Edward B. Roberts

Managing Invention and Innovation

OVERVIEW: 2007 is Research-Technology Managements 50th year of publication. To mark the occasion, each issue will reprint one of RTMs six most frequently referenced articles. The articles were identified by N. Thongpapanl and Jonathan D. Linton in their 2004 study of technology innovation management journals, a citation-based study in which RTM ranked third out of 25 specialty journals in that field (see RTM May–June 2004, pp. 5–6). The article reprinted here was Number 1 on their list. Published in 1988 and updated now with its authors “reflections,” the article surveyed what had been learned about the management of invention and innovation during the previous 50 years since the Industrial Research Institutes founding in 1938. Following a discussion of definitions of the invention and innovation process, it focused on three major dimensions of the process: staffing, structure and strategy. Taken together, their improved management was found to contribute critically to achieving successful institutionalized innovation.

Benchmarking Global Strategic Management of Technology

OVERVIEW: Extensive data collected from the largest R&D-performing companies in North America, western Europe and Japan reveal that top management linkages of business and technology strategies and external resource leverage are the keys to effective technology strategy. Companies worldwide continue to shift toward acquiring more key technology from outside, relying increasingly upon universities for research and on joint ventures and alliances for development. These and other findings on strategic management of technology arise from a global benchmarking study of approximately 400 companies that account for nearly 80 percent of the R&D expenditures in Europe, Japan and North America. These conclusions reaffirm similar findings from the authors 1992 global survey.

Overcoming weak entrepreneurial infrastructures for academic spin-off ventures

We discuss the characteristics of academic “spin-off policies” in environments outside of high tech clusters and where technology transfer and entrepreneurship infrastructures have been weak. We explore whether the policies could explain the lack of growth potential of spin-off ventures that have repeatedly observed. We studied the case of Belgium, gathering data from nine of spin-off policies in the eight largest academic institutions and in 47 firms. We propose that spin-off policies in academic institutions significantly affect the growth potential of ventures.

Strategic Management of Supplier-manufacturer Relations in New Product Development

This paper discusses the role of contractual and organizational arrangements for the governance of supplier-manufacturer relationships in new product development projects. We present cross-sectional project level data from 50 manufacturer-supplier relations in new product development in the European Major Home Appliance industry using a single dyadic interaction as the unit of analysis, to combine institutional decisions driving the governance of inter-firm relations and their organizational implementation. Our results show that (a) relational outcome depends on the type of joint activities, (b) it can be decomposed into short term (efficiency) and long term (learning) effects, (c) less articulate types of joint development activities increase efficiency, while more articulate joint development activities increase partners learning, and (d) inter-organizational structuring decisions are significant explanatory variables to understand relational outcome. Implications for the organization of vertical collaboration in new product development projects are derived focusing on the emerging trade-off between short and long term objectives as a central issue in guiding relational strategies.

The Trade-off Between Efficiency and Learning in Interorganizational Relationships for Product Development

This paper analyzes the performance implications of interorganizational relationships in the development of technological innovations, focusing on the characteristics of the tasks partitioned between a manufacturer and its suppliers in the development of new products. We identify two critical dimensions: (1) the design scope and (2) the level of task interdependency. The design scope dimension characterizes the type of problem-solving activities outsourced by the manufacturer. The level of task interdependency dimension characterizes the influence of any given supplier-manufacturer interaction on other activities within an overall innovation process. Data analyses on 50 supplier-manufacturer relationships drawn from three new product development projects show that the type of problem-solving activities being partitioned and their level of interdependency with the rest of the project are important predictors of performance outcomes of the relationship, controlling for contractual differences. Further, the analyses demonstrate a clear trade-off between short-term efficiency-increasing and longer-term learning-enhancing outcomes.

Benchmarking the strategic management of technology--I

OVERVIEW:Extensive data collected from the largest R&D-performing companies in the United States, Western Europe and Japan reveal that top management linkages and resource leverages are the keys to effective technology strategy. In terms of linkage, Japanese chief executive officers are more heavily involved in integrating technology with overall corporate strategy. Chief technology officers of Japanese companies have stronger board-level participation and greater influence on overall company strategy. U.S. firms are rapidly decentralizing control of R&D activities to their business units, while Japanese companies are moving in the opposite direction. In search of resource leverage, companies worldwide are experiencing major shifts to acquiring technology from outside sources, relying increasingly on universities for research and on joint ventures and alliances for development. These and other findings on strategic management of technology arise from a global benchmarking study of the 244 companies that a...

Globalizing the emerging high-technology company☆

Abstract Two traditional models of global expansion were evaluated in an exploratory effort to explain the globalization patterns of emerging high-technology companies. In-depth field interviews were conducted with 19 Massachusetts-based companies that supply software or peripheral products for desktop computing to explore: their timing and aggressiveness in entering markets outside of North America; their structures and patterns for expansion; and their success. Sampled companies report nondomestic revenues ranging from 6% to 58% of their totals. Statistical analyses of “globalization success,”, defined here as how quickly a company achieves substantial percentage of revenues from nondomestic markets, support an integrated model of globalization that combines a cluster of other influences with elements of Vernons specific product cycle model and aspects of the more generic internationalization process models. In accordance with Vernon, high-tech products are developed primarily for the home market but are soon transferred overseas, more slowly to “lagging markets.” In contrast with Vernon, many different selling arrangements are employed, and overseas production does not follow for most high-tech firms. In accordance with the general internationalization theory, when high-tech companies perceive foreign markets as risky they proceed cautiously, often using outside specialists to facilitate market entry and increase their involvement over time as their familiarity increases. But in contrast with this, many high-tech firms, especially the most successful, do not even perceive such riskiness and do not exhibit such caution. Unrelated to either of those two models, and building upon the work of Ragman et al.[1], globalization success is most strongly linked to how aggressively senior management allocates internal resources to developing an overseas business model that approximates the companys u.S. model of selling/distributing. External environmental forces, too, such as the varied adoption rates of the underlying desktop computing platforms themselves as well as regulatory factors, also affect globalization of high-tech products and companies.

Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT

The ultimate value of this study is to help us understand the economic impact of the entrepreneurial ventures of university graduates. We know that some universities play an important role in many economies through their core education, research and development, and other spillovers. However, in order to support economic growth through entrepreneurship, universities must create a culture and programs that make entrepreneurship widely accessible to students. While MITs leadership in developing successful entrepreneurs has been evident anecdotally, this study – one of the largest surveys of entrepreneur alumni ever conducted – quantifies the significant impact of MITs entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports firm start-ups. Furthermore, while MIT is more unique and unusual in the programs it offers and in its historical culture of entrepreneurship, MIT provides a benchmark by which other institutions can gauge the economic impact of their alumni entrepreneurs. The report also provides numerous examples of programs and practices that might be adopted, intact or modified as needed, by other universities that seek enhanced entrepreneurial development. The Appendix identifies several universities that have carried out surveys of alumni entrepreneurs.

Networks of innovators: a longitudinal perspective

This paper investigates how evolutions of complex technologies and networks of innovators affect the development of emerging innovations. Building upon the theories of technological evolution and socio-organizational dynamics, we develop propositions to examine the stability and change of networks punctuated by successive technological changes. We argue that incumbents who are early advocates of standards in complex technological environments are more likely to survive via alliances. Based on 150 firms and 319 alliances in the US data communications industry from 1985 to 1996, we found support for our propositions and the characteristics of central-periphery structure best describe the patterns of industry networks.

First-mover advantages in regimes of weak appropriability: the case of financial services innovations

Abstract A well-established stream of research indicates that there are advantages to early market entry demonstrated in several industries, particularly consumer products. Such empirical regularity has not been extensively tested in regimes of weak appropriability, such as the financial services industry. In this study, we use historical methods to analyze the effects of order of market entry on market share in the financial services industry in an international setting. Analyzing three lines of financial products, we find important market share advantages to early entry in financial services innovations. The traditional models of order of market entry do not utilize all the information that is revealed by a detailed qualitative analysis of longitudinal data, and they do not distinguish nearly simultaneous entries or entries separated by long periods of time. We find that a model using elapsed time since first entry renders stronger results and better interpretations.