Innovation brokers and their roles in value chain-network innovation: preliminary findings and a research agenda

Intervention approaches have been implemented in developing countries to enhance farmer's livelihoods through improving their linkages to markets and inclusiveness in agricultural value chains. Such interventions are aimed at facilitating the inclusion of small farmers not just in the vertical activities of the value chain (coordination of the chain) but also in the horizontal activities (cooperation in the chain). Therefore value addition is made by not just innovating products and services, but also by innovating social processes, which we define as Value Chain-Network Innovation. In Value Chain-Network Innovation, linkage formation among networks and optimisation is one of the main objectives of innovation enhancing interventions. Here some important roles for innovation brokers are envisaged as crucial to dynamise this process, connecting different actors of the innovation system, paying special attention to the weaker ones. However, little attention has been given to identify different innovation brokering roles in those approaches, and to the need that they facilitate innovation processes and open safe spaces for innovation and social learning at different organisational settings and levels, to have more effective and sustainable impacts. This paper offers some preliminary empirical evidence of the roles of innovation brokers in a developing country setting, recognising the context-sensitive nature of innovations. Two cases from work experience with intervention approaches are analysed in light of the theories of innovation brokering, presenting some empirical evidence of different types of arrangements made by innovation brokers. A third case was taken from the literature. Data from questionnaires, key informant interviews, participant observations of different types of activities and processes carried out in those approaches, SWOT analysis and project reports were used for the analysis of different types of brokering roles and to draw some lessons. One important outcome of this preliminary analysis was that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in integration with other media facilitate new ways of social organisation and interaction of innovation networks, which offer more possibilities for processes of innovation, aggregating value to the production and sharing of knowledge. There is already a transition of paradigm for approaching agricultural innovation to more participative and open approaches, which offers a promissory landscape for organising the value chain actors in a way that is more favourable for small farmers

Recombination in the Open-Ended Value Landscape of Digital Innovation

Digital innovation introduces a new open-ended value landscape to anyone seeking to generate or capture new value. To understand this landscape, we distinguish between design recombination and use recombination, explore how they play out together, and redirect the attention from products and services toward digital resources. Digital resources serve as building-blocks in digital innovation, and they hold the potential to simultaneously be part of multiple value paths, offered through design recombination and assembled through use recombination. Building on this perspective, we offer the value spaces framework as a tool for better understanding value creation and capture in digital innovation. We illustrate the framework and offer the early contours of a research agenda for information systems researchers

Marketing technologically advanced products

This paper calls for a merger of technology and marketing under a customer value perspective; for an enhancement of the traditional technological innovation orientation of the technology-based firm with a market thrust. It establishes technology-based products as product-service offerings that are derived from technological innovation. The aim in marketing technology-based products is an improved understanding of how an organization can combine a technology orientation with a customer value thrust that is common to the firm. In combining this technology and market orientation, the technology-based firm must strive to create and recreate differential customer value through product, process, service, and organizational innovation

Rethinking business models for innovation

One of the major challenges confronted by those in charge of technological innovation involves anticipating the value creation model sufficiently early on,in a highly uncertain context both as far as the technology itself is concerned and the potential market. Today, in many industrial sectors, the innovation boundaries have moved towards projects that are more and more exploratory and fuzzy. The simple optimisation of linear processes of the "stage-gate" type is no longer sufficient to build sustainable competitive advantages. The notion of Business Models, when applied to innovation, enables us to describe how a company creates value through innovation, generally within a business ecosystem, and how the value will be distributed between the actors involved. The authors of this book believe that the notions of Business Modelling and value creation are key to all the dimensions of successful innovation, whether technology, marketing, organisational or economically based. Rethinking Business Models for Innovation: this title describes the relationship between thinking, modelling, and also field-testing. The book is based on a series of nine recent cases of innovation involving company managers, often assisted by researchers (the co-authors of each chapter), and how they built and formalised their Business Models and then tested their strategies. After having discovered the variety of the cases, the reader will understand that every innovation situation generates specific questions about Business Models. However, we feel that we can identify three key issues that arise, more or less, in each of these projects. The chapters in this book build on these issues: the identification of sources of value and revenue models (the notion of value creation), the position of the company in the value-network or ecosystem (the sharing of value) and finally the evolution of Business MoDdels over time (the sustainability and the competitiveness of the company). The last chapter goes over all the contributions, exploring the notion of value in the Business Model approach.business model ; innovation ; value ; entrepreneurial project

Health System Reform: The Value and Price of Innovation

Explores the role of innovation in healthcare by reviewing the literature on international, federal, state, and local examples of system change; barriers to change; the contributions of research, academia, and industry; and the financing of innovation

Globalisation of Knowledge Production and Regional Innovation Policy: Supporting Specialized Hubs in the Bangalore Software Industry

This paper is concerned with the changing role of regional innovation systems and regional policies in supporting the transition of indigenous firms in developing countries from competing on low costs towards becoming knowledge providers in global value chains. Special attention is paid to policies supporting the emergence and development of the regional innovation system in this transition process. Regional innovation systems in developing countries have very recently started to be conceptualised as specialized hubs in global innovation and production networks (Asheim, B., Coenen, L., Vang-Lauridsen, J.,2007. Face to- face, buzz and knowledge bases: socio-spatial implications for learning,innovation and innovation policy. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 25(5), 655–670; Chaminade, C., Vang, J., 2006a. Innovation policy for small andmedium size SMEs in Asia: an innovation systems perspective. In:Yeung, H. (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Asian Business. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham; Maggi, C., 2007. The salmon farming and processing cluster in Southern Chile. In: Pietrobello, C., Rabellotti, R. (Eds.), Upgrading and Governance in Clusters and Value Chains in Latin America. Harvard University Press). A specialized hub refers to a node in a global value chain that mainly undertakes one or a few of the activities required for the production and development of a given good or service or serves a particular segment of the global market. In global value chains, firms in developing countries have traditionally been responsible for the lowest added-value activities. However, a few emerging regional innovation systems in developing countries are beginning to challenge this scenario by rapidly upgrading in the value chain. There is, however, still only a poorly developed understanding of how the system of innovation emerges and evolves to support this transition process and what the role of regional innovation policy is in building the regional conditions that support indigenous small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in this transition process. This paper aims at reducing this omission by analyzing the co-evolution of the strategies of indigenous SMEs and the regional innovation system of Bangalore (India).Regional innovation systems; Evolution; Globalization of innovation; Software industry; Bangalore

Innovation and Organisation in the UK magazine print publishing industry: a survey

This paper examines innovation within the UK magazine publishing industry. We find that publishers are able to engage with niche interest groups in order to supply a high value-added product. The paper attempts define the characteristics of the industry and to examine the drivers of innovation through a survey and an exploratory approach to data analysis. We suggest that the frequently employed simple output measures of innovation do not adequately capture the innovation process in this industry or the range of activities carried out by firms. We find that groups of firms engage different patterns of innovative behaviour depending on the drivers of innovation. Firms that are more responsive to consumer trends are more likely to engage in a wider range of associated activities in order to add value from their consumer knowledge

Citation Frequency and the Value of Patented Innovation

Through a survey, economic value estimates were obtained on 962 inventions made in the United States and Germany and on which German patent renewal fees were paid to full-term expiration in 1995. A search of subsequent U.S. and German patents yielded a count of citations to those patents. Patents renewed to full term were significantly more valuable than patents allowed to expire before their full term. The higher an invention?s economic value estimate was, the more the relevant patent was subsequently cited. --Innovation,Patent,Citation,Count data model

Is that Innovation? Assessing Examples of Revitalized Economic Dynamics among Clusters of Small Producers in Northern Vietnam

This paper addresses the question whether innovation is within reach for small enterprises in developing economies by studying four cases of new technologies, products and business practices in traditional craft in Northern Vietnam. The paper starts with reviewing definitions of innovation since Schumpeter. It concludes that newness, value creation and process are time and again considered as the key-elements of innovation. Innovation, hence, may be summarized as the process of introducing something new that creates value. Subsequently, this theoretical definition is operationalized into an innovation assessment instrument and applied in the aforementioned cases. The instrument verified the occurrence of innovation in three out of four cases of small producers' clusters in Northern Vietnam. The entrepreneurs managed to implement innovation on their own strength and upon their own initiative. This provides evidence that small enterprises in developing countries are indeed able to take part in the process of increasing competitiveness through innovation.innovation, small enterprises, clusters, value chains, Vietnam

Innovation and market value: a quantile regression analysis

We construct a new database by matching firm-level Compustat data to NBER patent data, for four 2-digit complex technology sectors. Whilst conventional regression estimators show that the stock market does recognise efforts at innovation, quantile regression analysis adds a new dimension to the literature, suggesting that the influence of innovation on market value varies dramatically across the market value distribution. For firms with a low value of Tobin's q, the stock market will barely recognize their attempts to innovate. For firms with the highest values of Tobin''s q, however, their market value is particularly sensitive to innovative activity.Innovation