Journal of Product Innovation Management最新文献

The development of innovations aimed at tackling grand challenges requires the support of an appropriate innovation ecosystem. However, there is a limited understanding of how such innovation ecosystems emerge in contexts of absolute uncertainty. We addressed this gap by examining the boundary work carried out by key actors in the creation of the biomedical innovation ecosystem in India that supported the development of a successful low-cost heart valve over the 1976–1995 period. We developed a process model demonstrating how the ecosystem leader co-created the innovation ecosystem that led to the development of a low-cost heart valve by engaging in three types of configuration boundary work: establishing ecosystem configuration, modeling ecosystem configuration, and expanding ecosystem configuration. Our study contributes to the literature on innovations for grand challenges, innovation ecosystems, and boundary work.

Innovation management research demonstrates that political behavior is necessary for project leaders to conduct breakthrough innovation (BI) projects successfully. Although it is known that project leaders' political behavior contributes to BI project success by maintaining continued support for the projects, this study focuses on another function of organizational politics: the uncertainty-handling function. Project leaders encounter uncertainties during their BI projects and are tormented by unintended project stagnation. While scholars and practitioners have developed several logic-based responsive approaches to address uncertainty problems, project leaders also employ political behavior. The realization provokes questions such as, what type of uncertainty in particular triggers a project manager's political behavior in the context of BI development? Is there any specific linkage between a particular type of uncertainty and particular political behavior? What mechanisms underpin those relationships? To answer these questions, we investigate six BI projects in five mature Japanese companies through the lens of the meaning management perspective. The analysis reveals that (1) project leaders use political behavior to address a specific situation in which two uncertainties are intertwined; (2) project leaders use different political behavior depending on the type of intertwined uncertainties; and (3) project leaders resolve intertwined uncertainties with political behavior and then address each uncertainty in their BI projects. This study contributes to the innovation politics literature and innovation management practices by identifying specific conditions under which BI project leaders use political behavior and suggesting the fit between particular political behaviors and uncertainty conditions.

Digital transformation (DT) strategies often aim at innovating an organization's business models (BMs) and developing digital innovations. However, most of the DT strategies fail or result only in incremental innovation. Research predominantly identified critical management capabilities for DT success, neglecting the role of employees, although employee support is vital for the successful implementation of DT strategies. We conceptualize employee acceptance of DT strategies and draw on paradox theory and organizational change literature to shed light on the antecedents of employee acceptance. Using survey-based data from an incumbent introducing a DT strategy, we find empirical support that employees with a paradox mindset are likely to accept the DT strategy regardless of the expected scope of change, while a high scope of expected changes weakens the effect of a positive attitude toward change on acceptance. The findings contribute to understanding the micro-level aspects of DT and extend research emphasizing top-down management approaches in DT with an employee perspective. This study extends previous findings in innovation management that predominantly provide evidence on the acceptance of specific digital technologies and offer insights into the antecedents of DT strategy acceptance. We offer managers insights into how employees perceive DT strategies, which can help to leverage the potential of digital innovation.

This study examines whether local neighbors operating in different industries affect corporate innovation engagement. Based on mimetic isomorphism theory, we find that innovative local neighbors can serve as a social reference group for corporations to build legitimacy and guide corporations' mimetic innovation behavior. Our results remain robust after controlling for endogeneity by employing various methods. More importantly, our mechanism analysis indicates that local government activism is crucial to promote mimetic innovation behavior in a region. Our study provides a valid mechanism to explain the emergence of highly innovative cities that agglomerate across industry boundaries. Our research makes two key contributions to the literature. First, our study contributes to the literature on corporate innovation clustering by adding new evidence of the mimetic effects in corporate innovation across industries. Different from the industrial peer effects in innovation, which address the industrial peer effects through the lenses of competitiveness and information dissemination, our results highlight that mimetic isomorphism explains the regional effects of mimicry on corporate innovation. We find strong evidence indicating that firms imitate the innovation behaviors of their local neighbors, and this tendency is most plausibly explained by the incentives associated with acquiring legitimacy. Second, our findings clarify the mimetic behaviors in corporate innovation by extending the theory of mimetic isomorphism. We link local government activism to mimetic isomorphism from the psychological and sociological perspectives. In particular, our results indicate that local governments can implement activism through the psychological and sociological mechanisms illustrated in this study. Those “soft” mechanisms initiated by government contribute to a better understanding of the regional effects of mimicry on corporate innovation.

While the positive influence of external knowledge on firm innovation is widely recognized, our understanding of the interplay between the quest for external knowledge and internally conducted research and development (R&D) remains incomplete. Previous research has identified certain conditions that shape the synergy between internal and external knowledge, such as the institutional origin of the external knowledge and the overall scale of the firm's internal R&D activities. In this study, we focus on an important but not yet considered dimension and analyze whether the returns from external knowledge sourcing are contingent upon a firm's internal involvement in basic or applied research as opposed to development. We argue that engaging in research, while supporting a firm's absorptive capacity, leads overall to lower benefits from seeking external knowledge because of knowledge crowding out and spillover effects. We test our predictions using a representative panel dataset from Spain (Panel de Innovación Tecnológica [PITEC]) and show that the benefits of external knowledge decrease for higher shares of internal research investment. This substitution effect is particularly pronounced in settings where sector-level appropriability is limited and in nonhigh-tech sectors. We contribute to the innovation literature by underscoring the important role of the nature of internal R&D efforts in shaping firms' capacity to benefit from external knowledge sources.

Managers often exclude some stakeholders from innovation programs, believing they would be “dangerous” for the purpose and pace of new product/service development. The exclusion of “dangerous” stakeholders, however, has negative implications on innovation, as it prevents access to key knowledge and connections. Our study investigates how “dangerous” stakeholders can overturn their exclusion, and gain key decision-making responsibilities. Theoretically, we import the “general theory of political representation” from Rehfeld (2006) to derive insight into agency of five actors: selection agents, strategic constellation and representatives (on the side of innovators), represented and “audience” (on the side of stakeholders). Empirically, we undertake a 4-year longitudinal case study of a digital innovation program in an English public hospital. Our study highlighted that only an elite “audience” of clinical leads enacted a strategy of “coaptation work” to overturn their exclusion from the innovation program, and ascend to a role of selection agents. Through “coaptation work,” the clinical leads used their privileged access to clinical resources to first create fractures within the community of innovators, and then embed clinical stakeholders in key decision-making roles to heal them. Our results challenge established “hub-and-spoke” interpretations of innovation programs, and emphasize the importance of political representation work to understand how stakeholders exert their influence.

This study investigates the influence of ascribed and achieved political connections on corporate strategies of incremental versus radical innovation. The corporate political strategy literature maintains that while politically connected firms have access to resources controlled by the government, they also have an obligation to reciprocate for this access by fulfilling government expectations. We integrate an institutional perspective with the political strategy literature to develop the argument that ascribed political connections enhance incremental innovation because firms with these connections will tend to innovate just enough to meet government expectations. In contrast, firms with achieved political connections will tend to prefer radical innovation because these innovations help them to maintain their relationships with the government and expand their competitive advantage in the market. Furthermore, we propose that these effects depend on firms' innovation orientation, captured by the firms' technological capability, industry characteristics, and the innovation context of their geographical region. Our predictions are largely supported by analysis of a panel dataset of privately controlled, publicly listed Chinese firms during the period 2008 to 2018. Our findings reveal that the positive effect of ascribed political connections on incremental innovation is less salient when a firm has stronger technological capability, or when a firm operates in a high-tech industry or a region with a strong innovative climate. Conversely, the positive influence of achieved political connections on radical innovation is stronger when a firm has stronger technological capability, or when a firm competes in a high-tech industry or is located in a region with a strong innovative climate. We also discuss the important implications for firms and the government.

Most discussions of innovation leadership focus on the role of the top leader. Such leaders are advised to be visionary, to control and coordinate the efforts of those below them, and to empower subordinates to engage in innovation activities. Most innovation efforts, however, also require teamwork, bringing together diverse individuals to combine divergent talents to develop novel solutions to complex problems. Leadership of such teams, research shows, benefits from shared leadership (e.g., Wassenaar & Pearce. 2018. The Nature of Leadership, 167–88). The rub is that these two sources of leadership are often seen as polar opposites and that the presence of the one negates the use of the other. We contend, however, that to realize the true potential of innovation teams requires the long-run paradoxical integration and simultaneous deployment of both vertical and shared leadership, along with the short-run tandem moderation of vertical versus shared leadership, depending on the issues confronting the team, as the innovation process unfolds. We synthesize the literature surrounding this issue and articulate a model of moderated paradoxical leadership to guide future research into this space.

In family firms, innovation poses distinct challenges due to the social complexity resulting from the intertwining of the family and business systems. While prior research has focused primarily on the powerful role of the dominant family coalition in leadership positions, much less attention has been paid to middle managers who must navigate the social complexity in family firms to implement management innovations. Through a multicase study of two highly innovative family firms, we theorize and demonstrate how middle managers engage in coalition building to address the social complexity in family firms when pursuing management innovation by creating a new organizational unit dedicated to managing innovation at the corporate level. Our study shows that middle managers change the social evaluation of the transfer of political capital from the dominant family coalition through enforcement and detachment. Subsequently, they convert, invest, and then mobilize different sources of political capital to gain power through pragmatic persuasion and altruistic evangelizing. Finally, we find that the dominant family coalition employs two distinct modes of political stewardship with respect to family and nonfamily middle managers.

This study investigates the sources of disruptive innovation. The disruptive innovation literature suggests that these do not originate from existing customers, in contrast to what is predicted by the user innovation literature. We compile a unique content-analytical dataset based on 60 innovations identified as disruptive by the disruptive innovation literature. Using multinomial and binomial regression, we find that 43% of the sample disruptive innovations were originally developed by users. Disruptive innovations are more likely to originate from users (producers) if the environment has high turbulence in customer preferences (technology). Disruptive innovations that involve high functional (technological) novelty tend to be developed by users (producers). Users are also more likely to be the source of disruptive process innovations and to innovate in environments with weaker appropriability. Our article forges new links between the disruptive and the user innovation literatures, and offers guidance to managers on the likely source of disruptive threats.