Journal of Product Innovation Management最新文献

How orchestrating external, supplier-provided resources affects product innovation is an important question. While product innovation is essential to achieve a competitive advantage, it is costly as it requires significant investments. It thus puts a severe strain on firm resources, which is particularly critical for resource-scarce small–medium enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, these firms must combine their own resources with those of external parties, particularly suppliers, to enhance their product innovation. However, knowledge about how orchestrating these resources affects product innovation is limited, because empirical studies on resource orchestration have largely focused on firm-internal resources; furthermore, there is ambiguity regarding the extent to which drawing on external resources is beneficial. In addition, the conditions that affect the resource orchestration–product innovation relationship remain unexplored. Therefore, we focus on supplier logistics integration (SLI), an important resource orchestration action referring to the orchestration of external, supplier-provided resources; we draw on the resource orchestration framework and the related work on organizational rigidity to theorize that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between SLI and product innovation. Additionally, we suggest that learning orientation and environmental dynamism mitigate rigidities associated with high levels of SLI and thus facilitate the translation of SLI into product innovation. Testing our hypotheses with data from Swedish SMEs supports our theorizing and provides important contributions. Most importantly, we extend the resource orchestration framework to include the focus on external, supplier-provided resources, thereby advancing our knowledge and understanding of resource orchestration for product innovation in SMEs.

The business model innovation (BMI) concept has become a well-established phenomenon of current academic research. While Foss and Saebi's (Journal of Management, 2017, 43, 200–227) seminal literature review on BMI revealed 349 articles on BMI published between 1972 and 2015, an additional number of 1727 articles on the topic have been published since 2016. In contrast to this overall interest in the BMI phenomenon, innovation-focused journals include only a limited number of publications on BMI. Further, besides the valuable insights and fruitful research directions of extant literature reviews, they tend also to overlook the linkages between traditional innovation management and the majority of BMI research. Given this underrepresentation of BMI research in the innovation management literature, we conduct an integrative literature review to bring the disconnected literature closer together and offer directions for future research. Our literature review applies the review strategy of blending and merging the literature across domains. First, we blend the knowledge base of the BMI domain by applying the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) Body of Knowledge categories. Second, we merge the literature across domains by developing an integrative framework. As recent BMI literature increasingly converged to two lines of research, our framework differentiates between the relatedness of the BMI and BMI openness. Thereby, we offer new avenues for future research that can enrich the dialogue on BMI research in the innovation management community. These results demonstrate how the BMI domain covers aspects that fit, contribute to, and extend classical innovation-focused research, how both research domains can be merged to enrich each other, and how future research can foster the dialogue across disconnected domains.

Although the effects of openness to experience (OTE) on individual creativity are well-established, research on how such effects unfold in a team context is scarce. Drawing on theories of group norms and uncertainty reduction, we argue that team mean OTE leads to a climate of team psychological safety which, in turn, facilitates team creativity. We test our hypothesis over three independent studies, the first comprising 35 business student project teams, the second based on 28 professional teams from the automotive industry, both conducted in the United Kingdom, and the third comprising 24 healthcare teams in Portugal. As predicted, across all three studies, team mean OTE was positively associated with team creativity via the affective emergent state of team psychological safety. Furthermore, the mediating role of team psychological safety remained significant even when accounting for team OTE variance, alternative motivational and cognitive emergent states, namely team promotion focus (studies 1 and 2) and team exploration climate (study 3), as well as empowering leadership (study 3). Finally, in study 3, we examined the differential impact of the two major facets of OTE, intellect, and openness, and found that intellect, but not openness, was responsible for driving the indirect effects. Further analysis did not support alternative perspectives concerning team OTE variance or the interaction between mean and variance. Our findings not only contribute to theoretical understanding regarding the relationship between team personality composition, specifically OTE, and team creativity but also provide much-needed insight into how such effects unfold. We delineate several practical implications for team design and development.

The present study seeks to shed further light on what favors the conversion of inventions into innovations in for-profit firms and to advance our understanding of how to tackle cancer grand challenges (CGCs). Specifically, following the literature on knowledge search and recombination, we analyze whether and how cancer-related inventions developed through an intense adoption of scientific knowledge (scientific search intensity) result in (i) a higher number of approved drugs and (ii) a shorter approval time for new drugs. Notably, while the role of science with regard to technological development has been widely studied, the extent to which science-based solutions relate to new product introduction, especially in terms of coping with grand challenges such as approved cancer drugs, is less known. Furthermore, considering the digitization of (health) R&D and the role of information and communication technologies (i.e., digital technologies) to address grand challenges, we examine whether and how cancer-related inventions developed through an intense adoption of digital knowledge (digital search intensity) directly affect the extent and speed of cancer drug approval, as well as whether interaction effects between scientific and digital search intensity exist. We develop hypotheses that we test on a sample of 65,861 cancer-related patents owned by 139 for-profit firms, collected from the USPTO Cancer Moonshot Patent Data. These have a priority date between 1990 and 2010, and have led to 1035 approved drugs. Results reveal that scientific search intensity is not associated with the number of different drugs developed from a single cancer-related invention but is associated with the speed at which the invention leads to a newly approved drug. Digital search intensity appears not to directly affect cancer drug approval, but it lessens the effects of scientific search intensity, thus pointing to a limit of digitization in cancer R&D and innovation processes.

In recent decades, multinational enterprises (MNEs) have increasingly harnessed local knowledge through various customer involvement practices implemented by their foreign subsidiaries. Our study, using a multi-informant survey of 230 MNE subsidiaries in China, explores how these subsidiaries manage customer involvement in new product development (NPD). We specifically focus on two practices: using customers as an information source (CIS) or as a co-developer (CIC). We posit that the two types of customer involvement have distinct effects on a subsidiary's innovation capability, which in turn impacts two critical NPD outcomes: innovativeness and speed to market. Moreover, we suggest that the roles that customers play in CIS and CIC, as well as their contribution to the subsidiary's innovation capability, depend on whether the specific knowledge is derived from the parent headquarters or local partners. Our findings reveal that technological knowledge transfer from the parent headquarters enhances CIS's effect on innovation capability, yet diminishes that of CIC. In contrast, knowledge sharing from local partners exerts the opposite effects. By elucidating the underlying mechanisms and contingencies, our study fosters a deeper understanding of customer involvement in NPD and provides insightful guidance for MNEs seeking to leverage local knowledge for successful innovations in foreign markets.

The agglomeration of financial resources is generally considered to encourage business practices that promote green innovation. In addition, green innovation is also subject to firms' location and may exhibit significant spatial effects. However, most studies failed to consider the complex association between financial resources and green innovation from the lens of geographical proximity. This paper scrutinizes the influence of geographical proximity of financial resources on green innovation with the case of Chinese listed firms. It critically examines the role of trade-offs between competitive and substitution effects triggered by geographical proximity in this complex relationship. The findings demonstrate that the geographical proximity of financial resources affects firms' trade-offs between competitive and substitution effects, changing their green innovation activities. In addition, green innovation and distance to financial centers have an inverted U-shaped association, suggesting an optimal location between the firm and financial centers conducive to green innovation. Finally, internal ownership reinforces the effect of geographical proximity of financial resources on green innovation, while external environmental regulation weakens this effect. Therefore, this paper extends the existing green innovation theory from the lens of geographic proximity. This can help us better understand the influence of geographic proximity of financial resources on green innovation.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a promising generation of digital technologies. Recent applications and research suggest that AI can not only influence but also accelerate innovation in organizations. However, as the field is rapidly growing, a common understanding of the underlying theoretical capabilities has become increasingly vague and fraught with ambiguity. In view of the centrality of innovation capabilities in making innovation happen, we bring together these scattered perspectives in a systematic and multidisciplinary literature review. The aim of this literature review is to summarize the role of AI in influencing innovation capabilities and provide a taxonomy of AI applications based on empirical studies. Drawing on the technological–organizational–environmental (TOE) framework, our review condenses the research findings of 62 studies. The results of our study are twofold. First, we identify a dichotomous view of innovation capabilities triggered by AI adoption: enabling and enhancing. The enabling capabilities are those that research identifies as enablers of AI adoption, underscoring the competencies and routines needed to implement AI. The enhancing capabilities denote the role that AI adoption has in transforming or creating innovation capabilities in organizations. Second, we propose a taxonomy of AI applications that reflects the practical adoption of AI in relation to three underlying reasons: replace, reinforce, and reveal. Our study makes three main contributions. First, we identify the innovation capabilities that are either required for or generated by AI adoption. Second, we propose a taxonomy of AI applications. Third, we use the TOE framework to track trends in the theoretical contributions of recent articles and propose a research agenda.

Despite a fundamental revolution in digital technology, along with an ancillary reduction in the cost of transmitting knowledge, the innovation literature on knowledge collaboration continues to hold on to the spatial localization of knowledge collaboration as a truism. Drawing on the open innovation literature and knowledge-based view of firm innovation, this study explores key boundary conditions affecting the relationship between research and development (R&D) collaboration breadth, and product and process innovation. Using a large-scale survey consisting of 25,813 observations of 14,784 firms in the United Kingdom during 2004–2020, we demonstrate that the breadth of knowledge collaboration with regional, national, and international partners directly affects product and process innovation. However, this relationship depends on the geographical location of the collaboration partner, the type of partner, and the firm's absorptive capacity. We found diminishing marginal returns to knowledge collaboration breadth for regional partners in product innovation, and an inverted U-shaped relationship in R&D collaboration breadth with regional partners for process innovation and for national and international partners for product and process innovation. While investment in digital technologies only shifts the curve upwards, it is unlikely to change the direction of the relationship between R&D collaboration and a type of innovation outcome. On the contrary, an increase in the share of science, technology, engineering, and math graduates enables firms to leverage the negative effect of R&D collaboration breadth nationally and specifically for process innovation. Investment in digital technology and human capital increases absorptive capacity and reduces the transaction costs associated with over-search and limited managerial capabilities and resources.

Prior research points out the benefits of external collaboration for innovation, yet little is known of: (a) the changes in the scope of external collaboration over time (i.e., firms increasing, seeking stability, or decreasing the geographic scope of their collaboration), and (b) how such changes in the geographic scope of collaboration affect product innovation novelty and commercialization. Here, we build on organizational learning theory, with the objective of exploring how changes in the geographic scope of collaboration over time affect the novelty of product innovation and its commercial success. Econometric analysis of a large panel of UK firms reveals three novel findings: First, while stability in the geographic scope of collaboration is common, there is a marked incidence of change, that is, firms are increasing or decreasing the geographic scope of collaboration. Second, while moving toward more geographically distant collaboration is beneficial mostly for radical innovation, maintaining stability in the geographic scope of collaboration is particularly beneficial for incremental innovation. Third, we demonstrate that becoming less international in the geographic scope might be beneficial for innovation commercialization. Finally, we identify six pathways to geographic collaboration that map to innovation outcomes.