Digitainability: The Combined Effects of the Megatrends Digitalization and Sustainability

The concept of digitainability has recently been suggested to underscore potential cross-fertilization effects between digitalization and sustainability, which have often been neglected. This article draws on an innovation-based view to develop a conceptual framework for combining digitalization and sustainability in firms’ strategic initiatives. It distinguishes four settings depending on whether firms pursue either digitalization or sustainability – or both or none of them to a strong degree. Beyond the individual importance of the two megatrends, their potential positive and negative interdependencies will gain further importance, and this article underscores the need for overcoming a potential dark side of digital solutions in terms of their carbon footprint and energy consumption to enable a sustainable digital transformation. In addition, digitainability offers the opportunity to move beyond optimization and cost savings due to digitalization and sustainability initiatives in order to capture the cross-fertilization potential of these two megatrends for innovation and new business development.

Scaling Innovation Hubs: Impact on Knowledge, Innovation and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Tanzania

This study has explored the impact of innovation hubs on knowledge, innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems. To gain deeper insights, the study adopted an exploratory case study design along a qualitative approach to conduct an empirical investigation. The study reveals a noticeable contribution of the X-Innovation Hub in empowering youths in aspects of knowledge co-creation and transfer, and promotion of diverse innovations. The findings of the study also disclose that the contribution of the innovation hub in transforming innovations into entrepreneurial opportunities is still unsatisfactory. Furthermore, the findings suggest that not all start-ups emanating from the hub are taking off. This is due to various undermining factors such as financial constraints and unfriendly legal frameworks. For X-Innovation Hub to satisfactorily and sustainably contribute to national innovation systems, deliberate efforts must be made, and strategies put in place by different stakeholders such as the government. Particularly, diversification of funding sources to minimise dependence on international development funding agencies and organisations is important.

Cleantech: Prospects and Challenges

The issue of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, global warming, and their effect on nature and the ecosystem has raised serious concerns. The desire to sustain economic growth and development while keeping a check on the environmental footprints is one of the leading challenges the contemporary world is currently facing. To ensure sustained growth, there is a need for technologies and solutions that has the potential to meet industrial needs without compromising the environment. Cleantech offers a possibility to address these needs in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner. Cleantech, being an umbrella term, is often confused and misunderstood, in terms of its definition and scope. This study seeks to explore what cleantech actually is, how this sector came into prominence, what are the driving factors behind its surge, and what kind of socio-economic, technical, and regulatory prerequisites are necessary for the advancement of this sector.

The Process of Social Innovation Scalability: What is the Role of Dynamic Capabilities?

Social innovations are important tools for minimizing or solving social problems. However, significant challenges remain in managing social innovation development for long-term survival and expanding its social impacts to generate scalability. This process can be supported by dynamic capabilities and their microprocesses. By conducting a single case study, we aim to contribute to the stream of research on management of social innovation that analyzes the ways in which dynamic capabilities can influence the scalability process of social innovation. Our contribution arises from generating an understanding of how and why dynamic capabilities influence the social innovation scalability process.

Big pharma’s search for a COVID-19 vaccine: Take It To The Limit!

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic undermines the world economy, the affordability and accessibility of our health systems. It puts an increasing strain on global production, supply and value chains. The research and development of a set of COVID-19 vaccines is an unprecedented triumph of rapid innovation. The sense of urgency has prompted academic research institutions, big pharmaceuticals and dedicated biotechnology companies to develop vaccines targeting the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus disease. Simultaneously, it unlocks new value for business, patients and society. Consequently, new business models have come to the forefront.

Strategizing with Hardware Rich Open Source Ecosystems

Companies are increasingly adopting open source strategies to develop and exploit complex infrastructures and platforms that combine software, hardware and standard interfaces. Such strategies require the development of a vibrant ecosystem of partners that combines the innovation capabilities of hundreds of companies from different industries. Our aim is to help decision makers assess the benefits and challenges associated with creating or joining such ecosystems. We use a case study approach on six major collaborative ecosystems that enable the development of complex, high cost infrastructures and platforms. We characterize their strategy, governance, and their degree of intellectual property (IP) openness. We offer a three-dimensional framework that helps managers characterize such ecosystems. Although all the ecosystems studied aim at scaling up innovative solutions, their strategy, governance and IP openness vary. An upstream strategy aimed at replacing supplier proprietary design with open substitutes requires a democratic governance and an intellectual property policy that maximize the attractiveness of the ecosystem. A downstream strategy aimed at carving a space in new markets requires an autocratic governance and an intellectual property policy that combine attractiveness and value capture opportunities.

Expanding Innovation Through Challenging Organization Endowments

Revolutionary innovation in mature or large organizations has been on the decline in recent years. Incremental innovation is the norm and few large organizations create evolutionary or revolutionary innovative offerings. A reason for the lack of innovation in mature or large firms is based on management practices over the last several decades. These practices have created biases in the form of an endowment effect, which results in incremental innovation. Endowment effects impact on innovation will be explored and methods to reduce the impact of endowment effect and overcome the biases are offered.

The Role of Dynamic Capabilities in Firm-Level Technology Adoption Processes: A Qualitative Investigation

Increasingly, marketers rely on advances in technology to maintain competitive parity or gain competitive advantage. Yet, often, the adoption of technology is met with suboptimal results and even outright failure. Qualitative field research based on depth interviews with business managers responsible for technology adoption decisions within their respective firms is used to develop a theoretical framework explaining the technology adoption process within firms, how expectations are formed for the innovation’s performance and factors that can further influence those perceptions. Result suggest a firm’s dynamic capabilities play a central role in informing the firm’s perceptions of a technological innovation’s characteristics that drive the adoption decision. Findings also suggest that a firm’s expectations are influenced by perception of risk, internal micro-political actions, and the opportunity to observe or trial use of the technological innovation.

Innovation cognizance and acceptance: The case of electric vehicles adoption in Ontario, Canada

This study examines the results of a survey of 1,000 Canadian internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle owners to assess factors that would encourage them to purchase an electric vehicle (EV). Further to the work of Peters and Dutschke (2014) and (Matthews et al. (2017) we combine the various drivers of EV adoption, independently identified in the literature, into one model in order to investigate their influence on the intent to purchase an EV. Through correlations and a series of probit regression modelling, we provide evidence to support additional policies that could establish greater relative advantages for owning an EV. These include the promotion of the communication of those advantages through experiential awareness initiatives such as improved access to EV test drives and consumer information. We suggest that car dealerships are important partners in this journey and their association is critical for greater diffusion of EVs in the market. Our findings have implications for EV manufacturers and government policy makers.

Cultural Fit of Assessments to Detect Curiosity for Weak Signals Among Employees

To remain competitive, organizations must make sense of antecedent weak signals that might yield information on opportunities or threats. However, perceiving those signals requires psychological capabilities which are not evenly distributed over their workforce. Identifying who might effectively sense weak antecedent signals is the necessary first step in the staff selection and management process. To this effect, Human Resources Management processes at organizations rely on assessments. However, this study suggests that some self-assessments might be too context-sensitive to fit their purpose across cultures. In particular, the CEI-II evaluation applied to a small and convenience sample of Brazilian executives did not satisfy Brazilian respondents’ selection for curiosity. The authors briefly discuss how the Brazilian context may differ, not least because of a considerably lower generalized trust level, and suggest relying alternatively on projective instruments.