Journal of Product Innovation Management最新文献

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.

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.

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.

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.

The open innovation paradigm emphasizes that firms can improve their innovation performance by collaborating with other firms. However, there is no consensus in the open innovation literature regarding what drives firms' implementation of inbound and outbound open innovation and how the two types of open innovation influence innovation and firm performance. The present meta-analysis synthesizes previous research to advance our understanding of open innovation by reexamining its antecedents and its moderating effects on innovation and firm performance. Using data from 157 articles, our results show that appropriation strategy, formal organizational structure, learning culture and top manager competence drive inbound open innovation, while innovation strategy, appropriation strategy, learning culture, and top manager competence drive outbound open innovation. In addition, we find that absorptive capacity positively moderates the positive impact of inbound and outbound open innovation on innovation performance. However, industry type (i.e., high- and low-tech) is not found to moderate the effect of open innovation on innovation or firm performance, suggesting that both high- and low-tech firms can equally reap benefits from open innovation. Furthermore, this study also partially supports the moderating effects of firm size and cultural value (individualism vs. collectivism) on the open innovation—performance relationship. These findings collectively suggest that the effects of inbound and outbound open innovation on performance are subject to contextual factors. Although this meta-analysis does not allow us to generate new theories in the open innovation literature, it offers valuable insights to both academics and practitioners regarding factors affecting the implementation of open innovation and its performance implications.

Although informal firms are rare in developed economies, they are prevalent in emerging economies and create significant competitive pressure for formal firms. Recent literature has focused on the effects of informal competition on product innovation, but the results have been inconsistent. This discordance motivated this study. Drawing on insights from competitive rivalry, this study investigates how informal competition affects formal firms’ product innovativeness (i.e., whether to develop new-to-market products or not). Using a sample of firms operating in Eastern Europe and Central Asia from the World Bank Enterprise Survey, we find that if formal firms encounter intense competitive pressure from informal firms, they are less inclined to develop new-to-market products. Furthermore, credit constraints strengthen the adverse effect of competitive pressure from informal firms on the development of new-to-market product innovation, but state legitimacy weakens this effect. This investigation provides insight into the barriers to innovation in emerging economies and adds to the existing literature by highlighting the need to consider the varied effects of informal competition on different types of product innovation.

Corporate entrepreneurship is infused with power. Prior research has begun to shed light on the role of power in innovation contexts. Yet, we know much less about the day-to-day enactment of mundane power in corporate entrepreneurship, which, despite its partial subtlety, is no less consequential regarding decisions on pursuing or abandoning innovative ideas. This paper extends the literature on corporate entrepreneurship and power by exploring the discursive practices through which managers and employees of a corporate accelerator disciplined venture founders in the pursuit of innovative ideas. Based on a Foucauldian discourse analysis of ethnographic data, we show how a clash of entrepreneurship discourses invokes the day-to-day performance of three discursive practices—observing, exercising, and punishing—through which the accelerator's staff ensured that venture founders would adopt a dominant entrepreneurship discourse, with important implications for decisions on pursuing innovative ideas or not. These findings deepen our understanding of enacting mundane power in corporate entrepreneurship as well as the enablers and outcomes of such power enactment. We also outline the practical implications for emerging corporate innovation settings such as accelerators.