Birgitta Sandberg

Operationalising brand heritage and cultural heritage

Purpose – Brand heritage is acknowledged as one of the future priorities in branding research. Adopting it in an international context is challenging. In order to maximise its use it is necessary to know how strong it and the target countrys cultural heritage are. Accordingly, the aim of the study is to construct a pioneering operationalisation of both brand and cultural heritage.Design/methodology/approach – The study begins with a discussion on the focal concepts. Definitions are proposed and suggestions for operationalisation put forward. Thereafter, the concepts are applied in an analysis of brand heritage in different countries.Findings – It is suggested that brand heritage is a mixture of the history as well as the consistency and continuity of core values, product brands, and visual symbols. A countrys cultural heritage could be conceived of as homogeneity and endurance.Research limitations/implications – The preliminary operationalisation of the concept needs to be further tested. Nevertheless, ...

Customer‐related proactiveness in the radical innovation development process

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the degree of customer‐related proactiveness in the process of developing radical innovations.Design/methodology/approach – The initial framework for this study is first created on the basis of the theory and then modified in the light of multiple retrospective case studies.Findings – The results show that the stage of the innovation development process seems to influence the degree of proactiveness. Contrary to many earlier studies, this research indicates that anticipation plays an important role already at the idea generation stage.Research limitations/implications – The study introduces a way of describing a firms proactiveness as a dynamic pattern. Thus, the process approach adopted in this research may encourage further longitudinal studies on the phenomenon. Given the explorative nature of the study, the propositions arising from the modified framework should be evaluated according to additional data.Practical implications – The results of this stu...

Enthusiasm in the Development of Radical Innovations

People involved in the development of radical innovations tend to feel a lot of enthusiasm. It has been claimed that, in fact, this enthusiasm fosters the innovativeness. The purpose of this study is to analyse how enthusiasm is created and sustained in this process. The theoretical framework combines the previous literature on champions and enthusiasm-creating systems. The study analyses enthusiasm in five processes of radical innovation. The results indicate that it is not only champions but also innovation-development teams who contribute to spreading enthusiasm throughout organizations. Eventually, the enthusiasm also spreads outside to the customers. Five inhibitors of enthusiasm were identified: commitment, engagement, trust, results and help gaps.

Creating an international market for disruptive innovations

Although the significance of international markets is recognised in innovation management, there seems to be a lack of studies on how the international context is actually present in the process of disruptive‐innovation development. This paper aims at filling this gap and at analysing the manifestation of the international context in market proactiveness during this process. It begins with a brief discussion of the concepts of market proactiveness and disruptive innovations. The international scope of market proactiveness at the idea‐generation, development, and launch stages is then analysed in the light of the ethnocentric, polycentric, regiocentric, geocentric (EPRG) model, and described in the context of the development of three disruptive drugs. The results of this study indicate that both the degree and international scope of market proactiveness differ considerably in demand‐related and competition‐related comparisons.

Highly innovative and extremely entrepreneurial individuals: what are these rare birds made of?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to advance and clarify conceptualisations of innovative and entrepreneurial individuals through the analysis of their personality traits.Design/methodology/approach – This study has elements of both theory testing and theory creation, which led the authors to choose the case study as their research strategy. The “case” is an innovative and entrepreneurial individual, and the authors used extreme‐type empirical cases to develop ideal‐type concepts. The analysis is based on extensive longitudinal data.Findings – The study makes a contribution to theories of both entrepreneurship and innovation. It adds conceptual clarity in terms of providing evidence that the individuals concerned should not be considered as one characteristic group of actors. The authors propose that highly innovative and entrepreneurial individuals can be further divided to entrepreneurial innovators and innovative entrepreneurs.Practical implications – This study may enable the colleagues, business...

“Man, this frustrates me”: change of consumer emotions in online discussions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse how consumer emotions towards innovation change over online discussions. Design/methodology/approach – This is an empirical study based on substantial data collected from 22 discussion forums, of which the ten longest discussions on heart-rate monitors were chosen for further qualitative analysis. Findings – The results show that a variety of consumer emotions can be detected in online discussions. Negative emotions clearly seem to dominate and be generally stronger than those that are positive. The results also show how product, company and behaviour enabled by the product (in this case, training) evoke different emotions in customers. Research limitations/implications – The study focuses only on emotional expressions presented by consumers online. However, the analysis of consumers’ basic emotions, their evolution and grounds can be transferred to other settings in which interaction among customers is studied; for example, in focus group interviews. Prac...

Sadness bright as glass: the acceptance of emotionally sensitive radical innovation

Abstract The existing literature acknowledges the importance of emotions in consumer decision-making and the challenges of radical innovation adoption; however, the literature seldom combines these two streams. The purpose of this study was to analyse potential adopters’ considerations concerning an innovation that is targeted at intense negative emotions. Choosing a case-study strategy enabled us to focus on extremely negative emotions (related to death) and the acceptance of a radical innovation (a memorial stone made of glass). In this study, we applied a longitudinal mixed-methods approach. Data were collected via interviews with consumers (357 respondents), the entrepreneur and her employee. Findings show that an emotionally sensitive radical innovation evokes more intense emotions and emotional ambivalence among consumers. Its acceptance also seems to depend on the age and gender of the customers and requires cultural change. A lengthy adoption process seems to be characteristic of emotionally intensive innovation. This study has implications for managers facing the challenge of creating new markets for a radical innovation that involves extreme emotions on the part of consumers. Theoretically, the study contributes to both innovation adoption and consumer decision-making literature.

Value Creation During Different Development Stages: What Changes When an Entrepreneurial Firm Transforms into a Multinational Corporation?

In this chapter, we report on transformations of an entrepreneurial firm during its internationalisation. We propose the use of a prediction/control framework to explain how an entrepreneurial firm gradually changes into a multinational corporation. During the processes of expansion the firm deploys different behaviours that indicate shifting mindsets from approaches that can be characterised as entrepreneurial to behaviours considered as managerial. Following a firm’s development from inception to its end as independent entit,y we discuss how the cross-roads between Entrepreneurship and International Business disciplines might create synergies beyond their own confines by establishing International Entrepreneurship as a meaningful field of study.