Cross-divisional innovation in large, multi-divisional firms: Economic relevance and managerial actions

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Founder team interaction, customer and competitor orientation in software ventures

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Purpose – Developments in the software industry have shown the need for sustainable and effective management strategies, especially for new ventures. Entrepreneurship literature suggests marketing to be one of the pivotal predictors of business performance. Previous empirical studies have shown the importance of social interaction and team work quality for new venture performance. The purpose of this paper is to apply founder team interaction quality (IQ), and the customer and competitor orientation concept of marketing research to new software venture performance. Design/methodology/approach – An empirical study using a fully standardized questionnaire was conducted in 101 young software ventures. Two founders in each company filled out the questionnaire separately allowing superior tests for reliability and validity of the research framework. Findings – The results show team IQ to be a powerful predictor of both customer orientation and competitor orientation. Furthermore, a positive, linear relationship between competitor orientation and technological performance has been found. There is a curvilinear U-shaped relationship between customer orientation and all examined success dimensions, i.e. economic, market and technological success. Originality/value – Based on a theoretical research framework and a comprehensive empirical study, the paper contributes to a limited body of research and provides insight for managers of young ventures in the nature of teamwork and IQ and its effects on market orientation and company performance

Strategic and cultural contexts of real options reasoning in innovation portfolios

Decision makers find creating an innovation portfolio challenging, because more innovative projects are associated with a higher degree of uncertainty. In this study, we investigate the potential benefits of applying real options reasoning (ROR) in innovation portfolio management from an attention‐based view. Using a sample of 137 innovation portfolios with multiple informants, we investigate ROR's influence on portfolio innovativeness and, ultimately, on portfolio success in a mediated model. Further, we analyze the moderating influence of an innovation portfolio's organizational context — entrepreneurial orientation and innovation climate — on ROR's application. The results support ROR's positive relationship to portfolio innovativeness and portfolio success. The analysis also supports the positive interaction between entrepreneurial orientation and ROR with respect to portfolio innovativeness. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating the relationship between ROR and portfolio success, mediated by portfolio innovativeness. In addition, the study's analysis offers an explanation of previously mixed findings regarding ROR's benefits by considering the firm's strategic and cultural innovation contexts. The findings underline the relevance of strategic support for ROR's effectiveness in innovation portfolio management. Furthermore, the findings encourage managers to implement ROR, but also stress the essential contribution an entrepreneurial orientation makes when the managers do so

Enforcing strategic fit of project portfolios by project termination: An empirical study on senior management involvement

Abstract Project portfolios are vehicles for strategy implementation. Senior management should terminate projects no longer conforming to corporate strategy in order to ensure strategic fit. This paper investigates how rigorous termination of bad and troubled projects affects portfolio effectiveness and senior management's decisive role in this context. We introduce the concept of project termination quality, analyse its consequences for strategic fit and how it is affected by senior management involvement. Using a quantitative longitudinal study of a sample of project portfolios, we show that termination quality positively affects strategic fit. We also show a positive, but inverted u-shaped relationship between senior management involvement and termination quality. We conclude that there is an optimal degree of involvement, beyond which an additional involvement of senior managers results in negative effects

How entrepreneurial orientation can leverage innovation project portfolio management

Innovation project portfolio management (IPPM) is a key task in R&D management because this decision‐making process determines which R&D projects should be undertaken and how R&D resources are allocated. Previous research has developed a good understanding of the role of IPPM in R&D strategy implementation and of successful IPPM practices. But the fundamental orientations that drive the strategy formation and implementation process have never been investigated in the context of IPPM, and it is unclear whether successful practices are equally valid for different strategic orientations. This study, therefore, investigates the moderating impact of a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation on the relationship between strategic portfolio management practices and portfolio success. An empirical analysis of 257 firms shows that both innovativeness and risk taking as entrepreneurial orientation’s dimensions positively moderate the relationship between managerial practices and performance. Specifically, we find that firms high in innovativeness profit more from stakeholder engagement compared to firms low in innovativeness. Firms high in risk‐taking profit more from a clearly formulated strategy. With increasing innovativeness and risk‐taking propensity, firms also profit more from business case monitoring and agility in portfolio steering. The results suggest that a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation can leverage the effect of IPPM practices. Vice versa, a lacking entrepreneurial orientation can render these practices ineffective. Strategic orientation and IPPM practices should, therefore, be aligned with each other to enable firms to better implement their strategy and generate competitive advantage