B.A.G. Bossink

The Development of Co-Innovation Strategies: Stages and Interaction Patterns in Interfirm Innovation

Organizations that choose or are forced to innovate in co-operation with other organizations, go through four stages of co-innovation strategy development. The stages are successively: (1) autonomous strategy making: organizations develop strategies on their own, (2) co-operative strategy making: organizations concentrate on developing innovation strategies in close co-operation with other organizations, (3) founding an organization for co-innovation: organizations found a joint organization in which they develop co-innovation programs, and (4) realization of innovations: organizations develop innovations, based on the co-innovation strategies and programs. The description of the stages is based on an interfirm network approach and a research project in the Dutch construction industry. The stage model can be a guideline for organizations that participate in co-innovation processes and have to decide how and with whom to co-innovate.

Effectiveness of innovation leadership styles: a manager’s influence on ecological innovation in construction projects

This article presents four basic innovation leadership styles: charismatic, instrumental, strategic and interactive innovation leadership. The leadership styles and their characteristsics relate to process and product innovations in construction projects. A theoretical framework – which synthesizes these relations – enables explorative research into the effects of leadership on organizational innovativeness. Four case studies, observing the same manager in four comparable projects, explore the effects of each leadership style on a construction project’s innovativeness in ecological terms. On an analytical level the case study explorations indicate that a manager’s consistent performance of a leadership style stimulates the project’s ecological innovativeness when the manager also injects the project with ecological information, knowledge and competence. It also indicates that a manager’s consistent performance of a leadership style, without an injection of information, knowledge and competence in the project, does not stimulate the project’s ecological innovativeness.

The strategic function of quality in the management of innovation

Quality management can be used to support strategically the management of innovation. Tools in strategic quality management can be useful in: creating the organizational conditions in which innovations can be developed; supervising and initiating innovation processes; producing innovation content; and implementing innovations in the primary processes of the organization. This conclusion is based on the results of a research project in the Dutch construction industry. In a large-scale house-building project the supportive use of quality tools in the management of innovation was studied. The study indicates that quality tools are used implicitly and sometimes explicitly to manage innovation processes.

Innovative quality management practices in the Dutch construction industry

Quality management practices do support the management of strategically important innovation processes. This conclusion is based on empirical research in the Dutch construction industry. A large‐scale innovative construction project is intensively studied during a three‐year period. The quality management practices that are used in this project to support the management of strategically important innovation processes are described and analyzed. The description and analysis is based on an analytical framework that consists of six quality management practices: design, planning, systems, goal, positioning, and interaction practices. The analytical framework is based on a theoretical study in the field of strategic quality management. The empirical research points out that planning, positioning and interaction practices in quality management support the management of strategic innovation. It also indicates that systems and goal practices in quality management can be supportive to the management of strategic innovation.

Factors that inhibit partnering for social start-up enterprises

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to analyze the inhibiting factors of partnership creation between social entrepreneurs in the business, government, public and non-profit sector. Design/methodology/approach - This paper examines four cases of social entrepreneurship in the start-up phase. Each case is studied in real time, for a period of two years. Findings - The empirical research reveals that partnership creation for social enterprises between a social enterprise and organizations in various sectors is inhibited by conflicting interests and diverging speed of on one hand and by the conflicts that originate from the opportunity-seeking behavior of the social entrepreneur and the risk avoiding behavior of the organizations. While the social start-ups that managed to neutralize such inhibitors succeeded, the start-up enterprises that did not manage to do so failed. Originality/value - While, there is a sound body of knowledge of the factors that inhibit the more traditional single and cross-sector partnerships, relatively little is known about the factors that inhibit the partnerships between social enterprises and organizations in the business, public, government, and non-profit sectors in society.

Understanding Alliance Evolution and Termination: Adjustment Costs and the Economics of Resource Value

Alliances have been studied extensively in the past and various arguments have been suggested to explain their evolution and eventual termination. We argue that one important explanation of alliance termination has remained overlooked, one where the mechanism revolves around resource value and is independent of any mismanagement, opportunism, lack of trust, interpretive misunderstanding, or perceptions of inequity. In this explanation, we recognize explicitly that resources undergo transformation through an alliance, and this transformation reveals new previously imperfectly predicted costs to remain in the alliance as well as new opportunities outside the alliance. We apply the concepts of direct and indirect adjustment costs and inter-temporal economies of scope to explain these phenomena and demonstrate that, depending on the particular structure of incentive asymmetry between the two firms after alliance formation, the new circumstances may motivate a revised cost/profit sharing arrangement, a change in ownership of alliance resources, or a complete dissolution of the alliance. Some determinants of adjustment costs are explored in detail, covering resource characteristics, resource combination characteristics, and environment characteristics. Based on the economics of resource value, our argument has implications not just for alliance evolution and termination but also provides a distinct lens to explain the evolution of firm boundaries and the manner of transition of alliances into acquisitions.

China's indigenous innovation approach: the emergence of Chinese innovation theory?

Theory-driven and theory-based studies on innovation in China are relatively scarce. Most innovation studies about Chinese business are based on Chinese policy and government programmes and their results. This special issue of Technology Analysis and Strategic Management explores Chinas indigenous innovation strategy and suggests a research agenda that focuses on Chinese innovation theory building that incorporates Chinas efforts to move towards an innovation-based economy. Currently, China is developing its indigenous innovation capabilities (The Chinese term is 自主创新, pronounced zizhu chuangxin). We suggest that innovation studies of Chinese business could focus on these indigenous innovation ambitions. In addition to this, it could adopt, and be embedded in a Chinese theory of innovation instead of a traditional Western-centric theory of innovation. Our proposition is that to better understand Chinese indigenous innovation, a new paradigm of Chinese innovation should be developed. We therefore present a research agenda that can be a starting point for the development of such a theory, and present seven papers in this special issue that give content to this idea. Obviously no theory will have a monopoly on exploring Chinese innovation phenomena, but it is interesting to add a Chinese-centric view into the Western-centric scholarly view. We hope that will be one of the contributions of this special issue on innovation in China.

Employee involvement in ideation and healthcare service innovation quality

ABSTRACT This study hypothesizes and empirically tests the influence of involvement of (1) frontline employees and (2) top managers in ideation process on healthcare service innovation quality. Based on data from 168 service innovation projects in Dutch healthcare organizations, the empirical results indicate that frontline employee involvement and top management involvement in, respectively, idea generation and idea application both improve the quality of healthcare service innovation. We find that the positive effect of frontline employee involvement is stronger under the condition of higher service innovativeness. In the direct relationship of top management involvement and healthcare service innovation quality, our data do not show such a moderating effect. The key and general managerial implication of the findings is that healthcare organizations are inspired to involve frontline employees in the idea generation processes and involve top managers in the idea application processes of service innovation projects, in order to improve innovation quality.

The Effects of Servant Leadership, Meaningful Work and Job Autonomy on Innovative Work Behavior in Chinese High-Tech Firms: A Moderated Mediation Model

Scholars acknowledge the critical role of employee innovative work behavior (IWB) in facilitating organizational innovation in high-tech industries. However, the current knowledge is far from complete to paint a clear picture of how to evoke employee IWB in the Chinese high-tech industry. Many Chinese high-tech firms face a challenge moving from hierarchy-based leadership toward more employee-centered leadership styles, as the styles have different effects on employees’ IWB. This perspective may complement and sharpen the incomplete picture. Drawing on a dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation, this study proposes and tests a moderated mediation model that examines the hypothesized positive influence of servant leadership on employee IWB via meaningful work as well as the moderating role of job autonomy in this process. We collected data (N = 288) from three Chinese high-tech firms and found that employees’ perceptions of meaningful work mediate the relationship between servant leaders and IWB. We also found that this mediating relationship is conditional on the moderating role of job autonomy in the path from servant leadership to meaningful work. The results further show that the indirect effect of servant leadership on employee IWB via meaningful work exists only when job autonomy is high.

Service innovation quality in healthcare: Service innovativeness and organizational renewal as driving forces

Drawing on an integration of service-dominant (S-D) logic and the dynamic capabilities approach, this study focuses on the relatively under-researched issue of service innovation quality in healthcare services. We propose a conceptual framework for the relationships between user-induced and organisation-based renewal, and service innovation quality in the healthcare sector. By putting service innovativeness and organisational renewal at the input side of the healthcare organisations’ value creation process, and treating service innovation quality as an output, this study hypothesises direct relationships between these two ends. We conducted an empirical study in the Dutch healthcare sector. Based on data from 168 service innovation projects in Dutch healthcare organisations, the empirical study verifies these hypothesised relationships. The results reveal that both service innovativeness and organisational renewal are significant antecedents of quality improvement of the healthcare service innovations in these projects. This study provides theoretical and managerial implications for improving the quality of healthcare service innovations. The key managerial insight is that healthcare organisations are implicated to pay more attention to continuous renewal of value propositions to their users/patients, as well as to continuous renewal of their organisations’ functioning.