Spinning straw into gold: Innovation recycling, innovation sourcing modes, and innovation ability in Sub-Saharan Africa

Copyright © 2022 The Authors. As innovation is inherently risky and uncertain, it is common for firms to suspend or abandon new product/service development projects that cannot achieve pre-defined objectives. Multiple cases exist where firms have attempted to resume the development of an innovative product or service after previously suspending or abandoning it prior to completion. Research on this important innovation recycling activity is surprisingly scarce, despite its critical role in mitigating risk in the context of high environmental uncertainty. We draw our inferences from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where innovation resources are relatively limited and environmental uncertainty and institutional voids prevail, a context that encourages the use of innovation recycling. This study examines how innovation recycling influences a firm's innovation ability and the moderating impact of innovation sourcing modes using a knowledge-based view of the firm and arguments from transaction cost economics. We retrieved data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey and the Innovation Follow-up Survey of 1076 firms located in eight SSA countries (Ghana, Malawi, Namibia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia) spanning from 2011 to 2014 to test our conceptual model. Our findings show that (1) innovation recycling has a positive influence on a firm's innovation ability and (2) this relationship is moderated by different innovation sourcing modes. These findings enrich the theory and imply that firms operating in developing countries need to develop innovation recycling by focusing on sourcing knowledge within, rather than across, firm boundaries

The Impact of Exploitation and Exploration on Export Sales Growth: The Moderating Role of Domestic and International Collaborations

This work is based on data from the U.K. Community Innovation Survey, produced by the Office for National Statistics, and supplied by the Secure Data Service at the U.K. Data Archive.This study examines the short- and long-term implications of the impact of exploitation and exploration on export sales growth. It also explores the moderating role of external collaborations by differentiating between domestic collaborations and international collaborations. The authors tested their conceptual model with data from the U.K. Community Innovation Survey (2010–2016). Using different time lags for exploitation and exploration, the findings indicate that the impact varies over time. Specifically, they reveal that the effect of exploitation is negative in the long term but positive in the short term, while exploration has no significant effect in the short term but a positive influence on export sales growth in the long term. Similarly, the moderating effect of domestic and international collaborations has been found to vary over time. The authors conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications.The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article

Consolidating and advancing knowledge on the post-entry performance of international new ventures

This paper consolidates emerging evidence on factors influencing the post-entry performance of INVs. It also addresses the challenging question of how to effectively measure performance in the entrepreneurial internationalisation context. The discussion presents and reflects on empirical findings from the studies included in the current Special Issue on INVs’ post-entry performance, extends debates on the themes examined and performance measures employed, whilst also acknowledging issues requiring future investigation. Notably, the studies’ findings reinforce previous evidence on the performance-enhancing effects of exposure to diverse, extra-regional market. Support is also reported for the importance of learning capabilities, but the relevant study goes even further to show how these capabilities interact with INVs’ strategies and resources to enhance post-entry performance. INV setting is especially difficult for the performance measurement as internationalization requires resources and young age means that firms are early in their life-cycle and financial performance, for example, may not be relevant. The paper also addresses the issues associated with measuring post-entry performance among INVs and discusses next steps and future research implications

Antecedents and consequences of effectuation and causation in the international new venture creation process

The selection of the entry mode in an international market is of key importance for the venture. A process-based perspective on entry mode selection can add to the International Business and International Entrepreneurship literature. Framing the international market entry as an entrepreneurial process, this paper analyzes the antecedents and consequences of causation and effectuation in the entry mode selection. For the analysis, regression-based techniques were used on a sample of 65 gazelles. The results indicate that experienced entrepreneurs tend to apply effectuation rather than causation, while uncertainty does not have a systematic influence. Entrepreneurs using causation-based international new venture creation processes tend to engage in export-type entry modes, while effectuation-based international new venture creation processes do not predetermine the entry mod

Ex-post Performance Implications of Divergence of Managers’ Perceptions of ‘Distance’ From ‘Reality’ in International Business

Despite much research on “distance”, little attention has been paid to the effect of divergence of managers’ perceptions of distance from reality (i.e. distance divergence) and its implications for firm performance. This knowledge is highly important since managerial perceptions of the firm’s environment do not always coincide with the actual environmental characteristics. Consequently, strategies based on inaccurate data may result in erroneous forecasts, missed opportunities and business failure. Using survey data from senior managers of Swedish exporters and corresponding objective data, this study is a first attempt to explore the ex-post performance implications of “distance divergence” when expanding into foreign markets. Our results demonstrate that the larger the divergence between managers’ perceptions of cultural distance and corresponding “objective” distance, the lower the performance expressed in companies’ sales. However, over/underestimation of cultural distance does not have differential effects on firm performance.“Stiftelsen Olle Hakelius Stipendiefond”, Grant no: 1165001