Product Innovation Practices Research Articles

Exploring factors affecting product innovation practice among micro and small scale enterprises: the case study of Debre Berhan Town, Ethiopia

Exploring factors affecting product innovation practice among micro and small scale enterprises: the case study of Debre Berhan Town, Ethiopia

Innovation Practices and Performance of Islamic Banks in Nairobi-Kenya

Purpose: The dominant feature of the modern financial system is a high pace of innovation practices, both in terms of their number and value. Thus, it is important to analyze their influence on the financial system. The current study aimed at determining the effect of innovation practices on the financial performance of Islamic banks in Kenya. Specifically, the study sought to determine the influence product innovation practices, process innovation practices, technological innovation practices and market innovation practices on the organizational performance of Islamic banks in Kenya. This study was informed by the following theories and models: the innovation diffusion theory of innovation, the Henderson-Clark model of innovation, the Task Technology Fit theory of innovation and the Shareholder’s Wealth Maximization (SWM) Theory.
 Methodology: The study adopted a descriptive research design and targeted 3 Islamic banks in Kenya with a total of 142 managers. The sample selection was scientifically guided using the Yamane (1967) simplified formula to calculate the sample size of 105 respondents. The study used structured questionnaires to collect the data. In order to ascertain how valid and reliable the questionnaires are, a pilot study was carried out. Descriptive statistics was used to collect summary statistics including means and standard deviations while inferential statistics helped in measuring the causal relationship between the variables and included correlation and regression analysis. The generation of the statistics was through SPSS program (v.25.0). The study employed both figures and tables to present the results of the study.
 Findings: The results established that product innovation practices, process innovation practices, technological innovation practices and market innovation practices positively and significantly affect the organizational performance of Islamic commercial banks in Kenya. This is shown by respective beta values of 0.398, 0.311, 0.443 and 0.295 and respective significant values of 0.002, 0.009, 0.000 and 0.01.
 Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: The results bears the implications that increasing each of the variable with one unit results to increase in organizational performance levels of Islamic commercial banks with respective beta values. The study recommends the Islamic commercial banks operating in Kenya to enhance their product innovation, process innovation, technological innovation and market innovation practices since the practices positively and significantly affects organizational performance.

Management control systems effect on the micro-level processes of product innovation

PurposeUsing institutional theory, this study aims to understand how the management control systems (MCSs) designed by top managers influence the micro-level process practices of organization members during product innovation.Design/methodology/approachThis paper reports on a case study carried out at NZMed to examine the design and use of MCSs and their product innovation practices. Simons’ levers of control was used to understand the ways in which MCSs were designed and used in a product innovation setting.FindingsThe findings indicate that the everyday micro-level processes of organization members encoded MCS when their espoused values aligned with those of top managers. However, when the perspectives within the organization differed, variations to the micro-level processes of organization members emerged. The authors show how this resulted in an increase in innovation capabilities necessary to meet organizational goals.Practical implicationsThe misalignment between espoused values and enacted values had a positive effect as it helped the organization maintain their innovation culture, and build long-term trusting relationships with suppliers which enabled the achievement of organizational goals.Originality/valueBy focusing on the relationship between MCS and the micro-level processes of organization members in product innovation, the paper shows how the lack of alignment between the espoused values of top management and the enacted values of project managers explained the variations between the MCS used by top managers and the practices of project teams at our case study company.

Evaluation of Product Innovation Practice of Chinese Internet Companies Based on DANP Model

Purpose. Internet companies have played an important supporting role in China’s economic growth and social resource allocation in the advent of an exogenous shock: the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. This is owing to their digital, networked, and platform-based characteristics amidst an environment of intensified competition and stagnation of innovation activities due to the pandemic shock. Thus, based on the social network theory and resource-based theory, this study combines the DANP model with corporate innovation to build a product innovation performance evaluation framework for Chinese Internet companies. From a value network perspective, this study considers the different performance aspects of network embeddedness, knowledge management, environmental triggering, and organizational effectiveness. Methodology. The performance of Internet enterprise product innovation may be considered a complex multicriteria decision-making problem. This study used the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory-based analytic network algorithms to analyze the complex influencing relationship among the factors and calculate their weights. Preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation was used for selecting the final solution of multiobjective optimization. Three representative and influential Internet companies in China were selected for empirical analysis and practical evaluation, to find the gap between product innovation performance and expectations and present development suggestions. Findings. The study results reveal that relational embeddedness, knowledge sharing degree, cognitive embeddedness, structural embeddedness, knowledge absorptive capacity, and corporate strategic orientation are important to Chinese Internet enterprise product innovation performance. Practical Implications. This Internet enterprise product innovation performance evaluation framework can be used by Internet business operators to assess product innovation performance and identify areas of improvement. This study provides new product innovation ideas for Chinese Internet companies during an epidemic situation. Originality/Value. This study contributes to the present body of knowledge by using the DANP model to conduct empirical analysis, considering value network-related performance aspects to evaluate the product innovation performance of Internet enterprise in China.

Strategic ambidexterity in green product innovation: Obstacles and implications

AbstractScholars and managers routinely point to various uncertainties in explaining why manufacturing firms struggle with green product innovation and why green product innovation is different from conventional product innovation. This explanation is yet unsatisfactory as a thorough understanding of how a firm deals with uncertainty exists in conventional innovation literature. At the same time, there is a lack of agreement and understanding how a firm's capabilities shape its green product innovation practices, which could contribute to this gap. Based on a case study at five multinational manufacturers, this paper sets out to contribute to the capability perspective on green product innovation by understanding how manufacturing firms learn and innovate in order to make and sell greener products. A powerful and favored way for firms to learn and innovate under uncertainty is through strategic ambidexterity. With this learning strategy, firms rely on existing competences in one area (exploitation) while they simultaneously explore new competences in another area (exploration). However, our results show that strategic ambidexterity is oftentimes unachievable due to several factors, and as result, firms are forced to choose between a highly uncertain and risky alternative strategy and a more conservative but also less green strategy based on exploitation only, which is often the preferred option. In addition, our findings shed a new light on the role of uncertainty in green product innovation as we conclude that uncertainties firms face in green product innovation are indeed abundant, but are fundamentally not new nor caused by external sources only.

Mobile Tech: Superfood or Super Fad of Creative Business?

ABSTRACTPurpose: Creative agencies are well known for pioneering technological transformation due to its reliance on information and communication technology. Not surprisingly creative businesses are experimenting with mobile technology and increasing their investments into mobile business transformation. However, there is a lack of scholarly evidence about whether and how exactly mobile technology use facilitates or stimulates innovation practices in B-to-B firms. Is mobile technology a superfood or super fad of creative businesses? This paper aims to explore the mobile technology deployment and its role in innovation practices of creative B-to-B firms.Methodology: Innovation practices and mobile technology deployment are studied by interviewing business decision-makers from the 31 UK creative business-to-business agencies. The evolved grounded theory approach is used to analyze the interviews data as well as complimentary documents shared by interviewees.Findings: Applying a capability approach and innovation practices theoretical perspectives, this grounded theory research discovered that mobile technology is, in fact, a superfood that with the right combination of resources and capabilities delivers strategic benefits for creative B-to-B businesses. It is the interaction between mobile technology resources and mobile technology capabilities to stimulate and facilitate process and product innovation practices. Moreover, distinct three clusters of creative B-to-B firms have been identified, which demonstrate that depending on organizational commitment of creative businesses to mobile technology deployment, interaction between mobile technology resources and mobile technology capabilities can lead to both innovation practices, in particular process innovation practices only (Cluster A) and both process and product innovation practices (Clusters B and C).Practical Implications: The understanding of mobile technology deployment process that derives from this paper is particularly significant in showing creative businesses’ managers the real value in embracing mobile technology. Considering the clustering of creative agencies based on organizational commitment they have towards mobile technology deployment, this study signals that business decision-makers can deploy mobile technology to effectively manage operations or/and produce new solutions.Originality/Value/Contribution: This paper’s main theoretical contribution is in researching mobile technology deployment process using the capability approach. This study defines “mobile technology capabilities” as a firm’s unique practices employed in orchestrating mobile technology resources to create a competitive advantage. Mobile technology capabilities consist of five distinct practices that firms perform to combine and integrate mobile technology resources into organizational processes, namely learning, leading, transforming, leveraging mobile technology resources and solving problems. Moreover, this study is first to integrate conceptually innovation practices and mobile technology deployment by grounding this conceptualization in an empirical setting – creative agencies delivering advertising, marketing, digital design and digital architecture services.

Exploring the impact of innovation implementation on supply chain configuration

Abstract Considering the foreseen digital transformation and rapid dissemination of technological innovations, this paper investigates what happens along the supply chain (SC) when process and product innovation practices are implemented. The research examines the SC strategy and configuration of four product families; it considers the configuration to incorporate the whole range of SC functions and relationships. The paper addresses the little attention paid to the process innovation dimension in SC literature, and develops a framework capturing the dynamics between innovation implementation and configuration decisions and settings. The provided analyses guide practitioners on better management of innovation implementation along the supply chain.

How participative is open source hardware? Insights from online repository mining

Open Source Hardware (OSH) is an increasingly viable approach to intellectual property management extending the principles of Open Source Software (OSS) to the domain of physical products. These principles support the development of products in transparent processes allowing the participation of any interested person. While increasing numbers of products have been released as OSH, little is known on the prevalence of participative development practices in this emerging field. It remains unclear to which extent the transparent and participatory processes known from software reached hardware product development. To fill this gap, this paper applies repository mining techniques to investigate the transparency and workload distribution of 105 OSH product development projects. The results highlight a certain heterogeneity of practices filling a continuum between public and private development settings. They reveal different organizational patterns with different levels of centralization and distribution. Nonetheless, they clearly indicate the expansion of the open source development model from software into the realms of physical products and provide the first large-scale empirical evidence of this recent evolution. Therewith, this article gives body to an emerging phenomenon and contributes to give it a place in the scientific debate. It delivers categories to delineate practices, techniques to investigate them in further detail as well as a large dataset of exemplary OSH projects. The discussion of first results signposts avenues for a stream of research aiming at understanding stakeholder interactions at work in new product innovation practices in order to enable institutions and industry in providing appropriate responses.

Characterization of Food Product Innovation Practices with Reference to Functional Food Product Development in Singapore

Functional foods, being one of the major food categories of the global health and wellness market, are becoming a major focus of new product development (NPD) in the food industry. The development of functional foods is more complex than traditional food New Product Development (NPD), calling for a concerted effort from researchers and NPD experts to explore and understand the functional food product development (FFPD) process in more detail. The current research in this field has reported that there is a need to evolve from a traditional NPD approach, towards an integrative and innovative approach involving cooperative networks and techniques of commercialization. However, there is little practical evidence on how much progress has been made to date. Therefore, this research was designed to investigate the food product innovation process of food manufacturing in the Asia-Pacific region (Singapore) with reference to functional foods development. Results report on a comparative account of NPD practices between registered Singapore food companies that are doing some sort of functional food development (Group 1) and those that are not (Group 2). A significant difference (P<0.05) in the aims and mode of NPD between Group 1 and Group was observed. Further it was observed that food companies in Group 1 have significantly (P<0.05) more diverse external collaborations with broad aims to collaborate, in comparison with food companies in Group 2. This is a positive step toward developing an external resource base, which is essential in developing functional foods. This attitude should be encouraged in future innovation polices as being critical to value-added food product innovations in Singapore. Apart from these differences, food companies are still pursuing a traditional NPD approach (independent and closed NPD); with loose Intellectual Property protection practices irrespective of type of innovation activity. There is a need to create awareness among the stakeholders about the factors needed for developing unique and inimitable resources, and dynamic capabilities in food manufacturing.Â

The impact of technological innovation on product quality: the moderating role of firm size

Innovation and quality are essential for sustainable competitiveness in today’s business world. Despite extensive theoretical discussions about the relationship between innovation and quality, few studies explore the observable effects of technological innovation practices (TIPs) on product quality. This paper aims to empirically investigate the impact of TIP on product quality, considering the moderating effect of firm size. A conceptual model linking product innovation practice, process innovation practice, normal quality (NQ), attractive quality (AQ) and product market performance is proposed. The model is tested using survey data from 201 innovative Chinese manufacturing companies. The results reveal that TIP does indeed positively influence both AQ and NQ. Firm size moderates the relationship between TIP and AQ. The study contributes to a better understanding of how different-sized Chinese firms can utilise innovation practice to improve product quality and market performance.

Making sense of flying: Designers give sense to the aviation manufacturing industry

Abstract This article aims to extend the body of knowledge on Sensemaking as a capability for organizational and strategic change by investigating how design methods could support Sensemaking activities. In order to investigate how design methods can consciously influence Sensemaking activities and how this supports an organization, the case of a large aviation industry manufacturer is taken into consideration. The company under investigation is dealing with implementing their newly established strategy to its everyday work and product innovation practices moving towards service enabling systems. This strategy has been chosen as industry is forced to find new drivers such as passenger experience to gain competitive advantage. As a consequence, manufacturers must also change strategy to support airlines in achieving their goals. Sensemaking is an essential mechanism that manufacturers use to understand the service goals of airlines. Sensemaking is defined as the process of cognitively organizing the unknown in order to give it meaning and to be able to act on it. In three separate moments of the innovation process, each taking place in a different project, design methods were used to explore their ability to support the manufacturer in Sensemaking activities.

Effects of Green Innovation on Environmental and Corporate Performance: A Stakeholder Perspective

“Going green” has become an important environmental issue in contemporary business practice worldwide. This study examined the influence of a number of factors on green innovation and the consequences in terms of performance. The stakeholder theory was adopted to observe the effects of each stakeholder on the green innovation practices of companies and to determine how green innovation practices influence environmental and business performance. A research model with eight hypotheses was proposed to determine the associations between the variables of interest. An empirical survey was conducted of 202 Taiwanese service and manufacturing companies. The survey found that pressure from competitors and the government, along with employee conduct, all had significant and positive effects on green innovation practices. Additionally, a moderating effect of innovation orientation existed only in the relationship between green product innovation practices and employee conduct. This study not only provides a systematic way to analyze the effects of green innovation practices but also suggests the best means for companies to adopt green innovation practices.

Product innovation among ICT technopreneurs in Malaysia

PurposeThe first purpose of this study is to discuss a brief review of the literature in product innovation, innovation strategies and resources. The second purpose is to present qualitative findings related to product innovation as well as their strategies and resources among ICT (information and communication technology) technopreneurs in the software sector of Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study is a preliminary study to a larger empirical study. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with five ICT technopreneurs in Malaysia.FindingsThe findings generate insights into the kind of market that ICT technopreneurs are in, the problems they are facing, their practices and opinions towards product innovation, and their strategies as well as the resources required.Research limitations/implicationsOne limitation of the work could be related to the small sample size.Practical implicationsThe findings imply that resource constraints, market factors such as market need, and strategic orientation towards customer and market needs may play a part in product innovation practices among ICT technopreneurs. Practitioners should pay attention to these factors to achieve innovative advantage.Originality/valueThis study adds knowledge regarding product innovation among software firms by shedding light on ICT technopreneurs in terms of product innovation and the factors associated with it. The implications provide an impetus for further research in related areas.

Modelling Product Innovation Processes, from Linear Logic to Circular Chaos

Product innovation is the focal point of the Delft Design School in the Netherlands. During its more than thirty years of existence different models of the product innovation process were and are used for education and for research. This paper will describe the development of these models. The first models tried to describe the product innovation process in a logical linear order, but recently this logical order has come under discussion. The most recent models try to show the more chaotic character of the product innovation processes in real corporate life. Although this chaotic model better reflects the product innovation practice, for educational purposes it seems to be less useful than the original logical ones. For our teaching we propose the two versions (logic and chaos) of our innovation model as two sides of one coin. This innovation coin is without proper value with one side left blank.

A comparison of practice‐performance models between small manufacturers and subcontractors

The adoption and effectiveness of advanced management practices by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is becoming an emerging issue since the literature has recognised that a pure entrepreneurial attitude is no longer enough for the competitive success of these firms. This paper explores this issue by comparing the practice‐performance links for two types of SMEs ‐‐ i.e. subcontractors and small manufacturers ‐‐ through the investigation of the management practices pertaining to the following three functional areas: general management, production management and product innovation management (only for manufacturers). Despite the fact that subcontracting is generally considered less appealing and profitable than manufacturing, empirical evidence shows that subcontractors are more effective in implementing advanced practices of production management whilst most small manufacturers ‐‐ although quite advanced in developing practices of general management ‐‐ experience difficulties in exploiting the potential of good product innovation practice.

The Organisation of High‐Technology Product Innovation

Examines best current product innovation practice. Describes the organizational arrangements currently used by firms which are regular product innovators in order to guide those which are less active. Centres on measuring the properties of loose/tight organization structures in relation to corporate renewal through product innovation. Presents results which suggest that there are important organizational differences between high‐tech firms which are active, experienced product innovators and those which are not.