Institutional pluralism and the search for sustainability-orientated innovation opportunities in hybrid organisational forms.

Organizational search is an inherent part of innovation and enables the creation of new knowledge combinations. It precedes the selection and implementation stages of the innovation management process, which is often concerned with ideas that have commercial potential. There is extensive evidence of global trends that require organisations to innovate in pursuit of sustainable development aims. This transpires a sense of urgency associated with a loss of ecosystem, depletion of natural resources and minerals, climate change and high rates of unalleviated poverty. Such contextual changes call for investigative inquiry into organizations search behaviours for sustainability-oriented innovations (SOI) that privilege open exploration and exploitation of novel sources of value. This more distributed approach to organisational search illustrates venturing in ‘unfamiliar’ territories with so-called ‘unusual partners’. Examples include not-for-profit, no-governmental agencies, civil society and public administrative governmental bodies – as a broader set of stakeholders engaged to identify valuable opportunities for innovation. Search in such collaborations is distinguished from traditional experience, as multiple institutional boundaries are spanned to source new knowledge inputs. These collective endeavours create hybrid organizational forms in which a variety of institutional orders and logics perform. Moreover, they have the capacity to coalesce seemingly competing and antagonistic missions to deliver social, environmental and economic progress. These efforts foster creativity by accessing knowledge and resources from beyond ‘familiar’ territories and boundaries to enhance levels of innovativeness. Recent studies in the field of organizational search have begun to focus on this phenomenon of ‘variety creation’. Such works proffer the merits of organisational boundary spanning behaviours, but to date have been limited to transcending disciplinary, departmental, organisational and sectoral boundaries and knowledge territories. This doctoral study deploys an exploratory detailed case study approach in a market leading multi-national automotive organisation that engages multiple institutional partners for the purposes of innovation. The findings from ten case projects demonstrate that ‘institutional pluralism’ affects the search for SOI opportunities in five major ways. First of all, institutional pluralism provides slack and second, it triggers both local and non-local search types. Third, the relationship between distinct institutional logics promotes different levels of (knowledge) variety creation. Fourth, ‘aligned’ logics have a more positive effect on both variety creation and levels of radicalness. Finally, as the number of logics engaged increases, the range and scope for innovation broadens. The overall theoretical contribution is to the organisation search literature and proposes institutional pluralism as a further mechanism for variety creation. This general contribution has led to further insights concerning the role of slack in local and non-local search variants and logic relationships during the search for innovation opportunities with so-called unusual partners.PhD in Leadership and Managemen

Policy for sustainable entrepreneurship: a crowdsourced framework

Sustainable entrepreneurship—entrepreneurship with social and ecological gains as well as economic ones—has the potential to play a significant role in addressing societal and environmental challenges. However, sustainability and entrepreneurship have hitherto been addressed through separate policy regimes, and it is not clear how policymakers can encourage sustainable entrepreneurship specifically. The authors develop a policy framework for sustainable entrepreneurship, using an open innovation approach with policymakers, business executives, academics, entrepreneurs and other relevant actors, including an online crowdsourcing event with 150 participants. The framework incorporates five policy domains: creating awareness and skills; building networks; funding and investing; measuring impact and performance; and innovating government. The article proposes a modified version of the multi-level perspective (MLP) on how socio-technical transitions occur, since the findings suggest that policy can catalyze the facilitation and aggregation of innovations coming from the niche level, thereby evolving the socio-technical regime, in addition to the role of policy described in earlier work in stabilizing the socio-technical regime. Contributions to entrepreneurship policy literature include the policy domain of measuring impact and performance, as appropriate success measures are non-trivial in a triple bottom line environment, and the potential for open policy innovation in entrepreneurship policy. Contributions to sustainability policy literature include the requirements for support mechanisms and capacity building to empower individuals to contribute as innovators and entrepreneurs and not just consumers. The sustainable entrepreneurship framework can be applied by policymakers to develop context-specific policies: this is illustrated with a worked example of EU policy recommendations. The paper also outlines a method for crowdsourcing policy innovations

Policy for sustainable entrepreneurship: a crowdsourced framework

Sustainable entrepreneurship—entrepreneurship with social and ecological gains as well as economic ones—has the potential to play a significant role in addressing societal and environmental challenges. However, sustainability and entrepreneurship have hitherto been addressed through separate policy regimes, and it is not clear how policymakers can encourage sustainable entrepreneurship specifically. The authors develop a policy framework for sustainable entrepreneurship, using an open innovation approach with policymakers, business executives, academics, entrepreneurs and other relevant actors, including an online crowdsourcing event with 150 participants. The framework incorporates five policy domains: creating awareness and skills; building networks; funding and investing; measuring impact and performance; and innovating government. The article proposes a modified version of the multi-level perspective (MLP) on how socio-technical transitions occur, since the findings suggest that policy can catalyze the facilitation and aggregation of innovations coming from the niche level, thereby evolving the socio-technical regime, in addition to the role of policy described in earlier work in stabilizing the socio-technical regime. Contributions to entrepreneurship policy literature include the policy domain of measuring impact and performance, as appropriate success measures are non-trivial in a triple bottom line environment, and the potential for open policy innovation in entrepreneurship policy. Contributions to sustainability policy literature include the requirements for support mechanisms and capacity building to empower individuals to contribute as innovators and entrepreneurs and not just consumers. The sustainable entrepreneurship framework can be applied by policymakers to develop context-specific policies: this is illustrated with a worked example of EU policy recommendations. The paper also outlines a method for crowdsourcing policy innovations

How are partners used in the search for innovations? A systematic review

The importance of search partnerships has grown as a mode to search for innovations. However, in spite of this development, notions of open innovation combined with new propositions to change the search process in favour of sustainability have unravelled a need to take stock of the existing literature of search partnerships and the aims that these partnerships follow. This review addresses this shortcoming and synthesises the literature on search partnerships to analyse the current state of knowledge to deliver future research opportunities. A systematic review process was adopted by means of a set a set of pre-defined stages. These stages included the formulation and positioning of the review question within the larger literature domains, a systematic research process which included the adoption of search strings, relevance and quality appraisal criteria, as well as a stock-taking process of descriptive and thematic features, which followed the logic of prescriptive synthesis. This process led to a representative sample of 73 articles which were analysed subsequently. The tentative findings reveal that the literature is underpinned by a combination of theories linking to evolutionary or transaction-based understandings of search partnerships. Also, six conditions were found to drive search partnerships and when they are likely to form. Moreover five interventions were identified that relate to the use of search methods, boundary spanning activities, and the number, type and involvement levels with the partner. Finally search partnerships have been found to yield five outcomes: partnerships, and various types of innovations, higher social goals, as well as market knowledge. By combining contexts, interventions, and outcomes, research opportunities are identified that should inform future reviews, including the need for more research in sustainability-led search partnership contexts and a better understanding of search strategy configurations in relation interventions used and anticipated search partnership outcomes obtained

Institutional pluralism and the search for sustainability-oriented innovation opportunities in hybrid organisation forms

Organizational search is an inherent part of innovation and enables the creation of new knowledge combinations. It precedes the selection and implementation stages of the innovation management process, which is often concerned with ideas that have commercial potential. There is extensive evidence of global trends that require organisations to innovate in pursuit of sustainable development aims. This transpires a sense of urgency associated with a loss of ecosystem, depletion of natural resources and minerals, climate change and high rates of unalleviated poverty. Such contextual changes call for investigative inquiry into organizations search behaviours for sustainability-oriented innovations (SOI) that privilege open exploration and exploitation of novel sources of value. This more distributed approach to organisational search illustrates venturing in ‘unfamiliar’ territories with so-called ‘unusual partners’. Examples include not-for- profit, no-governmental agencies, civil society and public administrative governmental bodies – as a broader set of stakeholders engaged to identify valuable opportunities for innovation. Search in such collaborations is distinguished from traditional experience, as multiple institutional boundaries are spanned to source new knowledge inputs. These collective endeavours create hybrid organizational forms in which a variety of institutional orders and logics perform. Moreover, they have the capacity to coalesce seemingly competing and antagonistic missions to deliver social, environmental and economic progress. These efforts foster creativity by accessing knowledge and resources from beyond ‘familiar’ territories and boundaries to enhance levels of innovativeness. Recent studies in the field of organizational search have begun to focus on this phenomenon of ‘variety creation’. Such works proffer the merits of organisational boundary spanning behaviours, but to date have been limited to transcending disciplinary, departmental, organisational and sectoral boundaries and knowledge territories. This doctoral study deploys an exploratory detailed case study approach in a market leading multi-national automotive organisation that engages multiple institutional partners for the purposes of innovation. The findings from ten case projects demonstrate that ‘institutional pluralism’ affects the search for SOI opportunities in five major ways. First of all, institutional pluralism provides slack and second, it triggers both local and non-local search types. Third, the relationship between distinct institutional logics promotes different levels of (knowledge) variety creation. Fourth, ‘aligned’ logics have a more positive effect on both variety creation and levels of radicalness. Finally, as the number of logics engaged increases, the range and scope for innovation broadens. The overall theoretical contribution is to the organisation search literature and proposes institutional pluralism as a further mechanism for variety creation. This general contribution has led to further insights concerning the role of slack in local and non- local search variants and logic relationships during the search for innovation opportunities with so-called unusual partners.Economic and Social Research (ESRC)PhD in Leadership and Managemen

The theranostic target prostate-specific membrane antigen is expressed in medullary thyroid cancer

Medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) accounts for 4% of all thyroid cancers and originates from the parafollicular C-cells. Prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) is known for its expression in the epithelium of prostate cancer and has been demonstrated to be useful both for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes as a so-called theranostic target. As PSMA is also expressed in the neovasculature of other solid tumor types, our aim was to assess PSMA expression and its prognostic role in MTC. Tissues from patients that underwent surgery for MTC between 1988 and 2014 in five tertiary referral centers in The Netherlands were included in a tissue microarray. Using immunohistochemistry, total numbers of PSMA and CD31-positive microvessels were evaluated. Results showed that 92% of MTC expressed PSMA in the neovasculature, whereas the tumor cells were consistently negative. The average number of PSMA-positive microvessels did not differ significantly between the primary tumor and initial lymph node metastases (P = .09), nor between initial and recurrent lymph node metastases (P = 1.00). The PSMA score was found to be correlated with progression-free survival and overall survival. In multivariate analysis, a higher number of PSMA-positive microvessels was associated with favorable prognosis (odds ratio 3.6; 95% confidence interval 1.0–12.8; P = .05). In conclusion, over 90% of MTC appears to express PSMA in the neovasculature. A higher number of PSMA-positive microvessels is prognostically favorable. Since it is highly expressed in MTC, PSMA is an interesting novel target for imaging and potentially also as a target for peptide radioligand therapy in MTC

SSTR2A expression in medullary thyroid carcinoma is correlated with longer survival

Purpose: Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) derives from the parafollicular C-cells of the thyroid gland. Somatostatin receptors (SSTRs) are expressed in various neuroendocrine tumours including MTC. The aim of this study was to evaluate SSTR2A as a prognostic factor for MTC, to study distribution of SSTR2A expression within tumours and to compare expression of SSTR2A between primary tumours and corresponding lymph node metastases. Methods: Patients who underwent surgery between 1988 and 2014 for MTC from five tertiary referral centres in The Netherlands were included. In total, primary tumours of 114 patients and lymph node metastases of 34 patients were analysed for expression of SSTR2A using a tissue microarray, and correlated with clinicopathological variables and survival. Results: The mean age of patients was 45.5 years (SD 16.2), 55 patients were male (49.5%). Primary tumours of 58 patients (50.9%) showed SSTR2A expression. In multivariate Cox-regression analysis, SSTR2A positivity correlated independently with better overall survival (OS) (HR 0.3; 95% CI 0.1–1.0). In stage IV MTC patients, 10-year survival rates for SSTR2A-negative and positive patients were 43% and 96%, respectively. In 53.9% of patients with lymph node metastases, expression in primary tumour and lymph node metastases differed. Conclusion: SSTR2A expression is correlated with longer OS in MTC, especially for stage IV patients, suggesting that SSTR2A expression might be a useful prognostic factor in MTC. The SSTR2A status of the primary MTC does not predict expression in lymph node metastases