How Firms Deal with Discontinuous Innovation

Management literature has highlighted that under discontinuous conditions, incumbents have encountered serious obstacles in identifying, developing, and commercializing innovations as traditional and validated ‘good’ approaches are not adequate, or even counterproductive. It is therefore necessary to identify and deploy the practices that organisations could apply for enhancing their capacity to manage innovation under such complex environmental conditions. Based on a comprehensive literature review on search practices and on the empirical background of the Discontinuous Innovation Lab - a research network covering around 180 firms in 12 countries - a questionnaire has been submitted to a 500 high tech Italian firm sample (respondents are R&D directors or general managers). This chapter analyses in detail the relations between search practices, their antecedents (culture, organizational context, R&D expenditure, market turbulence, etc.), and performance (in terms of competences and innovation)

Understanding cloud computing in a higher education context

Cloud computing has become prevalent in many sectors today, including higher-education. The study is premised on the assumption that despite the popularity of cloud computing in higher education, research within this context remains limited. The study, which is qualitative and exploratory in nature, involved an innovative methodological approach, drawing on interviews with three groups of participants: (a) members of a global, Fortune 100 technology company supplying cloud solutions; (b) members of a selected UK university's IT department implementing cloud solutions; and (c) students from the same UK university using cloud solutions. The findings improve understanding around cloud solutions in the higher education context by unpacking—through a qualitative thematic analysis approach—relevant themes that inform the extant information systems literature. Finally, the study provides recommendations for future researchers, cloud suppliers, universities, and students