Tina Lundø Tranekjer

Sources of innovation, their combinations and strengths – benefits at the NPD project level

External sourcing is increasingly seen as important for obtaining new and valuable knowledge and resources for new product development. However, when it comes to the specifics of choosing between sources and types of relationships, little is known on the NPD project level. This paper strengthens and expands existing research by investigating how the mix of external partner types as well as the relationship strength is related to performance at the project level. The empirical background is a survey conducted among Danish SMEs in 2010. Ordinary least square regressions reveal that firms should not only consider the potential benefits of collaboration with external sources but also the downsides, including higher cost and lengthier projects. Firms should look for opportunities in the combination of sources if they are to gain advantages of collaboration, as our analyses show that a mix of market and science sources is related to decreased costs. Additionally, if firms are looking for increased market performance, they should aim at collaborating with suppliers that have a similar knowledge base, whereas if the aim is lower project costs, collaboration with a customer with a similar knowledge base is beneficial. However, the degree of novelty in the new product is lower when companies are very closely embedded with suppliers.

Open Innovation in an International Perspective: How to Organize for (Radical) Product innovation

In a world of increasing global knowledge flows with better potential access to domestic as well as international external R&D providers and collaboration partners, innovation management is increasingly challenged to access and relate to the right sources, for the right knowledge at the right time, to ensure long-term innovative performance. Identifying providers and collaborating with appropriate partners that possess heterogeneous and tacit knowledge are truly challenging tasks for even the most experienced innovation managers.

Open innovation: effects from external knowledge sources on abandoned innovation projects

Purpose Innovation projects are often risky and costly. But not all innovation projects lead to commercialisation; some are abandoned, and these abandoned innovation projects can be classified as a waste of resources. Therefore, this paper studies the influence of different external sources and a firm’s decision to abandon an innovation project. The purpose of this paper is to provide a broader understanding of abandoned projects. Design/methodology/approach The data applied are quantitative data and the empirical background is the Danish Innovation Survey 2009. The sample consists of Danish manufacturing firms with ten employees or more (n=840). The results are based on logistic regression analysis. Findings Results reveal that firms should consider that the involvement of customers can lead them to abandon innovation projects. However, if firms combine customers with universities, it will decrease the likelihood of innovation projects being abandoned. A more in-depth analysis shows that the involvement of customers from “Europe” (countries in Europe excluding Denmark) and the “US” leads to innovation projects being abandoned while customers from “other countries” (the rest of the world, including China and India) have the opposite effect. Originality/value The contribution is to the limited literature on abandoned innovation projects by suggesting that the type of external sources is a significant factor in firms’ decisions to abandon innovation projects. The paper identifies that the involvement of certain external sources leads firms to decide to abandon innovation projects, and that the country of origin of the external sources is an important criterion to consider in relation to a firm’s decision to abandon innovation projects.

Advancing large-scale R&D projects towards grand challenges through involvement of organizational knowledge integrators

Abstract Public and private funding bodies make massive investments in research to address the grand challenges of the world. These require collective research efforts of a large number of partners to generate knowledge and ultimately create technologies to meet today’s grand challenges. Surprisingly, little research is conducted on how to design the research consortia appropriately that actually result in the development of new technologies. This article argues that when organisational knowledge integrators are involved in large-scale projects, they ensure that the research findings of earlier technology development efforts in a project are pulled towards innovation outcomes through their own position in the innovation value chain. This article uses a data-set with 376 collaborative R&D projects within energy technologies. Most importantly, this article confirms the existence of organisational knowledge integrators and the positive effects on project outcomes. These results are discussed with implications drawn for both applicants and funding bodies for future projects.