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The purpose of this paper is to explore how boundary-spanning demand-side search (BSDSS) fuels radical technological innovations as well as how innovation appropriability moderates this relationship. In particular, based on Teece’s (1986) argument regarding the appropriability of innovation, the authors divide factors to influence innovation appropriability into two types: external institution related and internal capability related.

This study employs a survey methodology. Specifically, the authors collected a sample composed of 150 high-tech manufacturing Chinese firms.

Results show that BSDSS has a positive effect on radical technological innovations. Further, the authors find that dysfunctional competition and political ties negatively moderate the main effect, whereas firms’ legal and IPRs protection capabilities positively moderate the main effect.

One major limitation is that the findings are based on data derived from Chinese firms, which may limit the generalization of the findings.

The findings suggest that firms competing Chinese market, both Chinese and foreign firms, should actively leverage BSDSS to boost radical technological innovations. Chinese firms should pay attention to the negative roles of appropriability hazards originating from external institutional environment. Foreign firms in Chinese market should be cautious on potential dysfunctional competition from local competitors, such as imitation and intelligence property violation, and enhance appropriability through building internal capabilities, such as legal and IPRs capabilities.

The study highlights the crucial roles of BSDSS in radical technological innovations, as well as the moderating roles of innovation appropriability. These results provide new insights into the drivers of radical technological innovations.

Recent research and practice have put a great deal of effort into finding efficient ways of managing and organizing to promote innovation within organizations. This study aims to continue this trend in addressing issues related to knowledge transfer and protection through examining roles of absorptive capacity and appropriability regimes and the interplay between them. An appropriability regime can play a dual role when external knowledge and the knowledge‐base of the firm form the basis for absorptive capacity, which then contributes to innovation performance.

The study provides an empirical examination of the direct and moderating roles of appropriability regime regarding the above‐mentioned dual role. Data collected from 335 firms was utilized to perform regression analyses.

The empirical evidence suggests, first, that the strength of the appropriability regime has a positive effect on absorptive capacity (especially the acquisition of knowledge) together with good connectedness to external knowledge sources and high levels of internal R&D. In addition, support can be found for the idea of absorptive capacity and the appropriability regime being positively related to innovation performance. Both direct and moderating effects can be found, but they are slightly different for knowledge acquisition and application.

This study contributes to prior studies by producing empirical evidence on the relationships described above. An important issue is also that it departs from prior works by viewing an appropriability regime as a factor that can be affected by the firm (i.e. as a strategic tool), and not as a purely environmental or external factor.

Industry appropriability – the degree to which firms in an industry can appropriate benefits from their innovations – is a crucial dimension of industry environment. Small and medium manufacturing enterprises (manufacturing SMEs), because of their limited resource base, tend to be especially sensitive to the appropriability conditions in their industry. The purpose of this paper is to understand the influence of industry appropriability on firm outcomes (innovativeness and performance), and posits technology orientation as a dynamic capability that helps firms overcome appropriability barriers in their industry.

Data were collected from 162 manufacturing SMEs in India. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

This study reveals that the perceived level of appropriability of manufacturing SMEs impacts their innovativeness. Further, findings also support technology orientation as a crucial firm-specific characteristic which enables firms to overcome unfavorable appropriability conditions. Technology orientation plays a significant role in mitigating the negative impact of lower appropriability conditions. Even when the patent regime is unfavorable, technology-oriented firms are able to innovate and perform better.

The findings suggest technology orientation as a strategic mechanism for manufacturing SMEs to respond to conditions of unfavorable appropriability regime.

This study elaborates the benefits of integrating industry-level and firm-level characteristics. Specifically, an attempt was made to extend the existing research on industry appropriability by bringing in the contingent effect of technology orientation. The context of manufacturing SMEs yielded several interesting insights.

Collaboration for research and development (R&D) and innovation among various organizations can be beneficial and in some cases even imperative, but in order to realise the potential, effective management is required. Effective innovation requires firms to share their core knowledge, and simultaneously make sure that they will not lose their core knowledge and future competitive advantage. In line with this, this study aims to clarify the role of knowledge protection in relation to collaborative innovation endeavours.

This study approaches the knowledge protection and knowledge sharing issues through a literature review and subsequent empirical analysis of 242 Finnish companies.

The results indicate that when a firm has put effort in getting strong protection at its disposal, sharing knowledge with varying partners is more likely, which, in turn, improves innovation performance of the firm. It is not just about the strength of protection, but also – and even more importantly – using it efficiently that counts.

The data are collected from one country only, with its specific features, and thus further research might reveal more on the studied phenomenon. Also utilising more detailed measures might reveal more.

This study augments both theoretical and managerial perspectives as it discusses a variety of protection mechanisms. In particular, it offers managers a new way of approaching the means of knowledge protection for innovation‐related collaboration.

This study shows that a wide range of knowledge protection mechanisms can be relied on, and that strategic use of these mechanisms improves knowledge sharing and innovation performance.

This study aimed to examine the similarities and differences between the ability to analyze the environment and exploit new knowledge (absorptive capacity) and the skills to generate value from innovation (appropriation). These fields have similar origins and are sometimes confused by practitioners and academics.

A review was conducted based on a full-text analysis of 681 and 431 papers on appropriation and absorptive capacity, respectively, from Scopus, Science Direct and Lens, using methodologies such as text mining, backward citation analysis, modularity clustering and latent Dirichlet allocation analysis.

In business disciplines, the fields are considered different; however, in other disciplines, it was found that some authors defined them quite similarly. The citation analysis results showed that appropriation was more relevant to absorptive capacity, or vice versa. From the dimension perspective, it was found that although appropriation was considered a relevant element for absorptive capacity, the last models did not include it. Finally, it was found that studies on both topics identified the importance of appropriation and absorptive capacity for innovation performance, knowledge management and technology transfer.

This is one of the first studies to examine in-depth the relationship between appropriation and absorptive capacity, bridging a gap in both fields.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how knowledge search (KS) affects open innovation performance (OIP) in consideration of appropriability hazard in an emerging market context.

The authors identify two types of appropriability hazard related to KS activities in the improvement of OIP: partner-related and market-related hazards, and construct a model of KS to the OIP with the government-enterprise relationship and market focus (MF) as moderating factors of the analysis framework, using the hierarchical regression analysis based on a survey sample of 258 Chinese companies.

The authors find that KS has a stronger positive relationship with OIP in international market-focused enterprises compared with domestic market-focused enterprises. In addition, using a configuration approach, the authors find that KS is more positively related to OIP when enterprises have an international MF and a good relationship with the government, but less in other MF government and enterprises relationship configurations.

This paper contributes to previous research work by identifying two types of appropriability hazard related to KS activities in emerging market countries: partner-related and market-related hazards. The authors argue that a positive relationship between KS and OIP is more likely to occur if these appropriability hazards can be mitigated by export MF and a good relationship with the government which has not been demonstrated in previous research.

Social entrepreneurs innovatively exploit opportunities and create, in this way, social change and value by bringing together different resources to meet social needs and solve social problems. To achieve this, given their limited size and financial resources, the personal ties and social networks that social entrepreneurs build in this process play a crucial role in developing relationships and enabling their ventures to succeed. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of network processes in innovative activities carried out by social entrepreneurs and to stress the importance of network processes rather than network structure/design for social innovation.

“Çöp(m)adam” (Garbage Ladies), a social development project and business in Ayvalik, Turkey (which aims to provide opportunities for women who have never had the chance to work and earn regular salaries in the course of their lifetimes), was explored qualitatively as a case study within the framework of the network orchestration theory. In-depth, semi-structured interviews and observations were conducted. Relevant documents about Çöp(m)adam were also collected at the time of the interview to provide the triangulation of reference material for thematic analysis and post-research inquiry.

It has been found that Çöp(m)adam dynamically manages the network process in the course of realizing social innovation and builds a win-win environment that creates value both for the future of the social enterprise and for all the actors in the network by integrating the relationships among the actors it is in a relationship with.

In contrast to traditional studies dealing with the network theory, this research focuses on network processes rather than network structure. Also, since the literature provides evidence for profit-based organizations, the study differentiates into two main reasons. First, the authors adopt a case study approach in social entrepreneurship for social value creation, and second, based on the case study, the authors provide a conceptual enrichment through proposing the sub-categories of knowledge mobility, innovation appropriability and network stability in orchestration processes. This paper seeks to broaden the existing understanding of how social entrepreneurial processes and innovative outcomes are shaped by social networks and orchestration processes in a network-centric innovation from the viewpoint of a hub/focal firm by undertaking research on a less examined type of enterprise and context – namely, a social entrepreneurial venture in Turkey.

Few papers address innovation activities among tourism entities. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the extent to which the theoretical framework of network orchestration can explain the system of relations underlying roles and behaviors of tourism actors in collaborative innovation settings.

Using interview data collected from destination management organizations and their destination partners within two polar-sampled North American destinations, this study identifies relationships which underlie the behaviors of tourism and hospitality actors engaged in collaborative innovative activities. To understand these relationships, this study abductively imposes the emergent theoretical framework of network orchestration and offers practical implications for conducting successful innovation among tourism collaborators.

First, orchestration of knowledge mobility processes in collaborative innovation settings is associated with trust, perceived fairness and the search for experts within the network. Second, orchestration of innovation appropriability processes is associated with forging shared ownership and knowledge exchange with “dissimilar” partners. Third, orchestration of network stability processes is associated with enhancing the reputation of influential actors within the tourism destination, and shared visioning of future innovation outcomes.

This paper contributes to the collaborative innovation landscape by testing the emerging theoretical framework of network orchestration and proposing practical implications for hospitality and tourism actors engaged in innovative activities. The research further demonstrates the value of abductive reasoning for elucidating theory from interview evidence and proposes a model for future studies on collaborative innovation networks.

The purpose of this paper is to study the moderating role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the knowledge asset–firm financial performance relationship.

This paper first develops hypotheses based on multiple theoretical lenses and uses a sample of 3,030 US firms in 51 industries over 11 years to test these hypotheses.

It is found that CSR positively moderates the relationship between research and development (R&D) investments and the firm's financial performance, and the moderating effect declines when firms mistreat their employees.

This paper provides evidence that when firms allocate their resources, they should consider the synthetic effect among different activities such as R&D and CSR.

First, this study offers a new and alternate mechanism for the appropriability literature and also extends the boundary of CSR research. Second, this work shifts the CSR performance thought by considering CSR as an enabler rather than a driver for performance.

This paper investigates the roles and activities of the orchestrators of innovation networks constituted within cities. In this sense, the authors expected to contribute for research related to the roles and activities of the orchestrators of innovation networks constituted in the scope of cities given the large number and diversity of complex and multiple dimensions social actors (Castells & Borja, 1996; Reypens, Lievens & Blazevic, 2019).

The authors conducted an exploratory research with a single case study in depth. The case chosen for the paper is the case of Pacto Alegre. The case selection criterion was the relevance of the Pacto Alegre Case in the construction of an innovation network in the city of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The Pacto Alegre network was proposed by the Alliance for Innovation (composed of the three main Universities in the city: UFRGS, PUCRS and UNISINOS) and by the Municipality of Porto Alegre. In addition to these actors, the network counts on financial and development institutions as sponsors, with media partners, with design partners, with an advisory board (composed of five professionals considered references in different themes) and composed by more than 100 companies, associations and institutions from different areas (Pacto Alegre, 2019). Data were collected from 09/20/2020 to 11/30/2020 through in-depth interviews, documentary research and non-participant observation.

In this research, the authors highlighted the city as a community that involves and integrates various actors, such as citizens and companies, to collaborative innovation activities. For this, they proposed a framework on innovation networks and network orchestration. In this direction, seven dimensions of the “orchestration of innovation networks” were assumed as a result of the combination of previous studies by Dhanaraj and Parke (2006), Hurmelinna-Laukkanen et al. (2011) and da Silva and Bitencourt (2019). In the sequence, different roles of orchestrators associated with the literature were adopted based on the work by Pikkarainen et al. (2017) and Nielsen and Gausdal (2017).

The authors’ results advance in relation to other fields by promoting the expansion of the “orchestration of innovation networks” model with the combination of distinct elements from the literature in a coherent whole (agenda setting, mobilization, network stabilization, creation and transfer of knowledge, innovation appropriability, coordination and co-creation) and in the validation of its applicability in the context of the innovation network studied. In addition, when relating different roles of orchestrators to the seven dimensions studied, it was realized that there is no linear and objective relationship between the dimensions and roles of the orchestrator, as in each dimension there may be more than one role being played in the orchestration.

Therefore, the findings suggest two theoretical contributions. First, the authors identified a role not discussed in the literature, here called the communicator. In the case analysis, the authors observed the communicator role through functions performed by a media partner of the innovation network and by a group of civil society engaged in the city's causes. Second, the authors indicated a new dimension of orchestration related to the management of communication in the innovation network and its externalities such as p. ex. civil and organized society, characteristic of an innovation network set up within a city.

Although several studies have proposed advances in the understanding of the orchestration of innovation networks (Dhanaraj & Parkhe, 2006; Ritala, Armila & Blomqvist, 2009; Nambisan & Sawhney, 2011; Hurmelinna-Laukkanen et al., 2011), the discussion on the topic is still a black box (Nilsen & Gausdal, 2017). More specifically, the authors identified a gap in the literature about the role and activities of actors in the city level. Few studies connected the regional dimension with the roles and activities of the orchestrators (Hurmelinna-Laukkanen et al., 2011; Pikkarainen et al., 2017), raising several challenges and opportunities to be considered by academics and managers.