Does technology and Innovation Management improve Market Position? Empirical Evidence from Innovating Firms in South Africa

There is a growing recognition of the central role of technology and knowledge management for market success of organizations. Little is empirically know, however, about this relationship. Drawing on the South African Innovation Survey, a unique dataset on innovative behavior of South African firms in manufacturing and services, this paper investigates the question to what extent and in which ways do technology and innovation management activities affect firms’ market position. Findings show that conducting technology strategy activities pays out. Moreover, especially a combination of internal and external technology audits seems to be beneficial for organizational performance

The future of energy and the case of the arctic offshore: The role of strategic management

As risk and uncertainty factors have become more prominent in the already volatile energy market because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the development of Arctic hydrocarbon resources has become a debatable issue. At any rate, oil and gas companies need to improve their strategic management systems (along with the development of technologies) for the successful implementation of such complex projects. The purpose of this study was to propose the conceptual basis for transforming strategic management and planning systems of oil and gas companies so that they can successfully face global challenges when implementing offshore oil and gas projects in the Arctic as well as provide more sustainable energy sources. The article discusses the current situation with Arctic initiatives and the results of an analysis of price instability in the energy sector, along with an analysis of several megatrends affecting oil and gas companies. All this allows for presenting a conceptual vision of how a strategic management system should be transformed in order to become able to meet the requirements for implementing Arctic projects, with the emphasis being placed on sustainability, management requirements, and the key principles. The research is based on the fundamentals of strategic management and strategic planning and relies on methods such as desk study, content analysis, event analysis, comparative analysis, and factor analysis. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Social Business Model Innovation: A Quadruple/Quintuple Helix-Based Social Innovation Ecosystem

Social innovation is related to new products, services, and models aiming to improve human well-being and create social relationships and collaborations. The business model innovation (BMI) context can foster social innovation and can be applied in social innovation projects and initiatives. What is important for social BMI is the social mission, which needs to be defined in order to be able to move forward with the strategy, the value proposition, and the best practices of the business. Based on the existing social innovation literature and case studies, this paper proposes an 'ecosystem' approach that can provide an integrated framework for social business models. This approach adopts the quadruple/quintuple helix innovation models which are able to promote social innovation, enabling a locus-centric and triple-bottom-line-centric entrepreneurial process of knowledge discovery and exploitation. Such a framework may help to study the role, nature, and dynamics of social co-opetitive fractal ecosystems, given emphasis on civil society, political structures, environment, and sustainability. In addition, the social innovation case studies presented in this paper highlight that targeted open innovation is a key element for social BMI. © 1988-2012 IEEE

Technological Platforms as a Tool for Creating Radical Innovations

The authors of the article discuss the formation and functioning of technology platforms as a tool for scientific and technological innovation development at the local and global levels of the economic space. In the context of the innovation triple helix concept, the authors of the article define a technology platform as a special type of business model and mechanism for organizing the innovation process, based on the system of innovations inherent in a specific, relatively stable network that unites representatives of the state, business, science, and education around a common vision of scientific and technical development and general approaches to the development of new innovative technologies. The article presents the organizational network structure of a technology platform, considers the processes of the dynamic development of a technology platform in the context of cyclical economic processes, reveals the relationship between the growth of intellectual and innovative potential with the change of technological structures, and proposes conceptual and formalized economic and mathematical models of the coordinated development of the technology platform and its sub-platforms. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature