Book review: Strategic Management of Innovation Networks. By Muge Ozman. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2017, ISBN 978‐1107071346, paperback, £30, pp. 360

Book review: Strategic Management of Innovation Networks. By Muge Ozman. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2017, ISBN 978‐1107071346, paperback, £30, pp. 36

Managing knowledge boundaries for open innovation - lessons from the automotive industry

Purpose: The shifting locus of innovations from the firm to the supply chain level in the automotive industry has led to an advanced integration of suppliers in New Product Development (NPD). The rising need to innovate and obtain knowledge from more distant knowledge sources calls for new innovation strategies and calls for a better integration of other external actors who lie outside the traditional automotive supply chain. Such an open innovation strategy challenges organizational boundaries both on the firm and supply chain levels, yet our understanding of the functioning of such boundaries and how they can be managed to allow for purposive knowledge flows is limited. Design/Methodology/Approach: In a longitudinal case study we trace the development of the first open innovation network in the German automotive industry over a period of 5 years based on (1) archival data, (2) semi-structured interviews, and (3) field observations. Findings: While the automotive industry is advanced in collaborating with suppliers for innovation, routines for assessing and integrating ideas from sources outside the supply chain are still underdeveloped. We show which knowledge boundaries currently exist which pose obstacles for open innovation initiatives in this industry and how they could be mediated through the involvement of gatekeepers. Originality/Value: We challenge and clarify the notion of the ‘permeability of organizational boundaries’ in the Open Innovation literature and investigate the role of gatekeepers for open innovation. As a mature industry, the automotive industry offers an excellent setting for this research

The emergence and performance of the Chinese merger market and the impact of partner location

Chinese acquirers spent $38 million on mergers and acquisitions in 1990, and$666.1 billion on mergers and acquisitions in 2016. As the Chinese merger market has grown, so too has the literature on its performance. Little is known, however, with whom the Chinese can best do business. We aim to fill this gap. We suggest that because the liabilities of ‘distance’ ‘foreignness’ and ‘outsideness’ complicate acquisition performance, targets in countries and regions which add fewer of these liabilities will outperform those that add more. We test this using a sample of 19,766 large (>$10m) acquisitions (Jan 1990-Aug 2017), and a sub-sample of 1,542 acquisition for which we could calculate performance. We then plot the overseas expansion of Chinese acquirers, and compare the performance of Chinese acquisitions, within the Greater China region, within the Confucian cultural sphere, and between Asian and the West. In each case, we predict that increasing cultural distance decreases performance. Then, because the Continental European governance system is institutionally more familiar to the Chinese system than it is to the Anglo-Saxon system, we consider the Chinese experience in each of these two systems. Our results largely support our hypotheses, but we also point to the limits of the generalizability of existing literature in understanding the Chinese market

Improving the value–of-input for ideation by management intervention: an intra-organizational network study

A discretionary social network in a firm is where individual employees voluntarily share new, innovative knowledge – activities in this network are essential to firm innovation. Drawing on a unique field study we quantitatively compare the situation before and after a ‘simple’ management intervention aimed at increasing discretionary social network activity. We submit that both the network position as well as the formal role of an individual both need to be taken into account to understand the antecedents to the voluntary exchange of valuable inputs within an organization. We find empirical evidence that someone’s structural position in the network prior to intervention positively contributes to the value-of-input exchanged. Contrary to expectation, however, those employees whose task it is to professionally share valuable, new knowledge attributed the input for future innovation – ideators – fall short in leveraging a favorable position in a firm’s discretionary social network

Market performance – liquidity or knowledge? Evidence from the market for corporate control

Market performance – liquidity or knowledge? Evidence from the market for corporate contro

Outside vs. inside entrepreneurs - When institutions bind and favors blind

In some societies outside-entrepreneurs are more active than community-inside entrepreneurs. Institution, and relationships entrepreneurs entertain may hamper insiders from starting or succeeding. Institutional economics and anthropology suggest that, rather than outside-entrepreneurs having more resources, inside-entrepreneurs may be hampered by a community’s institutions that blind and social relations that bind. Outsiders may, however be less inclined to generate societal value

Behavioral foundations for open innovation: Knowledge gifts and social networks

The literature on “open innovation” so far focuses almost exclusively on strategic issues. In this largely conceptual paper we propose behavioral foundations for knowledge exchange and knowledge sharing to address this gap in the literature. Innovation and knowledge development that result from knowledge transfer, is an uncertain and cumulative process that typically involves a number of parties. Knowledge transfer between people and firms has been fruitfully studied from a structural or network perspective. The social network literature however, faces an “action problem”. Focusing on structural elements such as an agent’s position in a network and the types of relations entertained cannot explain why actors actually do share knowledge. The exchange of knowledge is elusive and is a discretionary act for the people involved, certainly in the case of open innovation (OI). It is argued here that social network analysis is to be complemented by the concept of gift exchange, drawing on social exchange literature. Gift exchange – following Mauss’ dictum to “give, receive and reciprocate”– establishes obligations between people especially under circumstances of ambiguity, which explain why and how knowledge exchange relations are established, persist, and may also end. Relationships in a social network and the social capital that inheres in these cannot be drawn on at will to exchange knowledge. These obligations established by gift exchange between individuals who share a connection explain why agents exchange knowledge with each other even in the absence of markets or hierarchy

Network position and firm performance – The mediating role of innovation

Analyzing a unique, domain-similar database including all horticulturalists in a major flower producing country, this paper shows that a firm’s central position in a network significantly improves its financial performance. The effect of strategic positioning in a network is in large part mediated through its enhanced innovativeness. Strategically positioning in a network of firms contributes more to firm performance, both directly as well as indirectly, than other strategic options a firm has available, such as seeking scale, seeking to diversify, pursuing cost advantages, or locating in a cluster

Distances in organizations: Innovation in an R&D lab

The distance between actors in an organization affects how they interact with each other, and particularly whether they will exchange (innovative) knowledge with each other. Actors in each other’s proximity have fewer conflicts, more trust towards each other, for example, and are thus more involved in knowledge transfer. Actors close to others thus are believed to perform better: by being more innovative, for instance. This theory of propinquity’s claim resonates widely in the literature and has intuitive appeal: ‘people are most likely to be attracted towards those in closest contact with them’ (Newcomb, Th. (1956). American Psychologist , 11, p. 575). Knowledge that a focal actor receives from alters who are close is more readily accessed, better understood and more readily useable. At the same time, however, and in contrast to the what the theory of propinquity suggests, knowledge that a focal actor receives from alters who are at a greater distance may be more diverse, offer unexpected and valuable insights, and therefore give rise to innovation. In order to understand these opposing expectations, scholars have indicated that distance must be conceived of as multifaceted: individuals can be close to each other in one way, while at the same time distant in another. No prior paper has extensively studied the effects of distance as a multifaceted concept, however. This study offers two distinct contributions. It argues, first, why some instances of distance affect the opportunity to interact with alters, potentially lowering an actor’s performance, while other instances of distance affect the expected benefits from interaction. The latter would increase an actor’s performance. Secondly, this paper is the first study to test empirically the expectations about how seven different measures of distance affect an actor’s innovative performance. Innovative performance is measured as both creative contribution and contribution to knowledge that has immediate commercial use (patents). In the setting of a large research lab, it is found, contrary to expectations, that distance does not hurt individual innovative performance and sometimes helps it in unexpected ways

Regionale eigenheid in globale muziekindustrie

Regionale eigenheid in globale muziekindustri