TIME for performance improvement: Targeting innovation in manufacturing engineering

Performance improvement capability is related to an organization’s ability to utilize a fundamental asset, the knowledge that resides with its employees, together with learning from past projects and having good links to external knowledge sources. Firms that develop mechanisms to encourage conversation between individuals and teams to take place, particularly in today’s post job security economic climate, can witness performance improvement at the individual and team level, and thence to the overall performance of the organization. This paper reports on performance improvement work that is taking place with the case study company, a post-lean organization, in order to develop its capacity for team and organizational learning an

Development of absorptive capacity over time and across boundaries: The case of R&D consortia

Absorptive capacity (AC) has been identified as the ability of firms to acquire, assimilate, and apply external knowledge, and thus as a pre-condition for learning from knowledge environment. However, extant literature has focused on AC as (1) a static and (2) a firm-centred concept. In particular, there is little conceptual framing and empirical evidence of how AC develops over time and across boundaries. Taking R&D consortia as the unit of analysis and based on insights from three in-depth case studies of collaborative R&D, our contribution is a framework for AC development over time and across inter-organizational, intra-organizational, and practice boundaries at different stages of collaboration in R&D consortia. Using this framework, we identify a set of mechanisms which enable the development of AC and we discuss the preconditions for these mechanisms. For R&D managers, our research implies that in order to enhance effectiveness of knowledge transfer and learning in R&D consortia they need to develop a strategy that (1) supports learning and AC development throughout the whole cycle of the collaboration, not only by focusing on intra-firm capabilities, but in particular by providing flexible interfaces for overcoming a variety of interaction and learning boundaries between heterogeneous R&D partners, and (2) enables the integration of created and acquired knowledge within the organization once the collaboration is over

Multinational enterprises, local linkages and resource transfer: the building blocks of radical innovation in Finland

Objective of the Research The purpose of this research is to examine inter-company linkages between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and locally based companies in Finland in terms of linkage quality, quantity and type. In addition, firm-level determinants of MNEs’ ownership and cluster membership as well as locally-based companies’ absorptive capacity are analyzed in order to further explore the nature of inter-company linkages in Finland. Inter-company linkages are becoming increasingly important because knowledge required for innovation is seldom found internally any longer. Inter-company linkages are essential for creating radical innovations and sustaining the competitiveness of Finnish companies in the near future. Methodology This thesis used a quantitative approach for collecting and analyzing data. The data was collected as part of a GlobeConnect research project with a questionnaire. The questionnaire was sent to the 500 largest companies based on turnover in Finland and 81 responses were received. Companies with only domestic operations were excluded from this thesis in order to ensure that the sample group is coherent in terms of size and level if internationalization. Therefore 59 respondents were analyzed in this thesis. Findings and Conclusions The main findings show that the respondent MNEs are more likely to share R&D and marketing resources with their local buyers while management and HR resources are more likely shared with MNEs’ local suppliers. The results also indicate that R&D resources are more likely to be shared via inter-company linkages in Finland than management, marketing or HR resources. In general, MNEs receive more resources from locally-based companies than vice versa. Therefore it is argued that local companies are not absorbing the full potential of resources available at MNEs