In a first survey of its type, we measure development and modification of consumer products by product users in a representative sample of 1,173 UK consumers age 18 and older. We estimate this ...previously unmeasured type of household sector innovation to be quite large: 6.1% of UK consumers-nearly 2.9 million individuals-have engaged in consumer product innovation during the prior three years. In aggregate, consumers' annual product development expenditures are more than 1.4 times larger than the annual consumer product R&D expenditures of all firms in the United Kingdom combined. Consumers engage in many small projects that seem complementary to the innovation efforts of incumbent producers. Consumer innovators very seldom protect their innovations via intellectual property, and 17% diffuse to others. These results imply that, at the country level, productivity studies yield inflated effect sizes for producer innovation in consumer goods. They also imply that existing companies should reconfigure their product development systems to find and build on prototypes developed by consumers.
This paper was accepted by Lee Fleming, entrepreneurship and innovation.
This open access book presents a catalogue of over one thousand indicators which can be used by cities' public administrators to monitor and evaluate social innovation action plans to support ...people-centred, collaborative or co-designed solutions to lower carbon emissions. Indicators are clustered according to a framework of social innovation solutions for climate neutrality at city level, developed by merging top-down academic knowledge with bottom-up pragmatic case studies. There is currently limited guidance on how to embed social innovations in their cities’ action plans with the aim of reaching climate neutrality, and on how to assess the progress and impacts of such people-centred projects in cities. The book addresses this gap and is thus relevant for scholars in the field of policy-making and design, as well as cities’ transition teams, policymakers and consultants. Based on the work developed within the EU-funded project NetZeroCities, intervention logics are provided for each of the ten categories of action, with related indicators clustered by category and evaluation criteria (effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, replicability, and scalability). Guidelines to implement the framework support city administrators in defining steps they need to follow to apply the indicators to their local case, making social innovation a crucial lever for accelerating systemic transformation.
The impact of environmental regulation on enterprise innovation is closely related to the competitiveness of the enterprise and sustainable development of the regional economy, but existing research ...does not provide a consistent view. This paper summarizes the impacts of environmental regulation on enterprise innovation from the perspectives of technological innovation, product innovation, system innovation and ecological innovation. We find that the impacts of environmental regulation on enterprise innovation behaviour are complex, and that the impacts can be reflected together by the four aspects above and even by their interaction. Moreover, the impacts are not limited to the creation of new technologies, products, and systems but also include their adoption and application. In particular, whether the Porter hypothesis is true and which versions of the Porter hypothesis environmental regulation causes in enterprise innovation depend on enterprise characteristics, means of environmental regulation, and enterprises' strategic behaviours in an enterprise ecosystem. Finally, we propose five potential research directions: quantifying the degree of enterprise innovation caused by environmental regulation, the impacts of environmental regulation on sustainable economic development from an enterprise ecosystem perspective, the impacts of enterprise innovation on environmental regulation, the role of enterprise initiative in the relationship between environmental regulation and enterprise innovation, and social security issues and the integration of eliminated enterprises resulting from environmental regulation.
The concept of the regional innovation system (RIS) has been developed into an important framework for evaluating innovation performance. The study reported in this paper explores the relationship ...between the RIS and the firm's innovation system (FIS) according to the basic premise that firms that better utilize sources of information (SI) available within their regional innovation system (RIS) perform better due effect this has in enhancing the firm's technological innovation capabilities (TICs). The different innovation capabilities of a firm are regarded as the key components of the firm's innovation system. The sources of information available within an RIS include external sources (EXT) and external expert organizations, the latter of which are referred to as knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). This study also explores the dual role of KIBS as both sources of and bridges for innovation in the RIS. Data were obtained through a mailed survey using a self-administered questionnaire. The utilization concept and the dual role of KIBS were verified. The results show that externally available information affects all innovation capabilities of the firm, while external expert organizations affect only the firm's R&D and resources allocation capabilities. This study contributes to the RIS literature by providing empirical evidence on how firms can interact with the RIS by utilizing SI to enhance their TICs and achieve global competitiveness.
Prior research concerning IT business value has established a link between firm-level IT investment and tangible returns such as output productivity. Research also suggests that IT is vital to ...intermediate processes such as those that produce intangible output. Among these, the use of IT in innovation and knowledge creation processes is perhaps the most critical to a firm's long-term success. However, little is known about the relationship between IT, knowledge creation, and innovation output. In this study, we contribute to the literature by comprehensively examining the contribution of IT to innovation production across multiple contexts using a quality-based measure of innovation output. Analyzing annual information from 1987 to 1997 for a panel of large U.S. manufacturing firms, we find that a 10% increase in IT input is associated with a 1.7% increase in innovation output for a given level of innovation-related spending. This relationship between IT, research and development (R&D), and innovation production is robust across multiple econometric methodologies and is found to be particularly strong in the mid to late 1990s, a period of rapid technological innovation. Our results also demonstrate the importance of IT in creating value at an intermediate stage of production, in this case, through improved innovation productivity. However, R&D and its related intangible factors (skill, knowledge, etc.) appear to play a more crucial role in the creation of breakthrough innovations.
The current study attempts to broaden our understanding of the processes underlying successful innovation in family firms by studying not only research and development (R&D) but also organizational ...flexibility as drivers of innovation performance. Building on existing theoretical and empirical work, we formulate hypotheses on the relationship between family ownership and R&D and organizational flexibility, and on how this translates into successful innovation. Using a sample of 2604 firms and 3140-year observations, we find that family firms engage less in R&D, but are more flexible in the way they organize and that this organizational flexibility enables them to successfully develop new products and even outperform non-family owned businesses when it comes to process innovation. This research contributes to the family business field by disentangling R&D and organizational flexibility as processes underlying the relationship between family ownership and innovation performance. It illustrates how family firms' organizational flexibility can result in an innovation advantage and thereby has important implications for practitioners.
Innovation is a means for obtaining competitive advantages in the tourism and hospitality sectors. However, the innovations, knowledge, and technologies acquired may be easily accessible for ...competitors. This study, which is based on interviews with 115 senior managers, seeks to show how tourism and hotel firms innovate, and how the achievement of successful innovations is possible. A model for business innovation is proposed, which takes full advantage of internal and external sources of innovation for the generation of sustainable competitive advantages. The findings show the effects of business model innovation and business concept innovation. The adoption of new models and concepts that support innovation are shown to be important. Specifically, the keys to successful incremental and radical innovations lie in adopting a new contextual and conceptual framework through which innovations can occur and customer needs can be met, thereby giving rise to new competitive advantages.
•Business model innovation modifies the context of internal innovation.•Business concept innovation modifies the logic and patterns of internal innovation.•Innovation strategy, business concept, and business model are interrelated.•Business concept innovation is a central pillar in business model innovation.•Successful innovation is not only about technological and scientific progress.
Prior research on corporate innovation highlights the importance of accessing external knowledge from other firms and universities. However, survey evidence indicates that product users are perhaps ...the most important source of external knowledge. We build on existing theory to identify the conditions under which user knowledge contributes to corporate innovation and when the benefits will be greatest. Using a panel dataset of medical device companies and their collaborative efforts with innovative physicians, we find evidence that inventive collaborations with users enhance corporate product innovation and that the benefits are greatest in new technology areas and in the generation of radical innovations.
Factors related to atherosclerotic plaques may indicate instability, such as ulcerations, intraplaque hemorrhages, lipid core, thin or irregular fibrous cap, and inflammation. The grayscale median ...(GSM) value is one of the most widespread methods of studying atherosclerotic plaques and it is therefore important to comprehensively standardize image post-processing. Post-processing was performed using Photoshop 23.1.1.202. Images were standardized by adjusting the grayscale histogram curves, setting the darkest point of the vascular lumen (blood) to zero and the distal adventitia to 190. Posterization and color mapping were performed. A methodology that presents the current state of the art in an accessible and illustrative way should contribute to the dissemination of GSM analysis. This article describes and illustrates the process step by step.
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