•Configurations of internal and external sources depends on innovation typology.•Open innovation is moderated by types of technological innovation.•Product-oriented SMEs primarily choose R&D, ...customers and scientific sources.•Process-oriented SME primarily choose embodied knowledge and suppliers.
SME inbound open innovation has primarily received attention for new product development, overlooking the fact that SMEs may also pursue process or, simultaneously, product and process innovation. We posit that different technological innovation typologies (product vs process) are related to distinct search strategies. Focusing on 3,867 innovative SMEs, results indicate that inbound open innovation is not only related to internal resources of innovation but also to the type of technological innovation chosen by firms. Our results disentangle a rather more complex and comprehensive view of SME inbound open innovation that prevents the fragmentation of results. It is not just about being more or less innovative, but about how SMEs innovate differently, developing distinct internal and external activities.
Innovation is one of the most important issues in business research today. It has been studied in many independent research traditions. Our understanding and study of innovation can benefit from an ...integrative review of these research traditions. In so doing, we identify 16 topics relevant to marketing science, which we classify under five research fields:
For each topic, we summarize key concepts and highlight research challenges. For prescriptive research topics, we also review current thinking and applications. For descriptive topics, we review key findings.
•An emergent third framing of transformative innovation policy is distinguished from two earlier framings (R&D; national systems of innovation).•Key features of the third frame are a need for ...socio-technical system change.•Public policy should focus on anticipation, experimentation, participation, and directionality.•It is argued that it is impossible to address the Sustainable Development Goals through the existing frames.•Transformative innovation policy has practical implications for policy that deserve wider consideration by the innovation studies community.
Science, technology and innovation (STI) policy is shaped by persistent framings that arise from historical context. Two established frames are identified as co-existing and dominant in contemporary innovation policy discussions. The first frame is identified as beginning with a Post-World War II institutionalisation of government support for science and R&D with the presumption that this would contribute to growth and address market failure in private provision of new knowledge. The second frame emerged in the 1980s globalising world and its emphasis on competitiveness which is shaped by the national systems of innovation for knowledge creation and commercialisation. STI policy focuses on building links, clusters and networks, and on stimulating learning between elements in the systems, and enabling entrepreneurship. A third frame linked to contemporary social and environmental challenges such as the Sustainable Development Goals and calling for transformative change is identified and distinguished from the two earlier frames. Transformation refers to socio-technical system change as conceptualised in the sustainability transitions literature. The nature of this third framing is examined with the aim of identifying its key features and its potential for provoking a re-examination of the earlier two frames. One key feature is its focus on experimentation, and the argument that the Global South does not need to play catch-up to follow the transformation model of the Global North. It is argued that all three frames are relevant for policymaking, but exploring options for transformative innovation policy should be a priority.
•We study the impact of policy support on incremental and radical innovation.•We disentangle publicly-induced and privately-financed R&D investment.•We find that both types of investment contribute ...to radical innovations.•Only privately financed R&D contributes to incremental innovations.•We do not find that collaboration enhances the subsidy effect.
This study investigates the impact and effectiveness of a public R&D support policy. In a policy design that aims at incentivizing radical as well as incremental innovations, we test where the policy impact is highest. While the privately motivated R&D expenditures are significant for both types of innovation, the policy-induced part is significant only for radical innovation. Furthermore, given that the funding agency encourages collaboration, and particularly industry-science collaboration, we further test whether effects are enhanced in collaborating firms. We do not find any evidence pointing to increased effects for the latter.
•Generalises the definition of innovation in the business sector to all economic sectors.•Uses the System of National Accounts for definitions of economic sectors.•Uses a systems approach to the ...analysis of innovation.•Examines policy implications of measuring innovation in all sectors.
This paper combines general definitions of innovation applicable in all economic sectors with a systems approach, to develop a conceptual framework for the statistical measurement of innovation. The resulting indicators can be used for monitoring and evaluation of innovation policies that have been implemented, as well as for international comparisons. The extension of harmonised innovation measurement to all economic sectors has implications for innovation research and for policy learning.
The relationship between external knowledge, absorptive capacity (AC) and innovative performance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is investigated empirically. Using data from a survey on ...firms located in North Norway, we ask whether AC plays a mediating role between different external knowledge inflows and innovative performance. The results are consistent with AC as an important mediator for transforming external knowledge inflows into higher innovative performance if we include all SMEs in the sample. However, this result is not robust when considering the sub-sample of non-R&D SMEs only. External knowledge inflows have a much stronger direct effect on innovation performance for non-R&D firms and leave a weak mediating effect of AC. Our findings suggest that measures of AC should be developed further in order to make AC a more relevant concept for empirical studies of SMEs without in-house R&D.
In the context of open innovation business environments, more and more firms are joining together and creating innovation ecosystems to improve their innovation capabilities by interacting with ...heterogeneous actors. Yet, there has been little research that has examined the mechanisms regarding how and when firms within such open innovation ecosystems could enhance their innovation capabilities. To address this gap, we propose and empirically test a conceptual framework for understanding the internal mechanisms and contextual conditions in the relationship between a firm’s innovation niche and its exploratory and exploitative innovations. Using a sample of 327 Chinese manufacturing firms in strategic emerging industries, we find that a firm’s innovation niche within an open innovation ecosystem has a positive impact on its exploratory and exploitative innovations, and we demonstrate that these relationships are mediated by the innovation ecological network. Additionally, we find that the innovation ecological environment moderates the relationship between a firm’s innovation niche and the innovation ecological network. Furthermore, we show that the innovation ecological environment moderates the indirect effects of a firm’s innovation niche on its exploratory and exploitative innovations via the innovation ecological network. These results not only enrich the research on open innovation ecosystems but also provide important managerial implications for implementing innovation niche initiatives to foster firms’ exploratory and exploitative innovations.
A central part of the innovation process concerns the way firms go about organizing search for new ideas that have commercial potential. New models of innovation have suggested that many innovative ...firms have changed the way they search for new ideas, adopting open search strategies that involve the use of a wide range of external actors and sources to help them achieve and sustain innovation. Using a large-scale sample of industrial firms, this paper links search strategy to innovative performance, finding that searching widely and deeply is curvilinearly (taking an inverted U-shape) related to performance.
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