabling the explanation of the process to create shared meaning when idea and recipient context have a low level of compatibility. Second, this research shows the process of translating agile into a traditional context through a non‐linear joint creation of meaning. The process was shaped largely by the experience and resolution of project‐external (i.e., with the surrounding organization) and project‐internal conflicts, which in turn motivated the idea or context to adapt. The study identifies two central concepts, namely isolation, and shielding, which determine how the translation process unfolds and how meaning is created. Managerial implications based on these contributions are presented and discussed.

Designing the Internal Organization for Circular Economy Innovation: A Knowledge Governance and Microfoundations Approach

Firms implementing circular economy principles in their innovation processes necessitates the redesign of well-established processes and practices. This redesign leverages the various knowledge and practice domains within the firm, at different levels and scales. Despite the importance of knowledge to innovation management, there is a lack of research in innovation studies examining how firms could manage different knowledge flows within the circular economy context. In most research in this area, studies tend to assume that existence of governance mechanisms to manage these knowledge flows. However, given the need for redesigning or introducing entirely new business models to incorporate circularity principles, there is also a need to understand the internal organization that facilitates such changes. In this paper, we conceptualize how organizational mechanisms governing knowledge processes influence firms' adoption of circular-oriented innovation processes. We conclude that firms go through various stages and levels in the adoption process. These levels are linked through situational, action-formation, and transformational mechanisms that govern supportive knowledge processes. We contribute the innovation management literature by linking circular innovation process adoption to knowledge governance and the underlying knowledge processes. Specifically, we highlight the microfoundations nuances of circular-oriented innovation processes adoption that are pertinent to organizing innovation activities within the firm.

Organizational slack, ambidextrous search and high-tech SMEs’ performance: do strategic orientations matter?

Ambidextrous search behaviors that jointly looking for technological and market knowledge gain attention in the innovation management literature. This study treats the ambidextrous search behaviors as a technology-market search paradox and examines the effect of organizational slack on the paradox and further explore whether this paradox has synergistic effects on performance in high-tech small medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Besides, by integrating the literature of ambidextrous search and strategic management, we seek to understand the roles of strategic orientations, including growth-oriented and profit-oriented, in SMEs’ technology-market search paradox. Based on panel data of 547 high-tech SMEs, we find that organizational slack promotes both technology and market search, and ambidextrous search separately enhance high-tech SMEs’ performance, while the interaction of technology search and market search is negatively related to performance. Further, a growth-oriented strategy positively moderates the link between organizational slack and ambidextrous search and a profit-oriented strategy reinforces the relationship between organizational slack and technology search. We further enrich search-related and strategic literature.

Sustainability of the use of critical raw materials in electric vehicle batteries: A transdisciplinary review

The expected growth of electric mobility will have major sustainability implications in societies across the globe due to a global reliance on primary natural resources and the uneven distribution of benefits and impacts. There has been a call for comprehensive assessments that account for the complex causalities between technological, environmental, social, economic, and political aspects of electric mobility. We present a literature review examining the interconnections between aspects of sustainability in the use of critical materials in electric vehicle batteries. With a holistic review of social sciences, materials science, environmental policy, and innovation management literatures, five domains of sustainability tensions were identified: 1) resource sufficiency, 2) geographical distribution and global value chains, 3) regulation and policies, 4) circular economy, and 5) emerging battery technologies. The framework explicates the wickedness and complex causalities involved in the interdependencies of multiple sustainability dimensions and the related tensions. This study extends the examination to cover political aspects and adds to techno-industrial research on battery materials, supply chains and industrial policies and land use, electricity consumption and governance in EV battery production. This study proposes pathways forward that consider various sustainability interdependencies.

THE EFFECTS OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE, ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING CAPABILITY, AND TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP ON PRODUCT INNOVATION PERFORMANCE

This study significantly advances innovation management literature by analysing the impact of work-life balance (WLB), organisational learning capability (OLC), and transformational leadership (TL) on product innovation performance (PIP). By employing Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) combined with Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA), it clarifies the roles of these variables in Brazil’s manufacturing sector. Data from 332 organisations revealed that OLC and TL are vital for enhancing PIP, while WLB, though not directly influential, is crucial for innovation. This finding offers a new understanding of WLB’s role in innovation management and highlights the complexity of factors driving product innovation. Integrating NCA with PLS-SEM, this research enriches theoretical debates and provides practical insights for optimising innovation strategies. It fills a gap in the literature by analysing how these key factors interact to impact PIP, contributing to both academic research and practical innovation management.

Navigating the Digital Frontier: Emerging Trends in Digital Innovation Management for 2023 and Beyond

Purpose: After the pandemic digital technologies have increasingly become the focus of companies’ innovation management processes. This trend has led to a rapid expansion of the field, with a growing number of research papers on various facets of this topic being published in academic journals. However, the proliferation of literature in the field has complicated the ease with which practitioners and academics can stay up to date with the latest developments and build on recent findings in their respective work. In order to succeed within the field of digital innovation management a strong grasp of the newest trends is required to not fall behind competitors, and to be able to develop cutting edge research. To address this challenge, this paper aims to answer the research question: What are the most common themes in post-pandemic digital innovation management literature? Design/methodology/approach: To answer this question, this study conducted a systematic literature review of 148 academic papers published between 2020 and 2023. The identified trends were subsequently organized into a framework that provides a comprehensive understanding of the field. Findings: The identified trends can be classified as either catalysts or new opportunities. Catalysts are trends that companies can implement to make their digital innovation management more efficient. The four identified catalysts are: the use of artificial intelligence as a vital part of innovating, educating leaders and employees, incorporating digital knowledge management practices, and collaborating with innovation networks. The articles also point to three trends classified as new opportunities that digital innovation management can enable, such as more sustainable initiatives, better foreign aid, and a transition to platformization. Originality: This study summarizes the research direction of digital innovation management and synthesizes important key developments leading up to the year 2023, which researchers and practitioners should be aware of.

Unraveling data from an idea management system of 11 radical innovation portfolios: key lessons and avenues for artificial intelligence integration

In strategic and radical innovation, the degree of uncertainty and the amount of complexity is much higher compared to ‘business as usual’. Therefore, idea management systems are often used to support such innovation processes. An interesting question is what we can learn from studying data in such idea management systems and what potential implications we can derive from the innovation management literature. In this study, we were allowed to access and analyze data from the same idea management system used in 11 radical innovation projects from the years 2012–2018. Our analysis unravels 8 findings that in different ways nuance or challenge current research on innovation management. Finally, we discuss how the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in idea management systems can support innovation team members in increasing the innovation potential of the ideas that are elaborated.

Innovation in Living Labs: A Quantum Approach

Living lab research is a well-accepted stream of innovation management literature. Although previous research has documented living labs from a variety of perspectives, the core of living labs and their principles remain largely underexplored. The present study analyses innovation in living labs inspired by the lens of quantum theory and its key concepts, including superposition, entanglement and wave function collapse. More specifically, the study applies insights from quantum theory to improve our understanding of innovation endeavours in living labs. The framework developed in the study illustrates how and why living labs advance innovations: they enhance collisions of individuals with different backgrounds and knowledge, thereby increasing potential realities (superpositions) and their collapses. The study contributes to living lab literature by suggesting that living labs can be seen as a realisation of quantum computing in real-life environments, speeding up innovation activities. While the study explores conceptual aspects, its findings can offer valuable insights for policy makers and practitioners engaged in living labs.

The AI‐augmented crowd: How human crowdvoters adopt AI (or not)

AbstractTo date, innovation management research on idea evaluation has focused on human experts and crowd evaluators. With recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), idea evaluation and selection processes need to keep up. As a result, the potential role of AI‐enabled systems in idea evaluation has become an important topic in innovation management research and practice. While AI can help overcome human capacity constraints and biases, prior research has identified also aversive behaviors of humans toward AI. However, research has also shown lay people's appreciation of AI. This study focuses on human crowdvoters’ AI adoption behavior. More precisely, we focus on gig workers, who despite often lacking expert knowledge are frequently engaged in crowdvoting. To investigate crowdvoters' AI adoption behavior, we conducted a behavioral experimental study (n = 629) with incentive‐compatible rewards in a human‐AI augmentation scenario. The participants had to predict the success or failure of crowd‐generated ideas. In multiple rounds, participants could opt to delegate their decisions to an AI‐enabled system or to make their own evaluations. Our findings contribute to the innovation management literature on open innovation, more specifically crowdvoting, by observing how human crowdvoters engage with AI. In addition to showing that the lay status of gig workers does not lead to an appreciation of AI, we identify factors that foster AI adoption in this specific innovation context. We hereby find mixed support for influencing factors previously identified in other contexts, including financial incentives, social incentives, and the provision of information about AI‐enabled system's functionality. A second novel contribution of our empirical study is, however, the fading of crowdvoters’ aversive behavior over time.

Risk-Reward in Economics: Academic Career Genealogy

In academia, fostering innovation through interdisciplinary knowledge recombination is essential for growth. However, the balance between novelty and skepticism poses challenges, particularly for early-stage researchers lacking established social capital. While prior studies suggest diverse academic training enhances career prospects, this quantitative genealogical analysis challenges this notion. Drawing on the Family Tree of Trade Economists database, this study finds that having multiple supervisors and diverse academic ancestry doesn’t guarantee academic success. Surprisingly, the presence of academic siblings (shared supervisors) significantly increases the likelihood of securing a tenured position, whereas academic cousins (shared grand-supervisors) show no significant impact. This study, at the nexus of innovation and organizational management literature, informs doctoral students aiming for academic success by emphasizing the strategic choice of affiliations.

Business model innovation: Integrative review, framework, and agenda for future innovation management research

AbstractThe business model innovation (BMI) concept has become a well‐established phenomenon of current academic research. While Foss and Saebi's (Journal of Management, 2017, 43, 200–227) seminal literature review on BMI revealed 349 articles on BMI published between 1972 and 2015, an additional number of 1727 articles on the topic have been published since 2016. In contrast to this overall interest in the BMI phenomenon, innovation‐focused journals include only a limited number of publications on BMI. Further, besides the valuable insights and fruitful research directions of extant literature reviews, they tend also to overlook the linkages between traditional innovation management and the majority of BMI research. Given this underrepresentation of BMI research in the innovation management literature, we conduct an integrative literature review to bring the disconnected literature closer together and offer directions for future research. Our literature review applies the review strategy of blending and merging the literature across domains. First, we blend the knowledge base of the BMI domain by applying the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) Body of Knowledge categories. Second, we merge the literature across domains by developing an integrative framework. As recent BMI literature increasingly converged to two lines of research, our framework differentiates between the relatedness of the BMI and BMI openness. Thereby, we offer new avenues for future research that can enrich the dialogue on BMI research in the innovation management community. These results demonstrate how the BMI domain covers aspects that fit, contribute to, and extend classical innovation‐focused research, how both research domains can be merged to enrich each other, and how future research can foster the dialogue across disconnected domains.

Innovation Management Model for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs): Georgia

Abstract The present article explores the internal and external factors that enable the implementation of innovative practices within Georgian SMEs and the successful management of innovation and growth. We posit that a well-functioning and effective innovation management model is a prerequisite for growth and sustainability. The research aims to propose a conceptual model of innovation management and assess whether the application of innovation practices impacts the company’s growth in the targeted sample. The interpretation of results is based on examining the phenomenon and synthesis of theoretical information and data obtained from the online questionnaire and focus group. The data reported here appear to support the assumption that innovation management and a good combination of human and financial resources shall be the basis upon which the growth is implemented. As there is still a scarcity of research on innovation management practices in SMEs in developing countries, notably in Georgia, the present study shall contribute to the business and innovation management literature and shall develop recommendations and suggestions for start-up managers, entrepreneurs, policymakers or other interested parties. Consequently, the present research shall attempt to combine theoretical and empirical substantiations and create practical implications.

SME innovation, supply chain strategy fit and business performance: the moderating role of environmental uncertainty

ABSTRACT Innovation continues to be a strategic priority of corporate competitiveness. Despite there is a sizable body of research that addresses how innovations influence various business outcomes, little is known as to whether and how process and product innovation may fuel/hinder the supply chain strategic fit (SCSF) and the business performance of focal small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Employing structural equation modelling on data collected from 258 Korean SMEs, we find that both process and product innovations positively impact SCSF, and that improved SCSF positively influences on SME performance. Our study also suggests a non-monotonic contingency effect of environmental uncertainty on the relationship between SME innovation and SCSF. Specifically, we find that environmental uncertainty strengthens the positive effect of process innovation on SCSF but weakens the positive impact of product innovation on SCSF. Our study contributes to the innovation and supply chain management literature with novel theoretical and managerial knowledge on how to manage innovation and SCSF under different environmental conditions.

The ‘bright’ side of innovation management for international new ventures

All businesses are finding it difficult to figure out how to enhance the environment and society. Following the co-generation of social, ethical, and corporate aims, new sustainable inventions have evolved since the COVID-19 pandemic event, similar to new solutions into a workable, viable, and ethical business. The positive and negative aspects of inventions are a topic of discussion among innovation management academics. In particular, how innovation may be more sustainable even when job inequities caused by automation have sparked a feeling of the importance of upholding human rights. Despite that, the innovation management literature is still far from being pedantic in studying automation and human rights towards sustainable innovations in the context of international new ventures (INVs). The article challenges a pessimistic view of innovations by examining automation and human rights for 3000 INVs through the perspective of the micro-foundations. Multiple linear regression analysis is used to evaluate hypotheses, demonstrating how social entrepreneurship can play a constructive mediating role in upholding human rights and promoting automation. This demonstrates the necessity for additional research on a business’s individual level to create social breakthroughs. The study encourages policymakers and the government to support sustainable innovations by utilizing technology to boost job quality, uphold human rights, and foster global entrepreneurship.

The influence of the cross-border innovation environment on innovation processes in agri-food enterprises – a case study from the Dutch-German Rhine-Waal region

Enterprises of the agri-food and other sectors develop innovations that can serve the EU’s Green Deal objective to become climate-neutral by 2050. Innovation processes face specific innovation environment conditions, which are beyond the enterprise’s control. Our research aims to investigate how the innovation environment affects product innovation processes of agri-food enterprises located in a cross-border region. We developed our conceptual framework of the “cross-border innovation environment” based on innovation system and innovation management literature. We conducted semi-structured interviews in selected agri-food enterprises in the Dutch-German region Rhine-Waal. Results indicate that agri-food enterprises’ innovation environments concentrated on national-level factors, and that cross-border factors and relationships were rare. Moreover, different factors influenced different stages of innovation processes that were primarily driven by markets compared to research. We conclude that integrating customers and business partners during research and technological development is important to address current challenges of the Green Deal. Understanding how the innovation environment influences innovation processes in agri-food enterprises can help to develop appropriate policies.

Industrial Convergence and Industrial Crisis: A Situational Analysis About Precision Medicine During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Convergence, and its various configurations, is an established topic in technology and innovation management literature. This article contributes to the extant literature about industrial convergence by conducting an explorative analysis of the industrial crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article, we aim to explore how industrial convergence affects the business dynamics of the healthcare markets. To fulfill our research purpose, we perform a qualitative study by exploring retrospectively the case study of precision medicine. Thus, we use a case study approach based on the triangulation of the multiple sources of evidence gathered. We propose a conceptual framework attesting to the continued recourse to digitalization for the need for data integration and the creation of hybrid figures within healthcare markets during the industrial crisis. This article proposes various implications for researchers and practitioners dealing with the management and development of innovation in convergent sectors.

Co-creating values for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements: research on the structural hole filling behavior of stakeholders

PurposeThis study aims to explore how stakeholders leverage their guanxi and structural holes to promote knowledge mobilization to increase the performance of sci-tech achievement transformation.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducted questionnaires, a social network analysis and semistructured interviews to examine its hypotheses by gathering data from a university and an enterprise in China.FindingsStructural holes impede knowledge mobilization among stakeholders in their network, but guanxi moderates this impeding effect. In addition, knowledge mobilization promotes transformation performance.Originality/valueBy developing a mechanism to illustrate how stakeholders strategically leverage their guanxi and structural holes to affect the efficacy of knowledge mobilization to increase transformation performance, we reveal how stakeholders interact to co-create values for innovation, thereby contributing to the innovation and knowledge management literature.

How the smart product attributes influence consumer adoption intention.

Compared with traditional products, the connection attributes and intelligence attributes of the smart product are their differentiated competitive advantages. In order to understand how smart product attributes affect consumer attitudes and the influencing mechanism, we carry out this study. In the framework of psychological empowerment, this paper explores the relationship between smart product attributes and consumers' adoption intention. We consider that companies can launch a range of smart products, where the probability of success is related to the degree to which intelligent and connection attributes stimulate consumer motivation. Smart products with intelligence attributes and connection attributes can improve consumers' cognition of the four motivations consist of meaning, ability, autonomy and influence, which activate consumers' psychological sense of empowerment, and thus improve consumers' willingness to adopt. In addition, we also find that consumer heterogeneity influences this process. This paper mainly reports the moderating effect of Consumer domain-specific innovation. We find that the connection and intelligence attributes of smart products stimulate consumers' adoption intention effectively. The findings of this paper complement innovation management literature related to smart product attributes and provide suggestions for enterprises to introduce smart products.

Short communication: To speed or not to speed? The impact of market type and the COVID pandemic

Rapidly developing and bring an innovation to market (innovation speed) should have positive effects on performance. Yet innovation and technology management literature also suggests that faster innovation speed may lead to higher innovation failures in some scenarios. We investigate the value of innovation speed in four market scenarios: established markets before and during the COVID pandemic and emergent markets before and during the COVID pandemic. The study findings indicate that the pandemic has major implications for the value of innovation speed. In established markets where customer needs are well defined, rapid innovation increases performance before the pandemic; yet fast innovation speed leads to worst performance during the pandemic. In emergent markets where customer needs are still being formed, before the pandemic, the effect of innovation speed on performance is U-shaped (that is, slow or rapid innovation speed is better than moderate innovation speeds). In contrast, increasing innovation speed always leads to higher performance during the pandemic and innovation is most successful at very fast innovation speed. We present top ten success factors for managing innovation speed before and during the pandemic. The research findings are applicable for the post-pandemic new normal. The study also advances the engineering and technology management literature.