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This paper aims to explore how to build firm’s radical innovation capability from its own knowledge resources. It proposes the impact of knowledge base on radical innovation and outlines why and how appropriability regimes are important throughout the radical innovation capability development process.

Questionnaire and in-depth interviews were used to empirically test the relationship between knowledge base, appropriability regimes and radical innovation capability. To correct for potential endogeneity, a two-stage regression model was used to test the interaction effects

By examining 237 firms involved in R&D activities in high-tech manufacturing firms in China, this paper finds that when a firm have a deep knowledge base, strategic appropriability regime may reduce concerns about problems such as knowledge leakage and innovation appropriation associated with deep knowledge bases. In contrast, legal appropriability regime will also tend to strengthen the positive effect of knowledge breadth on radical innovation capability.

In this study, self-reported measures are used because of their potential for concept specific accuracy; future research might wish to replicate our model and test it with objective data.

The paper includes implications for the fit between the existing internal knowledge base and the way a firm appropriates from its knowledge, and provides entrepreneurs and managers with direct implications about how to manage knowledge resources for radical innovation capability development.

This paper provides a more nuanced understanding of how knowledge base and value appropriability mechanisms jointly affect radical innovation capability development.

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.

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 study is to theoretically and empirically advance a concept of competitive antecedents to absorptive capacity (AC) research and to explain their relationship to a firm’s innovative performance. A firm’s competitive antecedents involve a relative advantage in a firm’s ability to access external knowledge – (i.e. relative advantage in external knowledge flows) – and a relative advantage in appropriating these external knowledge flows (i.e. relative advantage in appropriability regime).

By drawing on network and market share explanations, hypotheses were developed in which a firm’s AC is argued to mediate the influence of these competitive antecedents on a firm’s innovations. In using linear and negative binomial estimation methods, a mediation analysis of the US biotechnology industry was conducted.

A firm’s competitive antecedents have a positive influence on a firm’s AC and that these influences indirectly impact a biotechnology firm’s product innovations.

While a firm’s innovation is widely attributed to its AC, this study’s concept of competitive antecedents shows that a firm’s competitive advantage lies upstream from its AC.

The purpose of this study is to increase understanding of service innovation in networks. Especially the most loosely coupled forms of innovation networks, innovation communities, can be valuable in service innovation, but may not be manageable in the traditional sense. Rather, they may require orchestration characterized by discreet guidance that also accommodates the specific nature of services. Through informed orchestration, it is possible to deal with several contingencies, and influence the absorptive capacity at the network level to generate new service innovations.

These issues are examined through literature review and a case study.

The findings suggest that individual orchestration mechanisms may be more closely connected to certain contingencies than others, and that both orchestration mechanisms and contingency factors have a role in absorptive capacity development within service innovation networks.

While the case study approach limits the possibility to make wide generalizations, the in-depth insights provide valuable knowledge.

There has been a shift from inter-firm competition towards competition between networks of organizations, increasing relevance of absorptive capacity at the network level.

Despite the recent increase in service innovation literature, research on service innovation taking place in networks is scant. Knowledge on some aspects can be derived from more traditional notions on technological innovation, but both the distinctive features of services and central characteristics of innovation networks make it necessary to reconsider some of the established views. In particular, managing – or rather orchestrating – service innovation is still a challenging area.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effectiveness of innovation protection mechanisms in four high-tech industries in Malaysia.

A questionnaire survey is administered to 339 managers working in four Malaysian high-tech industries.

The authors find that in most industries, patents are considered as the most effective innovation protection mechanism, while lead time is considered as least effective. In firms with private and foreign ownerships, patents and in firms categorized as “others” “moving quickly down the learning curve” are considered as the most effective protection mechanisms. It also emerges that “being first to market (lead time)” is considered as the least effective protection mechanism under all ownership structures. Further, young and middle-aged firms report patents, while old firms report secrecy as the most effective innovation protection mechanisms.

This paper restricted analysis to the high-tech sector in Malaysia, and thus, the findings are not generalizable to other industries. Second, this paper took into consideration only four innovation protection mechanisms. The authors suggest that future research should investigate the issue at hand in other industries and consider other innovation protection mechanisms to have a holistic view of how Malaysian firms view different innovation protection mechanisms.

In addition to providing inputs for policy-making, the results of this paper are expected to help practitioners in deciding on the right kind of innovation protection mechanisms for their innovations based on their industry, ownership structure and firm age.

This paper is the first of its kind conducted in the Malaysian high-tech sector and as such is expected to help policy-makers to design and implement effectively innovation protection policies.

The purpose of this paper is to show how science-industry R&D cooperation (SIRC) generates effects on the strategy developed by firms to appropriate the benefits of innovations. Given the plurality of cooperation patterns between firms and public R&D institutions and the variety of appropriation mechanisms used by firms to protect generated knowledge or to strengthen their market position, this paper investigates to what extent different forms of cooperation are associated with different effects on appropriation strategy.

As evidence of this, the authors carry out a multiple case study, covering nine biopharmaceutical Argentine firms whose innovation projects are developed in cooperation with public R&D institutions. Using critical dimensions identified by public-private R&D cooperation literature, the paper analyzes the characteristics of cooperation in the cases studied, looking for different patterns. Given the existence of various appropriation mechanisms identified by appropriability literature, the paper analyzes how firms use (or not) those mechanisms within the specific context of jointly generated innovation.

The paper shows that SIRC generates opposing effects on the various appropriation mechanisms used by firms, both challenging and strengthening them. Likewise, the identification of three cooperation patterns in Argentine biopharmaceutical sector, namely, contract R&D, internalization and coordination, allows appreciating how each pattern affects differently the appropriation mechanisms used by firms, being the coordination one, the most functional to the appropriation strategy of firms analyzed.

The arguments presented here are necessarily limited to the biopharmaceutical Argentine sector, which is strategic to the country, for accumulated capabilities in scientific and business aspects. The analysis could be enriched by extending it to other industries with similar innovation characteristics and to other countries, where patents have a similar weight (emerging countries) or a different one (developed countries).

Innovation and public-private collaboration policies may benefit from the analysis presented here, which helps to assess advantages and challenges of different SIRC logics on firms’ appropriation issues and to considerate which aspects allow cooperation and appropriation combining in a more virtuous form.

There is no paper that explicitly examines the effects generated by different SIRC patterns on the appropriation strategy of firms, conceived as a combination of different mechanisms which may include patents but is not limited to them.

Profiting from service innovations can be challenging. It is not only a question of pricing and marketing the services appropriately, but also of keeping competitors from imitating them. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how service innovation differs from technology/product innovation in terms of protection, and how this shows in collaborative innovation activities.

The paper offers a literature review combining discussion related to service research and strategic management. Empirical evidence is provided in the form of a multifaceted case study illustrating some of the aspects of collaborative service innovation.

The results indicate that characteristics separating service innovations from product or process innovations influence the efficacy of protection. This, in turn, may make or break the subsequent value appropriation. Furthermore, as service innovation typically includes collaborative activities, there is another twist to protection: companies must protect knowledge that brings them competitive advantage, but on the other hand they need to foster knowledge sharing, which may be in conflict with protective measures. As a result, service innovators cannot rely solely on intellectual property right strategies, as their counterparts working with products might do, but the service element requires taking a wider look around, and utilizing means such as human resource management, lead time, and contracting.

The novelty of this paper lies in its analysis of two very recent trends: collaboration (and coopetition) in innovation, and the tendency to introduce business models that bring service innovations to the core of the offering. Augmenting prior knowledge, the paper brings forth issues that need to be acknowledged when service innovations are created, protected, and appropriated.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between open innovation and the use of intellectual property rights (IPRs) in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The authors consider patents, industrial designs (i.e. design patents in the USA), trademarks, and copyrights.

The relationships between open innovation, IPRs, and profitability are tested with random-effects panel regressions on data from the Spanish Community Innovation Survey for 2,873 firms spanning the years 2008-2013.

A key result is that SMEs do not benefit from open innovation or from patenting in the same way as larger firms. Furthermore, the results show that SMEs profit in different ways from IPR, depending on their size and the corresponding IPR.

The different impact of IPRs on the efficiency of open innovation in firms of varying sizes highlights the importance of further investigation into IP strategies and into open innovation in SMEs.

Industrial designs are currently the most efficient IPR for SMEs to protect their intellectual property in open innovation collaborations. Depending on the company size, the use of different IPRs is recommended. Moreover, firms should seek to increase the efficiency of open innovation and the use of IPRs.

The high impact of SMEs on employment highlights the importance of fomenting efficient innovation processes in such firms.

This paper opens the black box of IPR in relation to open innovation in SMEs, and draws distinctive conclusions with regards to patents, industrial designs, trademarks, and copyrights.

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.