Technological innovations often lead to redesigns in the business models of established companies, requiring them to incorporate new external knowledge into internal activities. Against this ...background, this study integrates the concepts of business model design, absorptive capacity, and innovation strategy into a novel research model, which analyzes the redesign of established business models in response to the emergence of Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0, also known as the Industrial Internet of Things, constitutes a contemporary research context that is highly relevant for corporate practice but scarcely regarded in management literature until now. The article contains an analysis of data from 221 German industrial enterprises, conducted through structural equation modeling, with separate data for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises. First, the results indicate that the acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation of knowledge from the environment enable companies to engage in both exploratory and exploitative innovation strategies. Furthermore, the paper includes an evaluation of the role of exploratory and exploitative innovation strategies that reflects in efficiency-centered and novelty-centered business model designs. The distinct characteristics differentiating SMEs from large enterprises are also explained. The implications of absorptive capacity on innovation strategies, which influence the redesign of extant business models, are discussed from a research and managerial perspective.
After the rapid expansion of data variety, velocity and volume, human civilization experienced rapid changes in the period between the “IT” and “Data” ages. Researchers view big data and data ...capability as new sustainable competitive advantages that enhance the sustainability of organizational development. This paper aims to develop and empirically test a framework that will investigate how big data capability is achieved through exploitative, explorative and ambidextrous modes of innovation strategies, and will also explore how they can, in turn, build firms’ sustainable competitive advantage. Using data from surveys of 229 respondents working in Chinese manufacturing firms, we test the framework using regression and bootstrapped mediation analyses. It also shows how big data capability will make firms more inclined to implement exploitative innovation strategy and construct sustainable competitive advantage, as opposed to explorative innovation strategy; when viewed from an ambidextrous perspective, combined dimension of ambidextrous innovation strategy is found to partially mediate between big data capability and sustainable competitive advantage while balanced dimension of ambidextrous innovation strategy does not. The conclusions are of great significance because they will help firms to deal with challenges that arise in big data applications and digital transformation. The findings offer new insight into the strategic choices of organizational innovations.
Understanding innovation Kahn, Kenneth B.
Business horizons,
05/2018, Volume:
61, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
While innovation has become a pervasive term, many of today’s organizations still find innovation elusive. One reason may be that much of what is being said about innovation contributes to ...misunderstanding. To truly manifest innovation and reap its benefits, one must recognize that innovation is three different things: innovation is an outcome, innovation is a process, and innovation is a mindset. Innovation as an outcome emphasizes what output is sought, including product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, business model innovation, supply chain innovation, and organizational innovation. Innovation as a process attends to the way in which innovation should be organized so that outcomes can come to fruition; this includes an overall innovation process and a new product development process. Innovation as a mindset addresses the internalization of innovation by individual members of the organization where innovation is instilled and ingrained along with the creation of a supportive organizational culture that allows innovation to flourish. Such an understanding defines necessary elements, considerations, and vernacular surrounding the term so that better decisions can be made, thereby enabling innovation and having a greater propensity to succeed.
This study develops a contingency framework to investigate how and when innovation intensity and creativity enhancement affect a firm's eco‐innovation strategy by drawing upon the perspectives of the ...resource‐based view and stakeholder theory. This investigation aims to explore whether firms with high innovation intensity and creativity enhancement really pursue eco‐innovation strategy. Our examination is based on a sample of 2,126 manufacturing firms. By using a hierarchical regression, the results reveal that the effects of innovation intensity and creativity enhancement on eco‐innovation strategy depend on customer demand and environmental regulation. Specifically, customer demand positively moderates the effects of innovation intensity and creativity enhancement on eco‐innovation strategy, whereas existing regulation has a weaker effect on the relationship between innovation activities and eco‐innovation strategy than that of anticipated regulation.
Much of the attention surrounding blockchain today is focused on financial services, with very little discussion about nonfinancial services firms and how blockchain technology may affect ...organizations, their business models, and how they create and deliver value. In addition, some confusion remains between the blockchain (with definite article) and blockchain (no article), distributed ledger technologies, and their applications. Our article offers a primer on blockchain technology aimed at general managers and executives. The key contributions of this article lie in providing an explanation of blockchain, including how a blockchain transaction works and a clarification of terms, and outlining different types of blockchain technologies. We also discuss how different types of blockchain impact business models. Building on the well-established business model framework by Osterwalder and Pigneur, we outline the effect that blockchain technologies can have on each element of the business model, along with illustrations from firms developing blockchain technology.
Does Industry 4.0 really matter for SME innovation? Somohano-Rodríguez, Francisco M.; Madrid-Guijarro, Antonia; López-Fernández, José Manuel
Journal of small business management,
07/2022, Volume:
60, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This research, grounded on the organizational information processing theory, studies whether the digital enabling technologies of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) impact innovation in small and medium enterprises ...(SMEs), and what role innovation strategies play in promoting I4.0 in SMEs. We consider two types of enablers, information and communication digital enabling technologies (IDETs) and advanced robotics and integration digital enabling technologies (ADETs), according to their nature, to demonstrate that different I4.0 enabling technologies play different roles in SME innovations. Results from 109 SMEs show that strategic planning fosters I4.0, and innovation is promoted more intensively by IDETs than by ADETs, with both technologies exerting mediating effects in the relationship between strategy and innovation. Finally, innovation has positive effects on performance.
To achieve a complex value proposition, innovating firms often need to rely on other actors in their innovation ecosystem. This raises many new challenges for the managers of these firms. However, ...there is not yet a comprehensive approach that would support managers in the process of analysis and decision making on ecosystem strategy. In this paper, we develop a strategy tool to map, analyze and design (i.e., model) innovation ecosystems. From the scholarly literature, we distill the constructs and relationships that capture how actors in an ecosystem interact in creating and capturing value. We embed these elements in a visual strategy tool coined the Ecosystem Pie Model (EPM) that is accompanied by extensive application guidelines. We then illustrate how the EPM can be used, and conclude by exploring the multiple affordances of the EPM tool as a boundary object between research and practice.
•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.
Past innovation research has largely neglected potential effects of corporate governance issues on strategic choices, and thereby on innovation management outcomes. The theory of upper echelon ...implies that strategic choices result from idiosyncrasies of top management teams (TMT). Building on this theory, we hypothesize that TMT diversity enhances firm performance by facilitating an innovation strategy that increases the firm's new product portfolio innovativeness. Our findings support the relevance of considering a corporate governance view for explaining innovation outcomes. Empirically, we can show that TMT diversity has a strong impact on the strategic choice of firms to focus on innovation fields. Such focus then drives new product portfolio innovativeness and firm performance. As corporate governance arrangements thus seem relevant in the context of innovation management, we can derive implications for both policy makers and innovation researchers.
In the past few years, there has been increasing awareness regarding the significance of the Green Innovation Strategy (GIS) in the academic and practical fields. Hence, it becomes important to ...determine the correlation between the GIS and the Corporate Financial Performance (CFP). This study attempted to determine the dynamic correlation between the GIS and the CFP, with regards to the firm size. For this purpose, this study has collected data for 163 international automotive firms, from the CSRHub database, for the period ranging between 2011 and 2017. Furthermore, we also used the dynamic panel data system, i.e., the Generalised Method of Moment (GMM) method, for estimating this relationship. The empirical results indicated that the GIS positively affected the CFP. Interestingly, we also uncovered that the firm size moderated the negative correlation between the GIS and the CFP. The small-sized firms showed higher green innovation investments return than the larger-sized firms, which indicated that these smaller firms were more prone to seek variation and visibility, for accessing better resources. Furthermore, due to the extensive scrutiny of the stakeholders, these small firms could generate higher profits. The implications for managers and the theories in this regard are then discussed.
•The relationship between firm-level green innovation strategy and corporate financial performance is investigated.•Green innovation strategy interacts with firm size to affect organisational performance.•The paper controlled for endogeneity that emerges from unobservable heterogeneity of firms using the dynamic method of moments estimator.•Green innovation strategy shows significant positive effect on corporate financial performance.•The small-sized firms shown GIS than the larger-sized firms, which more inclined to pursue variation and visibility, for accessing better resources.
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