Journal of Product Innovation Management最新文献

Prior research has highlighted the performance implications of R&D alliances for innovation outcomes and the financial returns of firms. However, research on R&D alliances has yet to offer insights into how the premature termination of such alliances, before fulfilling their predetermined innovation objectives, affects the shareholder returns of the firm. Applying transaction cost economics (TCE) theory and real options (RO) logic to a post-formation alliance setting, we posit that premature termination of R&D alliances prompts relative volatility in investors' prospective benefits and risks. Employing an event study analysis method and using a sample of 116 premature alliance termination announcements in the biopharmaceutical industry, we observe an average negative abnormal stock return of 3.21% for focal firms. Further, our analyses reveal that investors respond even more adversely to alliances terminated unilaterally by the partner of the focal firm in which they invested than those terminated through mutual agreements or by the focal firm itself. Also, we find that alliance duration from formation to termination mitigates the negative effect of termination on shareholder returns.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has brought the world to a standstill, with severe consequences on economic and health systems, requiring the identification and implementation of innovative solutions. This study's aims are threefold: first, to examine the impact of balanced and combined dimensions of ambidexterity on for-profit organizations' innovation performance related to pandemics; second, to uncover whether and to what extent such innovation performance contributes to tackling global health grand challenges (i.e., mortality rate, risk of infection, and life expectancy) associated with pandemics; and, third, to investigate the moderating role of social equalities in health in the relationships between innovation performance and health-related outcomes associated with pandemics. To uncover how for-profit firms tackle the health-related consequences of pandemics, we examine whether they have introduced product innovations to the health sector, defined as the market introduction of a new or significantly improved good, that have helped address the health challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a panel dataset (1974–2020) with 15,062 firm-year observations from the United States, we show that both the separate and the synchronous implementation of the balanced and combined dimensions of ambidexterity have a strong positive effect on firms' innovation performance and, particularly, innovation initiatives related to the pandemic. The results also reveal that innovation activities (i.e., granted patents and citations focused on COVID-19) negatively affect mortality rate and risk of infection, as well as the positive impact of innovation on increasing life expectancy, with social equalities in health moderating this relationship. Taken together, we make novel contributions to the literature on how to tackle the health-related consequences of pandemics through innovation and provide actionable managerial guidance on how firms can enhance innovation performance.

This article draws on responsible innovation (RI) undertaken by hybrid organizations, institutional rigidity, and national innovation systems (NISs) to assess and contextualize the innovation performance of for-profit firms seeking to resolve grand challenges (GCs). The extant research on RI lacks the theoretical underpinnings to profile the unique characteristics of RI firms and the contextual conditions behind the resolution of GCs through RI. This study aims to fill this important gap by focusing on a specific type of RI firm—a firm seeking to reduce climate change through implementation of a circular economy model. By studying a multi-country sample of 1153 manufacturing firms, we implemented propensity score matching (PSM) and the Heckman selection model to compare the patent productivity of RI and non-RI firms. Our evidence demonstrates that RI firms display lower likelihood of patenting and lower patent productivity than non-RI firms when they do engage in patenting. Furthermore, we found that a stronger national R&D environment can be conducive to aligning public interests and private incentives by enabling RI firms to enhance their patent productivity. Additionally, RI firms in industries with lower levels of technological complexity capture more value from improvements in R&D environments than RI firms in industries with higher levels of technological complexity. Our argument as a whole contributes to the GC and RI literature streams by considering both the innovation barriers faced by RI-oriented firms and the macro/industry boundary conditions that enable such organizations to overcome them.

This paper examines the role played by strategic agility and gender diversity in enabling the creation of value for grand challenges (VCGCs) by small and medium-sized enterprises originating from emerging markets (ESMEs). ESMEs face significant challenges due to the dynamic environments in which they operate and the limited support they receive from formal institutions. In such contexts, strategic agility enables ESMEs to drive VCGCs through responsible collaborative innovation. We further argue that gender diversity is an important boundary condition that influences the effect of strategic agility on VCGCs via responsible collaborative innovation. Utilizing 228 survey responses from ESMEs originating from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), our findings shed light on the vital role played by strategic agility in enhancing ESMEs' VCGCs. Specifically, our findings indicate that responsible collaborative innovation acts as an important mediating mechanism between strategic agility and VCGCs. In addition, gender diversity emerges as an important moderating factor in that, in the presence of more heterogeneous senior management teams, the effect of strategic agility on VCGCs through the mediating mechanism of responsible collaborative innovation is higher. These findings contribute to the literature on dynamic capabilities, upper echelons, and grand challenges by providing important insights into the mechanisms and boundary conditions of VCGCs in the context of emerging market firms.

Extending 30 years of NPD best practice studies, this paper presents the results of the most recent 2021 global best practice survey on product development management practices conducted by the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA). With responses from 651 companies in 37 countries, the results reveal once again that no single capability is necessary or sufficient to explain the best performance. The Best firms rely on the skillful combination of multiple new product development (NPD) practices to achieve greater overall innovation success. However, for the first time in this series of research, having an innovation strategy that encourages radical innovation, is oriented toward risk-taking and long-term, and strives for growth through new markets and new technologies is now a more important component of these practices than was previously found. Further results regarding the practices of the Best are discussed in the paper, and implications are provided.

Reward-based crowdfunding (CF) has emerged as a method to solicit funds for innovative projects. Yet, little is still known about the ability of reward-based CF to act as a signal in the eyes of future consumers, and thus boost the future market performance of new products that innovators intend to commercialize using the campaign funds. In addition, scant research has clarified the boundary conditions that can magnify or weaken the efficacy of this CF signal. Given the relevance of reward-based CF for supporting innovation, understanding when the CF campaign performance works as an effective signal is of great interest, especially in business settings characterized by high product quality uncertainty. By using the movie industry as a setting, we contribute to fill this gap. Specifically, we argue that the positive effect of the reward-based CF performance is moderated by two important factors influencing consumers' purchase decisions: the degree of product innovativeness and the expert judgment about the product. Elaborating on the effects of product innovativeness, we posit that this product feature should moderate the positive relationship between CF and subsequent market performances in an inverted U-shaped fashion. Favorable expert recommendations, on the other hand, should weaken the efficacy of the CF performance as a signal. Results from a sample of 1059 new movies (of which 152 released in theaters) confirm these predictions and offer several remarkable implications for innovators.

The behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF) suggests that firms are motivated to increase R&D search in response to profitability shortfalls—that is, R&D-based problemistic search. Although prior studies have provided considerable evidence for this influential explanation of R&D search, recent research shows that it is not the case in transition economies. Our study sheds light on this critical question of Why not for transition economy firms (TEFs), by identifying institutionally derived mechanisms that distract TEF decision makers' attention from R&D-based problemistic search. Specifically, we examine the implications of institutional environments for goal definition and problem attribution—two critical yet underexplored components of problemistic search. Integrating the BTOF and institutional implications, we theorize how TEFs' R&D-based problemistic search is distracted by government-imposed goal definition and politically oriented problem attribution. Using panel data on Chinese listed firms, we find that R&D search in response to profitability shortfalls is negatively moderated by employment shortfalls (government-imposed goal definition) and lack of political connections relative to peers (politically oriented problem attribution). Our study provides novel insights into TEFs' R&D-based problemistic search by revealing two institutionally derived distractive mechanisms (i.e., boundary conditions). Moreover, this study extends the BTOF literature by exploring how decision makers' intrinsic attention allocation (among different goals and among different latent problems) is subject to extrinsic institutional environments.

The use of transformer-based language models in artificial intelligence (AI) has increased adoption in various industries and led to significant productivity advancements in business operations. This article explores how these models can be used to augment human innovation teams in the new product development process, allowing for larger problem and solution spaces to be explored and ultimately leading to higher innovation performance. The article proposes the use of the AI-augmented double diamond framework to structure the exploration of how these models can assist in new product development (NPD) tasks, such as text summarization, sentiment analysis, and idea generation. It also discusses the limitations of the technology and the potential impact of AI on established practices in NPD. The article establishes a research agenda for exploring the use of language models in this area and the role of humans in hybrid innovation teams. (Note: Following the idea of this article, GPT-3 alone generated this abstract. Only minor formatting edits were performed by humans.)

A growing number of firms are seeking to leverage emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D printing, to enhance their innovation efforts. These seemingly distinct technologies are currently coalescing into an encompassing new technology called the digital twin. This technology allows innovative firms to create a digital replica of a physical entity that evolves over its life cycle. This article explores the implications of the digital twin for innovation theory and practice. First, we examine the connection between the digital twin and three related technologies (i.e., 3D printing, big data, and AI). Second, we create a typology of four categories of digital twins (i.e., monitoring, making, enhancing, and replicating) and illustrate their relevance for innovation management. Third, we offer a set of four case studies that exemplify this typology and illustrate how digital twins have been put into practice. Fourth, we craft a set of digital twin-related future research directions that encompasses a broad range of innovation-related topics, including service innovation, co-creation, and product design. We hope that our examination of the digital twin serves as a catalyst to help advance innovation thought and practice in this intriguing new domain.

Advances in digital manufacturing technologies have not only altered R&D processes for new product development (NPD), but they have also opened new possibilities for user innovators to engage in traditionally closed innovation processes. However, incorporating external sources of user innovation—through design challenges or crowdsourcing, for example—can introduce competing logics into exploratory innovation processes. Using the lens of complexity, we conduct an ethnographic study of the competing logics at work in the NPD processes of a corporate makerspace launched by a large firm in the consumer appliances industry. The makerspace was founded with a hybrid logic, intended to combine the community logic of makers with the corporate logic of the parent organization. We analyze the conflicts that arose between logics and how the hybrid logic evolved through four iterations of the NPD process. We identify how managing multiple logics led to structural and identity changes, and we explain how two mechanisms—structural bridging and stakeholder identity linking—enabled the makerspace to innovate with a hybrid logic and overcome the constraints of a dominant logic on the NPD process. The results offer insights into dynamic organizational responses to complexity, how new business initiatives can be structured to act as exploratory units for corporate parents, and how corporate makerspaces can help incorporate external sources of innovation.