Debate surrounding the performance outcomes of a firm’s strategic commitment to digitalization and environmental sustainability (namely, digital orientation and environmental orientation, ...respectively) is gathering pace. Despite progress, there remains no conclusive evidence on whether, and how digital orientation and environmental orientations enhance innovation outcomes, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, this paper examines the direct and complementary effects of digital and environmental orientations on the likelihood that SMEs introduce product and/or process innovations (i.e., product and process innovation performance). The study tests its hypotheses on a sample of 369 North American SMEs. Results demonstrate that digital and environmental orientation have a positive direct effect on product and process innovation performance. Instead, the complementary effect of pursuing a dual strategy towards digitization and environmental sustainability has a negative impact on process innovation performance and is not significant for product innovation performance. These results add new insights to theory linking strategic orientation to innovation performance, with specific regard to smaller firms.
The increasing complexity of products and services, rapidly changing market demands, or growing pressure from various societal groups are trends that require companies to enact new practices to ...remain competitive. The external search for information and its integration in the context of open innovation is one practice that can lead to increased success. However, the full range of potential open innovation partners has not yet been sufficiently explored, and their effects on innovation performance remain unclear. In this research, we investigated the roles different open innovation partners played in improving economic innovation performance and sustainability innovation performance. Furthermore, we asked whether striving to meet economic and sustainability innovation goals represents a conflict. Drawing on a cross-sectional sample of industrial firms and applying a benchmark approach to identify the relevant performance drivers, we found that, in addition to well-known partners such as universities and customers, increased collaboration with NGOs and intermediaries is beneficial for firms. Moreover, economic innovation performance positively correlates with sustainability innovation performance. This implies that economic and sustainability innovation goals can be reached simultaneously. Thereby, this paper contributes to the open innovation literature by revealing which collaboration partners fit best to strengthen innovation performance, and by clarifying the relationship between economic and sustainability innovation performance.
Scholars have argued that the exploitation–exploration interaction provides a source of competitive advantage beyond that provided by each individually. However, we know little about the mutual ...effects of exploitation and exploration on either incremental or radical innovation performance. To address this gap, we examine data from 171 manufacturing firms. We find incremental innovation performance is highest when exploitation interacts with an intermediary level of exploration. Radical innovation performance, however, is solely driven by exploration. A coupling with exploitation is not effective. We contribute to the extant literature, first, by disentangling the interaction effects of exploitation and exploration on radical and incremental innovation performance, respectively. Second, we extend extant literature that agrees that maintaining an appropriate balance of exploitation and exploration is critical for innovation performance and that has conceptualized this balance as symmetrical presence and magnitude of exploitation and exploration. In particular, we provide evidence in support of an asymmetric relationship.
While prior studies recognize the importance of knowledge accumulation capabilities in innovation performance, current research has still failed to empirically identify its role with regard to ...different types of innovation performance. The objective of this paper is to address this knowledge gap and to explore the relationships between internal knowledge creation and absorptive capabilities, and incremental and radical innovation performance. The study also contributes to analyzing the complex effect that organizational size has in the whole innovation process, influencing its antecedents (internal knowledge creation capability and absorptive capability) as well as its outputs (incremental and radical innovation performance), as the literature has produced inconsistent results and the issue is subject to continuing debate. This study demonstrates that incremental innovation performance is positively affected by both knowledge accumulation capabilities and size. However, results show that only absorptive capability has a positive direct effect on radical innovation performance, whereas size has a negative non-significant effect on it. The effect of size on knowledge accumulation capabilities also turns out to be mixed. It appears to increase internal knowledge creation capability, but it does not affect the absorption of new external knowledge.
•Incremental innovation performance is positively affected by internal knowledge creation and absorptive capabilities.•Absorptive capability affects radical innovation performance positively.•Size has a direct positive effect on incremental innovation performance.•Size has a direct positive effect on internal knowledge creation capability.
This study examines the quantitative relationship between knowledge management, innovation, and performance. We aim to shed some light on the consequences of Knowledge Management (KM) activities on ...firm's innovation and performance. Organizations are unaware of real implications of KM. According to the literature review, we develop a research model showing a positive relationship between knowledge management, and performance as well as its impact on innovation, which in turn contributes to the firm's performance. Using data from 120 firms that are members of the Iranian Power Syndicate, this model was tested empirically. Based on the Structural Equation Model (SEM) results by Partial Least Square (PLS) method, research hypotheses were supported. Results show that KM activities impact innovation and organizational performance directly, and indirectly through an increase in innovation capability. It is found that knowledge creation, knowledge integration, and knowledge application facilitate innovation and performance. Knowledge creation has more significant effects on innovation speed, innovation quality, and innovation quantity, whereas innovation quality, knowledge creation, and knowledge integration has more significant effects on performance. Findings presented in this paper may help academics and managers in designing KM programs to achieve higher innovation, effectiveness, efficiency, and profitability.
This study proposes a novel research model to investigate the neglected and pivotal mediating role of knowledge-worker productivity between knowledge management processes (knowledge generation, ...knowledge sharing, and knowledge application) and innovation. The data were collected from the 369 knowledge workers in the IT sector of Pakistan and analyzed using the SmartPLS 3 Version 26. The results indicate that knowledge-worker productivity mediates between two knowledge management processes (knowledge creation and knowledge utilization) and innovation. However, surprisingly, it does not mediate between knowledge sharing and innovation. The results support the pivotal role of knowledge-worker productivity-the most striking challenge for the management discipline in the 21st century-in knowledge-based innovation. Moreover, the results signify the overarching role of the human and cultural approach to knowledge management over the Big Data and IT and system-based approaches.
This research examines the integrated effects of external network ties and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on innovation performance. It also investigates how environmental dynamism affects the ...network ties-EO-innovation performance relationship. Drawing on the dynamic capability perspective of EO and the contingency view of network ties, we posit that business ties influence innovation performance through EO, while political ties affect innovation performance through business ties and EO. Moreover, we hypothesize that the indirect effects of business ties (through EO) and political ties (through business ties and EO) on innovation performance are stronger in more dynamic environments. Using a sample of 218 industrial firms from China, the findings support our arguments. Our in-depth examination of the relationship between network ties, EO and innovation performance results in some theoretical and managerial implications for discussion.
This study aimed to understand whether the increased use of digital technologies improves innovation performance of firms. Previous studies reveal that the more the firms use digital technologies, ...the more they can be potentially innovative. However, this is a myth. In fact, one of the main limitations of such studies is their undifferentiated approach toward the vast ocean of digital technologies. Yet, given the increasing pervasiveness of digital technologies at all levels, business and society, a question emerges: how they impact the capability of firms to be innovative? Counter-intuitively, we argue that most frequently used digital technologies have very low impact on innovation performance of firms as innovation is the result of creativity and of constant R&D efforts. By contrast, excess use of digital technologies may even deplete the long-run innovation capability of firms, for instance, by impoverishing the relational capital.
We performed two different statistical analysis to understand whether this intuition was grounded and hypotheses would be confirmed. First, we used a principal component analysis to identify the digital technologies that are salient for innovation performance. Second, we conducted a multivariate analysis of variance to understand if the identified technologies predicted innovation performance. All tests were conducted on a large-scale sample of firms operating the European Union. The findings confirmed that digital technologies have very low impact on innovation performance, whilst R&D expenses are the most reliable predictor of innovation. These results challenge the false belief that digital technologies improve innovation performance. At a practical level, the results suggest that decision makers should debias themselves from considering digital technologies as the ultimate ingredient for a successful innovative firm, as this may backfire eventually.
This research aims at exploring the relationship between a firm's strategic orientation, marketing management in terms of marketing mix tactics, and innovation performance. We examine three types of ...strategic orientations: customer, technology, and combined customer/technology orientation. We analyze their direct effect on innovation performance as well as the moderating effect of marketing management in terms of the marketing mix on this relationship. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 1603 French manufacturing firms and show that organizations with a combined customer/technology orientation outperform those with a customer or technology orientation alone. We also show that the moderating effect of marketing management in boosting innovation success is positive for all orientations, but greatest for organizations with a technology orientation. Finally, we find that the moderating effect of marketing management on the relationship between orientation and performance increases as more elements of the marketing mix are deployed simultaneously.
We investigate how cadre incentives within political organizations affect innovation activities in China. Analyzing prefecture-level data between 2006 and 2015, we find that prefecture-level mayors ...are more likely to be promoted in regions with a strong innovation performance, as indicated by the number of patents, especially in prefectures with strict innovation evaluations. We also identify inter-jurisdictional competition among local governments in the field of technological innovation, which is reflected in competition over the number of patents. We show that this competition effect holds after controlling for knowledge spillover effects. Our study highlights the important role of political incentives of government officials in promoting innovation in developing countries.
•We investigate how cadre incentives within political organizations affect innovation activities in China.•We find that prefecture-level mayors are more likely to be promoted in regions with a strong innovation performance, especially in prefectures with strict innovation evaluations.•We manually collected innovation targets set by city governments to construct the instrument variable.•We also find that local governments compete in the field of technology innovation by racing to approve more patents.
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