THE IMPACT OF TEAM GOAL ORIENTATION IN THE FUZZY FRONT END OF THE INNOVATION PROCESS

Many organisations face intense pressure to produce radical innovations. Consequently, innovation researchers have highlighted the need for incubating dedicated radical innovation capabilities. R&D teams are especially pivotal in generating these radical, highly-novel, original ideas at the front end of innovation (FEI). But such efforts end more often in failure than success. Organisational learning theorists have begun to draw on Goal Orientation theory as a motivational driver that might boost the success rate of teams working on such radical innovation projects. But, as yet, no fieldwork has been conducted on R&D teams to explore this promising theoretical model. In this paper, we use a case study of a corporate experiment comprising two innovation teams to investigate how situationally induced goal orientation in R&D teams might impact the radicality of innovation ideas. We find that a shared team Learning Goal orientation is associated with radical innovation and that a shared team Performance Goal orientation is associated with incremental innovation. This paper provides field-based evidence of the role of shared team goal orientation on FEI ideation outcomes. An implication of our findings for R&D managers faced with the difficulties of generating radical innovations from internal teams is that more attention should be paid to the situational cues that impact team FEI efforts, and in particular, a team’s goal orientation.

SIMILAR, YET DIFFERENT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ROLE OF TRUST IN RADICAL AND INCREMENTAL PRODUCT INNOVATION

Trust within teams is a central performance driver in product innovation. In this paper, we examine the antecedents to and performance implications of trust in firms engaged in radical innovation compared to those working towards incremental innovations. Our findings suggest that systematic processes and structures are significantly linked to trust in firms conducting radical innovation, but not so in firms conducting incremental innovation. Our findings also indicate that trust is significantly linked to business performance in radical innovation firms, although we do not find that the link between trust and performance is stronger for radical innovation firms, compared to incremental innovation firms. A central contribution of our study is therefore a better understanding of how trust operates differently in radical innovation firms, compared to incremental innovation firms. Our findings are of interest to research on radical innovation management, as well as to researchers studying the role of trust in a context of product innovation.

DO INNOVATIVE ORGANISATIONS COMPETE ON SINGLE OR MULTIPLE OPERATIONAL CAPABILITIES?

Organisations lack clear guidance on how they can become more innovative at the operational level. The operations strategy literature shows that organisations compete on four generic capabilities: cost efficiency, quality of products or services, speed of delivery, and flexibility of operations. Should organisations choose between these capabilities, i.e., engage in trading-off these capabilities and focussing on one capability ("trade-off" model), or combine them, thereby competing on multiple capabilities simultaneously ("cumulative capabilities" model), remains an unresolved issue. Our paper addresses this by empirically testing the relationship between the four operations capabilities and innovation performance through a large-scale global study of manufacturing plants. Our results show support for the cumulative capabilities model and not the trade-off model. Furthermore, both delivery and flexibility capabilities are comparatively stronger predictors of innovativeness than cost efficiency and quality capabilities. This study provides interesting insights for practitioners and managers in generating clearer guidelines as to what organisations need to do with their key operational capabilities, in order to become more innovative.

ACHIEVING ALLIANCE INNOVATION VIA ALLIANCE LEARNING: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Firms increasingly enter into business alliances in an effort to manage the innovation process and with a view to achieving better outcomes. The process therefore likely benefits from greater alliance learning, which can help transform alliance creativity and absorptive capacity into innovative outputs and thus a sustainable advantage for the alliance firms. Survey data collected from 389 Australian firms confirm that alliance creativity and absorptive capacity affect alliance innovation through the mediating role of alliance learning. In contrast, a test of an alternative moderating perspective reveals that alliance learning does not play a significant moderating role in these relationships. Although this study uses a cross-sectional, key-informant design, it offers important insights for research and practice.

RETHINKING THE ROLE OF INTERMEDIARIES AS AN ARCHITECT OF COLLECTIVE EXPLORATION AND CREATION OF KNOWLEDGE IN OPEN INNOVATION

This paper questions the applicability of traditional notions of intermediary activities, which are usually categorized as either brokering or networking, in cases of high uncertainty regarding technologies, markets or which actors to involve. In the case of collaborative open innovation, especially in circumstances when no single organization is able to take on the challenge alone, the activities traditionally associated with intermediation do not suffice to describe what an intermediary can do to support innovation. This paper presents two cases of intermediaries working with the early phases of traffic safety innovations, and how they have managed to develop their activities beyond solely brokering and networking, but also to take an active role in the process of joint exploration and creation of knowledge. We use a qualitative approach to analyze the two cases in order to provide examples of how rethinking intermediation activities can support open innovation in a collaborative setting. The findings suggest that intermediaries can take on a more active role, which could be described as an architect which designs prerequisites and offers leadership in the process of joint exploration and creation of knowledge.

STRATEGIC INNOVATION IN ESTABLISHED COMPANIES: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF APPROPRIATE AMBIDEXTERITY STRATEGIES

As strategic innovation may lead to high revenue and profit growth a deeper understanding of any enabling organizational capabilities is highly relevant to both researchers and managers. Therefore, in this paper we focus on the concept of "ambidexterity". More specifically, we use a qualitative research in five Dutch industrial sectors to study the ambidexterity strategies that established firms use for their systematic creation of strategic innovations.

We find that established companies have to cope with different ambidexterity frictions in the initiation and commercialization phases of strategic innovation projects. These results add to the emerging academic discussion on ambidexterity by showing that the appropriate ambidexterity approach may not only differ by innovation type but also by the specific phase of the innovation project. Our findings are also relevant to managerial practice as they suggest a limited value of isolated business development units for strategic innovation initiation.

ACTIVE INNOVATION — CASE STUDY IN SMART EXERCISE ENVIRONMENTS: COMPARING TRADITIONAL AND EXPERIMENTAL INNOVATION METHODS

The purpose of this paper is to improve the existing methods of building new product concepts in a qualitative "two-case" case study with action research approach combined with method comparison. Companies need an effective method to create radical product concepts and product visions. The commonly used focus group method is too simplistic for achieving deep understanding about the user needs. Innovation competitions are seen as a solution to the following major industry challenges: ineffectiveness of traditional market research, structural innovation gap, closed innovation paradigm, and the low amount, low quality and low variance of innovation opportunities. A new design for next generation innovation competition, the "InnoCoop" method, is introduced. InnoCoop produces more holistic product concepts, involves management in participation, is active in terms of working methods, offers more surprise elements, and produces more creative ideas. Traditional method produces singular, but concrete ideas and is more passive in terms of working methods.