Jens Leker

Open and closed innovation – different innovation cultures for different strategies

Although strategies, processes, or the role of business models have been addressed in the open innovation literature, the people side of the equation – i.e., the underlying innovation culture – has been neglected so far. Whereas cultural requirements of open innovation have been mentioned, such as the need to overcome the not-invented-here (NIH) syndrome, there exists, to the best of our knowledge, no study that empirically examines open innovation cultures. We attempt to fill this research gap by focusing on innovation cultures within three business units (two follow a closed and one follows an open innovation approach) of a leading multinational company within the specialty chemicals industry. Employing an overall sample of 109 respondents, we focus on the cultural dimensions of NIH syndrome, risk-taking, and management support of innovative behaviour and provide first evidence of cultural differences between Open and Closed Innovation units.

Industry Convergence and its Implications for the Front End of Innovation: A Problem of Absorptive Capacity

This paper explores industry convergence and its implications for the front end of innovation. Conventional practice of idea generation and selection seems to be difficult in times of convergence, since actors face new knowledge and competencies owned in different industries. Given these particularities of industry convergence, this paper analyses decision processes at the front end of 54 R&D projects by using a mixed-method research design. Findings indicate that there are different approaches of how firms engage in innovation in industry convergence. A central implication is the need to differentiate between the market and technological side of a firms absorptive capacity.

Exploration and Exploitation in Product and Process Innovation in the Chemical Industry

Achieving a well‐balanced innovation portfolio is an often advocated goal for R&D managers, but guidelines how to achieve this are scarce in the innovation and management literature. In this study, we investigate the effects that balancing R&D budget allocation between exploratory and exploitative innovation activities has on new product performance. Furthermore, we distinguish between product and process exploratory and exploitative innovation activities offering a new and highly relevant contingency perspective on the requirement to balance exploratory and exploitative innovation activities within a portfolio. In doing so, we integrate these two important dimensions of innovative activity in a framework that can help senior managers to decide how to allocate scarce R&D resources within an innovation portfolio to maximize returns. Based on a unique data set of objective, internal financial accounting data from strategic business units in the chemical industry, we found not only that new product performance is enhanced through the simultaneous pursuit of exploratory and exploitative innovation activities (i.e., they are complementary) which holds true for product and process innovation alike. But we are also able to show that in process innovation, exploration requires more funding to achieve maximal performance when compared to product innovation. An imbalance of exploration and exploitation has less severe consequences than in product innovation efforts. Our study design that is based on firm‐internal R&D budget data allows R&D managers to directly compare their budget allocation practice with our findings that are derived from a wide range of business units in one of the main process industries. Furthermore, our results have important implications for the practice of R&D budget allocation, since they highlight how product and process innovation efforts differ with respect to their impact of the exploration–exploitation balance on new product performance relationship.

SUPPLIER INVOLVEMENT IN CUSTOMER NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: NEW INSIGHTS FROM THE SUPPLIER'S PERSPECTIVE

This paper presents the results from an empirical survey of chemical suppliers, which examines the influence of customer relationship functions on supplier involvement in customer new product development (NPD) from the suppliers perspective. Using multiple regression analysis, we can demonstrate a positive influence between the direct functions (e.g., profit, volume) of customer relationship and supplier involvement in customer NPD. Differentiating between innovative and non-innovative suppliers leads to distinctive differences. While the direct functions are a strong predictor for the supplier involvement in the non-innovative supplier group, in the innovative group only indirect functions (innovation, market, scout and access functions) influence the supplier involvement. These results show that mutual support in the NPD and open network are the imperative triggers for the involvement of innovative suppliers. The obtained results provide theoretical as well as practical implications for the supplier involvement in customer NPD.

Anticipating industry convergence: semantic analyses vs IPC co-classification analyses of patents

Purpose – The convergence of industries exposes the involved firms to various challenges. In such a setting, a firms response time becomes key to its future success. Hence, different approaches to anticipating convergence have been developed in the recent past. So far, especially IPC co-classification patent analyses have been successfully applied in different industry settings to anticipate convergence on a broader industry/technology level. Here, the aim is to develop a concept to anticipate convergence even in small samples, simultaneously providing more detailed information on its origin and direction. Design/methodology/approach – The authors assigned 326 US-patents on phytosterols to four different technological fields and measured the semantic similarity of the patents from the different technological fields. Finally, they compared these results to those of an IPC co-classification analysis of the same patent sample. Findings – An increasing semantic similarity of food and pharmaceutical patents a...

INNOVATIVE BEHAVIOUR TYPES AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON INDIVIDUAL CROWDSOURCING PERFORMANCES

Crowdsourcing as a tool for idea generation has become popular for companies in the last few years. The aim of this research is to identify innovative behaviour types in an intra-organisational online ideation contest. Based on a survey with 75 employees of a specialty chemicals company, we determined the degrees of personality severity of two main factors — creativity and proactivity. Creativity seems to enhance the number of submitted ideas while proactive peoples ideas seem to have greater chances of being pursued by the company. Four different personality combinations arise out of the empirical analysis that show specific performance types and are clustered into different activity roles, such as the follower, the proactive promotor, the creative innovator and the intrapreneur. Some of them refer to existing innovation roles. This novel combination of crowdsourcing performance and innovative behaviour delivers new insights that enrich current understanding on the characteristics of internal crowds.

EMPLOYING STN ANAVIST TO FORECAST CONVERGING INDUSTRIES

Converging industries are characterized by the blurring of boundaries between technologies, markets and industry sectors. As such they can enable firms to access new markets or threaten them with an array of new competitors and a lack of knowledge. This makes an early identification of convergence trends highly important. In the present paper we focus on the application of a frequency-based analysis and visualization software (STN AnaVist) for the forecasting of converging industries. Scrutinizing 3,836 patent and scientific publication references on phytosterols in the areas of nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals, we employ research landscape, co-authorship and International Patent Classification (IPC) co-classification analyses. The results demonstrate partial convergence between the pharmaceutical, the chemical, the nutrition and the cosmetics industries and the suitability of the employed approach. According to this study, scientific as well as technology convergence have taken place in this segment, with a time-lag of roughly 25 years.

Radical or not? Assessing innovativeness and its organisational implications for established firms

Established firms try to rejuvenate their mature product portfolios by fostering innovation. In this paper, we present a concept on how innovative initiatives can be distinguished concerning their innovativeness. We also discuss organisational requirements to cope with the innovation process. Different forms of organisation are assigned distinct degrees of innovativeness. Cases from the chemical industry illustrate the theoretical concept.

F&E-Controlling

In vielen Branchen fuhrt die zunehmende Marktdynamik zu einer Verkurzung der Produktlebenszyklen. Fur den Wettbewerb folgt hieraus, dass neue Produkte innerhalb kurzerer Zeit entwickelt werden mussen. Insgesamt nimmt der Druck auf die Unternehmen zu, bei gleichzeitiger Reduzierung der F&E-Kosten Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprozesse zu beschleunigen. Als Beispiel sei hier die pharmazeutische Industrie genannt. Die Forschungs- und Entwicklungszeiten betragen hier bis zu 13 Jahren bei gleichzeitig sehr hohen F&E-Kosten von bis zu 1 Mrd. US

Marketing in der chemischen Industrie

fur einen neuen Wirkstoff. Somit betragt die effektive Patentlaufzeit, nach deren Ende Generika-Hersteller den entsprechenden Wirkstoff ebenfalls vermarkten konnen, heute nur noch etwa 7-8 Jahre (vgl. Gassmann, Reepmeyer & von Zedtwitz 2004, S. 129). Um den Break-Even-Punkt zu erreichen, mussen forschende Pharmaunternehmen ihre F&E-Kosten reduzieren und moglichst als Erste auf dem Markt sein. Forschung und Entwicklung sind damit fur Unternehmen in technologieintensiven Branchen unverzichtbare Bestandteile fur die Sicherung des Unternehmenserfolgs.