Hannah Noke

Climbing the value chain: Strategies to create a new product development capability in mature SMEs

Purpose – Increasing productivity gaps and declining manufacturing bases create complex challenges for mature small to medium enterprises (SMEs). One solution advocated by academia is to reposition along the value chain – moving to a position of greater value. The purpose of this paper is to examine strategies used by firms to reposition through creating a new product development (NPD) capability. In doing so, the paper seeks to resolve gaps in extant literature on NPD in mature SMEs.Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory approach is taken, analysing in‐depth case studies of three mature UK manufacturing SMEs.Findings – Four strategic approaches to enable the creation of a NPD capability (strategic alliances, licensing key technologies and ideas, outsourcing and deploying an internal development process) are found. Each may facilitate an SME to reposition but the findings highlight that these strategies are not mutually exclusive as different combinations were employed to accelerate and leverage cha...

Strategic Dalliances as an Enabler for Discontinuous Innovation in Slow Clockspeed Industries: Evidence from the Oil and Gas Industry

The concept of ‘strategic dalliances’– defined as non-committal relationships that companies can ‘dip in and out of,’ or dally with, while simultaneously maintaining longer-term strategic partnerships with other firms and suppliers – has emerged as a promising strategy by which organizations can create discontinuous innovations. But does this approach work equally well for every sector? Moreover, how can these links be effectively used to foster the process of discontinuous innovation? Toward assessing the role that industry clockspeed plays in the success or failure of strategic dalliances, we provide case study evidence from Twister BV, an upstream oil and gas technology provider, and show that strategic dalliances can be an enabler for the discontinuous innovation process in slow clockspeed industries. Implications for research and practice are discussed, and conclusions from our findings are drawn.

Academic entrepreneurship and economic competitiveness: rethinking the role of the entrepreneur

There has been an increase in research activity focused on the contribution of university spin-offs to economic competitiveness, yet the majority of the studies have considered the economic performance of universities or spin-offs in isolation. Such studies have cast some doubt on the extent to which spin-offs have generated expected performance benefits in terms of economic impact and have critiqued the role and capabilities of technology transfer offices in adding value to spin-off ventures. With a few exceptions, studies of academic entrepreneurship have tended to omit consideration of the role of the entrepreneur, and thereby neglected any economic contribution outside of spin-off venture creation. We propose that to better understand the economic impact of academic entrepreneurship, there is a need to explicitly recognize the academic entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurial behavior across different contexts. First, we suggest that academic entrepreneurship can occur in a wider range of contexts than previously examined, necessitating a consideration of the mobility of academic entrepreneurs back and forth between academic and commercial settings. Second, there is a need to better understand the microfoundations, that is, the behavioral and cognitive processes associated with academic entrepreneurs, as they create and develop enterprises within academe or industry. Third, there is a need to examine the heterogeneity of all universities involved in academic entrepreneurship, specifically looking outside the atypical group of leading research universities and considering the significant variance in entrepreneurial culture between schools within specific universities. Fourth, we propose that the nature of policy toward knowledge transfer and academic entrepreneurship needs to be sensitive to the individual and the context. We argue that policy can have unintended consequences upon the entrepreneurial behavior of individuals due to the significant moderating effect of the entrepreneurial legacy of different contexts. Implications for policy and further research are discussed.

DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUDIT TOOL FOR PRODUCT INNOVATION: THE INNOVATION COMPASS

This paper will present the development of an audit tool called the Innovation Compass. It will show how the tool was formulated through a research project, which was aiming to understand the innovation process within organisations. The creation of the Innovation Compass was driven by the research process and, as this paper will give an example of, validated through its application to case studies. The paper gives a greater understanding of the elements of the tool and, how it could be used and developed in other research projects considering innovation and New Product Development.

The influence of human and social capital upon the entrepreneurial intentions and destinations of academics

The development of entrepreneurial intentions by academics remains a relatively unexplored area. This study investigates the transition from intentions to career destinations in a group of early career bioscientists following their participation in a business plan competition. Despite a significant proportion of academics stating entrepreneurial intentions, very few were seen to subsequently create new ventures. Through a longitudinal analysis distinct patterns of changing aspirations are observed as academics attempt to develop ventures within academe or leave to pursue industrial careers. Propositions are developed explaining how the use of social capital influences changing ambitions and destinations. We observe that weak ties are used to reveal the specific skills needed to realise entrepreneurial intentions. By contrast, strong ties are used to either reinforce entrepreneurial intentions or change career aspirations altogether.

Navigating innovation: a diagnostic tool supporting the process

This paper considers organisations that have adopted the new product development (NPD) process to improve their innovative capabilities. It aims to bring an understanding of the underlying characteristics that may contribute to the degrees of success or failure of NPD within organisations. The paper presents a diagnostic tool described as the “innovation compass” that allows the comparison of empirical findings from case studies. In this paper the innovation compass will be used to illustrate the findings from two case studies which differ on certain characteristics. It permits the quantitative data gathered from the research to be directly compared, facilitating organisations to benchmark. The qualitative data substantiate and elaborate on the quantitative findings, providing a contextual understanding of the companies’ product development process. The paper concludes that understanding the context is an important factor in ensuring an effective NPD process.

Conceptualising and contextualising public sector operations management

The pressure to improve the productivity and performance of public services has led to many calls from industrialists, management consultants and policy officers for the application of operations management practices to the public sector. However, the underlying question posed by this special issue is, are the concepts and models of operations management appropriate to public services? Based on the articles in this special issue, this article seeks to conceptualise and contextualise operations management within the public sector. The articles cover performance management, supply chain and advanced manufacturing technology covering a range of public sector organisations from healthcare to local government. The issue spans several continents including Europe, Australasia and America demonstrating the far reaching implementation of operations management concepts in public services. This article reflects on the articles presented in this special issue in order to illustrate that currently operations management in the public sector is concerned with context, complexity and the adaption and development of new theories and frameworks. In this article we draw attention to the challenges of managing operations in the public sector and the degree to which operations management is context dependent, stating an agenda for future research.

Developing a Compass to Navigate the Innovation Journey

This chapter will present a diagnostic tool referred to as the ‘innovation compass’. The innovation compass uses a self-audit methodology to identify gaps between current and desired new product development (NPD) performance for an organization. The innovation compass aims to bring an understanding of the underlying characteristics that may contribute to the degrees of success or failure of new product development within organizations that could be used to develop an action plan to improve performance.