scholarly journals Search Strategies in Innovation Networks: The Case of the Hungarian Food Industry

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1752 ◽  
Author(s):  
József Tóth ◽  
Giuseppina Rizzo

In the food sector, open innovation has become of particular interest. This paper considers open innovation search strategies in the food and beverages industry and examines the probability of using different innovation sources with respect to the type of innovation. Although the information search for new ideas, tools and solutions in the innovation process regarding the scope and depth is well explored and interpreted in the literature, the probability of using the different sources with respect to type of innovation is rarely investigated. To answer these questions, first a probit, then OLS regression model is adopted, in order to understand the chance of a specific source of information being chosen, and then, to verify how much of these sources are selected in different types of innovation. Findings show that food companies use several kinds of information sources during their product, process, organization and market innovation development processes and apply different sourcing strategies based on innovation type. The study concludes that managers have to take into consideration the type of innovation when they formulate their innovation search strategies. Moreover, if they would like to strive on the European, or even more on the world market, they necessarily have to cooperate with universities and research institutes. Our recommendation for policymakers is that they should encourage the food companies in creation of a viable information network with their business, scientific and professional partners. It is also important that they help the food producers in their continuous innovation activities as well as in expanding their business to European, or even more, to world level.

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Basco ◽  
Andrea Calabrò

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate what types of open innovation search strategies are associated with internal innovation activities in family and non-family SMEs within natural resource-based clusters. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on an empirical analysis of a sample of 245 Chilean firms. Findings Results suggest that while family and non-family SMEs do not significantly differ in terms of internal innovation activities, important differences exist in terms of open innovation search strategies. In particular, family SMEs search for new ideas and knowledge within their closest network of relationships (e.g. customers, suppliers and competitors), whereas non-family SMEs mainly focus on broader network relationships (e.g. universities, public institutions and fair trade organizations). Practical implications This study shows that within a natural resource cluster, the types of firm do matter. In fact, family and non-family SMEs use different open innovation search strategies to innovate; hence, this research may help and assist policy makers in tailoring innovation policies aimed at expanding the potential benefits of clusters for regional growth and development. Originality/value This research addresses the call to further investigate the link between family SMEs and innovation in developing countries, given that SMEs may also act as a lively player for regional development.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Barjak ◽  
Fabian Heimsch

PurposeThe relationship between corporate culture and inbound open innovation (OI) has been limited to two sub-constructs: a culture for openness and an innovation culture, but until now a richer conceptualization of corporate culture is missing.Design/methodology/approachThe authors apply Quinn and Rohrbaugh's (1983) competing values framework and regress these together with company internal and external control variables on five measures of inbound OI, reflecting product innovation, process innovation and the sourcing of innovation activities. The authors use data from a survey of more than 250 Swiss companies, primarily SMEs.FindingsThe importance of the firms' market environments suggests that the results are affected by the specific situation in which the firms found themselves at the time of the survey: after a strong currency shock, inbound OI activities seem to be a reaction to external pressure that favored planning and rule-oriented (formal) cultures to implement cost-cutting process innovations.Practical implicationsCompanies should develop a vision and a strategy, ensure open and transparent communication, have suitable reward and support mechanisms in place, adjust structures and processes, and institutionalize and formalize any change whenever they are confronted with a situation that requires a quick reaction and an adjustment to their degree of openness.Originality/valueThe paper clarifies the relationship between cultural traits and inbound OI, using a well-established understanding of corporate culture and differentiating between innovation types. It points to the importance of the external environment in order to understand the role of culture.


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (06) ◽  
pp. 1340016 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUSTYNA DĄBROWSKA ◽  
IRINA FIEGENBAUM ◽  
ANTERO KUTVONEN

Open innovation holds great potential for improving the efficiency of companies' innovation processes, but also presents substantial risks. A key issue in innovation management is finding the right balance of openness, i.e., determining how open companies should be in their innovation activities. However, academics and business practitioners hold conflicting notions of what constitutes open innovation practice and of how "open innovation companies" are defined. In this paper, we present three in-depth case studies of global R&D-intensive companies, where we find that the firms' perception of their openness differs from their actual situation (as determined by the innovation practices that they apply), and that each company has a different view as to what constitutes open innovation. We claim that resolving conceptual ambiguity and differentiating between openness (as a philosophical aspect) and open innovation (as a way of structuring the innovation process) in research is critical in order to clarify the current state of open innovation research and enable the communication of results to practitioners.


2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hargadon

PurposeThe author has spent the last ten years studying the innovation process in modern organizations and found that the most successful firms pursue an innovation strategy termed technology brokering.Design/methodology/approachHow are the objectives achieved? Include the main method(s) used for the research. What is the approach to the topic and what is the theoretical or subject scope of the paper?FindingsRather than chasing wholly new ideas, these successful firms focus on recombining old ideas in new ways. The results have sparked many technological revolutions and produced a steady stream of growth opportunities for existing businesses.Research limitations/implicationsNeeds cases showing that technology brokering, and the complementary work practices and people, can successfully execute such a strategy.Practical implicationsBy transforming traditional R&D organizations through a strategy of technology brokering firms can build competencies for continuous innovation..Originality/valueTo pursue a strategy of recombinant innovation, corporate leaders must put themselves in position to be the first to see how existing technologies in one market could be used to create breakthrough innovations in another.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-259
Author(s):  
Siti Fadhilah

Open innovation is an approach that involves not only internal company, but also external parties in developing and integrating new ideas optimally for the benefit of the company. This approach is more applied by companies in innovating to cope with the business world whom very competitive. However, research through this approach is still minimal and the concept has not been fully adopted in Indonesia. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to know how the influence of open innovation approach and the factors supporting the development of innovation on innovation performance in Indonesian companies. The scope of this research is Indonesian companies engaged in all industrial sectors (both manufacturing and service sectors), which conducts innovation activities for the last 3 years, from 2011 to 2013. The research method is quantitative with statistical data analysis descriptive and inferential ie regression analysis. The result of the research shows that the open innovation approach model has a significant influence on the innovation performance of the company, but only two of the three variables approach are inter-organizational collaboration and technology acquisition which has significant influence. For both factors supporting the development of innovation ie the source of information (both internal and external) and internal R D, factors that have a significant influence on innovation performance of the company only internal R D alone.


2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 615-636 ◽  
Author(s):  
VALENTINA LAZZAROTTI ◽  
RAFFAELLA MANZINI

Starting from the several conceptual and empirical studies about open innovation modes, this paper attempts to integrate them by suggesting a framework which reveals four basic ways to collaborate. Two variables are considered that represent the degree of openness for a company: (i) the number/type of partners with which the company collaborates, briefly labelled as "partner variety"; (ii) the number/type of phases of the innovation process that the company opens to external contributions, briefly labelled as "innovation funnel openness". By crossing these two variables, four basic modes of open innovation are identified: closed innovators, open innovators, specialized collaborators and integrated collaborators. The framework shows its practical validity in an empirical study that is conducted in Italy with the specific aim at verifying whether companies can really be mapped using this framework, i.e. whether the four modes of open innovation can be found in real companies (framework applicability); whether different modes correspond to different companies' strategies, capabilities, organisational and managerial processes (framework explicative power and usefulness). The framework shows that, in some cases, being totally open in innovation activities is not the only and most suitable option, but that different degrees and ways of "openness" can be implemented successfully, as well as the totally closed option.


Author(s):  
Oleksandr Dziubliuk

The article gives a rationale for rebuilding the country’s innovation capacity as a key task of the current economic policy of the state, since it is the use of innovations that is extremely important for successful business activity and for obtaining competitive advantages in the world market. The subject matter of the study is the role of banking system, whose lending activity can serve as a powerful source for funding innovation, which, in turn, is seen as a key driver for investment and economic growth. The purpose of the research paper is to substantiate the appropriate theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding the role of the banking system within the framework of stimulating innovative development of the economy. The article critically analyzes the current state of innovation activity in Ukraine and systematizes the main factors restraining the innovative development of the economy. Particular attention is paid to the lack of funding for innovation, the ineffective structure of the national economy, and insufficient state financial support. The lack of an adequate level of funding for innovation activities of enterprises is identified as one of the main constraints on the introduction of innovations and enhancement of innovation potential. It is stressed that the limited amount of own funds and the objective difficulties in attracting foreign financial resources of investors are usually the main reasons for the low degree of innovation activity of enterprises in Ukraine. It is argued that it is the banking system that can act as the main institutional element of the innovation infrastructure, which has the proper organizational, technological and financial potential, sufficient for accumulation and redistribution of those investment resources that are necessary for activating the innovation process in the national economy. The advantages of banks in comparison with other participants of the financial market are determined, which determines the key role of the banking system in the innovative development of the economy. The author articulates a set of organizational, institutional and economic measures at the macro- and micro-levels which can contribute to incorporating the banking system into the framework of stimulating innovation processes.


Author(s):  
Likoebe Maruping ◽  
Yukun Yang

Open innovation is defined as an approach to innovation that encourages a broad range of participants to engage in the process of identifying, creating, and deploying novel products or services. It is open in the sense that there is little to no restriction on who can participate in the innovation process. Open innovation has attracted a substantial amount of research and widespread adoption by individuals and commercial, nonprofit, and government organizations. This is attributable to three main factors. First, open innovation does not restrict who can participate in the innovation process, which broadens the access to participants and expertise. Second, to realize participants’ ideas, open innovation harnesses the power of crowds who are normally users of the product or service, which enhances the quality of innovative output. Third, open innovation often leverages digital platforms as a supporting technology, which helps entities scale up their business. Recent years have witnessed a rise in the emergence of a number of digital platforms to support various open innovation activities. Some platforms achieve notable success in continuously generating innovations (e.g., InnoCentive.com, GitHub), while others fail or experience a mass exodus of participants (e.g., MyStarbucksIdea.com, Sidecar). Prior commentaries have conducted postmortems to diagnose the failures, identifying possible reasons, such as overcharging one side of the market, failing to develop trust with users, and inappropriate timing of market entry. At the root of these and other challenges that digital platforms face in open innovation is the issue of governance. In the article, governance is conceptualized as the structures determining how rigidly authority is exerted and who has authority to make decisions and craft rules for orchestrating key activities. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive framework for understanding governance as applied to open innovation that takes place on digital platforms. A governance perspective can lend insight on the structure of how open innovation activities on digital platforms are governed in creating and capturing value from these activities, attracting and matching participants with problems or solutions, and monitoring and controlling the innovation process. To unpack the mystery of open innovation governance, we propose a framework by synthesizing and integrating accreted knowledge from the platform governance literature that has been published in prominent journals over the past 10 years. Our framework is built around four key considerations for governance in open innovation: platform model (firm-owned, market, or community), innovation output ownership (platform-owned, pass-through, or shared), innovation engagement model (transactional, collaborative, or embedded), and nature of innovation output (idea or artifact). Further, we reveal promising research avenues on the governance of digital open innovation platforms.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 225-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abd El salam El Rayyes ◽  
Jaume Valls-Pasola

Research and Development (R&D) activities and Open Innovation activities (OI) have been of crucial importance in Low/Medium Technology (LMT) sectors that are based on the innovation abilities of LMT firms. This article analyzes the links between OI activities and R&D activities in Catalan (Spain) LMT firms. First, we develop a model of how innovation is developed within LMT Catalan firms. By analyzing R&D and OI activities in LMT firms, we measure both internal and external activities of these firms. Secondly, we explore the effects of R&D activities and OI activities in the industrial sector, and then the effects of both in the market of the Catalonia region. Catalan LMT firms have unique opportunities in the innovation process, yet face some obstacles. The objective of this article is to advocate for bridges to be built between university research and public centers, and LMT firms in Catalonia. To define the current issue within the field of Catalan LMT firms, we sample 2008 to 2010 data from the Spanish National Statistical Institute (INE), Statistical Institute of Catalonia (IDESCAT), and the Organization for Economic, Cooperation and Development (OECD).


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (06) ◽  
pp. 1750036 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maximilian A. Maier ◽  
Peter Rück ◽  
Alexander Brem

Literature on the champion theory proposes the informal character of the champion’s role and also notes difficulties in institutionalizing it. Nevertheless, formally institutionalized roles that seem to fit the description of a champion can be recognized in organizations, especially as enablers of open innovation activities. However, research cannot answer how this institutionalization occurs and which factors influence it. To answer these questions, we investigate a unique single case in which a champion role was institutionalized in the purchasing department of a multinational company. The new role’s task is to identify, select, and integrate supplier innovations. Our results indicate that the informal role of the champion can be successfully institutionalized when certain success factors are considered, which are management commitment, use of success stories, and matching of champions with research and development teams. We contribute to innovation management literature by using the well-established champion theory to explain how and why large multinational companies formally establish the role of the innovation champion. Our research offers pathways for further research about both, the antecedents and the consequences of role formalization. Practitioners can build on the success factors derived in this study when formally implementing innovation champions as enablers of open innovation activities.


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