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This paper examines the relationship between open innovation (measured by exploratory and exploitative linkages) and firm-level innovative activity in the offshore renewable energy (ORE) sector.

A unique, purpose-built survey that targeted firms operating in the ORE sector and its supply chain was used. The data provides novel insights into the research activities and networking capabilities of an industry in its infant stages of development. Regression models are used to estimate the relationship between firm-level external linkages and innovative activity.

Exploratory linkages are positively related to more innovative activity. This relationship is subject to diminishing returns, distinguishing the ORE sector from other sectors. Collaborating with suppliers and accessing scientific journals are conducive to research and development (R&D) activity and process innovation, whilst collaborating with customers is associated with the decision to introduce new products and processes.

This study provides evidence of a positive, but curvilinear, relationship between external knowledge linkages and innovative activity, adding novel insights into the relationship between open innovation (OI) strategies, research and innovation outcomes for firms predominantly in the introductory stages of the technological life cycle with limited commercialisation experience. The nuanced finding that specific linkages matter for certain research and innovation (R&I) outcomes adds deeper complexity to March’s (1991) framework, where tailoring certain exploratory or exploitative linkages to specific innovation activities is important.

Due to the constantly increasing competitiveness along with the complexity of knowledge, firms perceive collaboration as a key strategy that preserves firms' radical innovation performance. In this context, this paper aims to examine how firms’ partners’ diversity in open innovation activities influences the development of radical innovations, critical for social development. In particular, this study analyzes how the functional and geographical breadth of the firm’s collaboration portfolio affects its radical innovation performance. Furthermore, it also explores the role of firm size as a moderator in the relationships proposed.

This research employs panel data analysis, using a sample of 4,677 Spanish firms, with data sourced from the PITEC database.

The results of this study show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the functional and the geographical breadth of collaborations and the firms’ radical innovation performance. Moreover, this study finds partial support for the moderating role of firm size, in the sense that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms vary in their optimal number of diversity of partners.

This research provides a better understanding on how partners’ functional and geographical diversity, along with organizational characteristics such as firm size, affect how firms benefit from collaboration for innovation. This study shows that both SMEs and large firms experience diminishing returns when their collaboration networks become overly diverse in pursuit of radical innovation, due to increased costs. However, in SMEs, the turning point occurs at a later stage, consistent with the idea that small firms need broader functional networks to access complementary and novel resources they usually lack.

Although businesses continue to take up artificial intelligence (AI), concerns remain that companies are not realising the full value of their investments. The study aims to provide insights into how AI creates business value by investigating the mediating role of Business Process Management (BPM) capabilities.

The integrative model of IT Business Value was contextualised, and structural equation modelling was applied to validate the proposed serial multiple mediation model using a sample of 448 organisations based in the EU.

The results validate the proposed serial multiple mediation model according to which AI adoption increases organisational performance through decision-making and business process performance. Process automation, organisational learning and process innovation are significant complementary partial mediators, thereby shedding light on how AI creates business value.

In pursuing a complex nomological framework, multiple perspectives on realising business value from AI investments were incorporated. Several moderators presenting complementary organisational resources (e.g. culture, digital maturity, BPM maturity) could be included to identify behaviour in more complex relationships. The ethical and moral issues surrounding AI and its use could also be examined.

The provided insights can help guide organisations towards the most promising AI activities of process automation with AI-enabled decision-making, organisational learning and process innovation to yield business value.

While previous research assumed a moderated relationship, this study extends the growing literature on AI business value by empirically investigating a comprehensive nomological network that links AI adoption to organisational performance in a BPM setting.

The study aims to build upon the Resource-based view of the firm (RBV) and Dynamic Capability Theory (DCT) to perform a meta-analysis on the eco-innovation/SMEs’ sustainable performance relationship.

Employing a psychometric meta-analytic approach with a random-effects model, the study examines a sample of 134,841 SMEs covering 99 studies and 233 study effects. Subgroup and meta-regression analysis were used to test the study`s hypotheses in Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) statistical software.

Results unveil that the average impact of eco-innovation on SMEs` sustainable performance is positively significant but moderate. Moreover, it was found that eco-process, eco-product, eco-organizational, and eco-marketing innovations positively influence SMEs’ sustainable performance, but the impact of eco-organizational innovation is the strongest. Findings further reveal that eco-innovation positively influences economic, social, and environmental performance, but its effect on social performance is the largest. Moreover, our findings reveal that contextual factors, including industry type, culture, industry intensity, global sustainable competitive index, and human development index, moderate the eco-innovation/SMEs’ sustainable performance relationship. Lastly, methodological factors, namely sampling technique, study type, and publication status, account for study-study variance.

Our findings imply that investing in eco-innovation is worthwhile for SMEs. Therefore, CEOs/managers of SMEs must adopt eco-innovation initiatives by establishing a sustainability vision, developing employee environmental development and training, building a stakeholder management system, and promoting employee engagement in sustainability activities.

The study develops a holistic conceptual framework to consolidate the distinct types of eco-innovation and their association with the sustainable performance of SMEs for the first time in this research stream, thereby resolving the anecdotal results and synthesizing the fragmented literature across culture, discipline, and contexts.

Based on imprinting theory and episodic future thinking, this paper aims to study how CEOs’ attributes and experiences inform innovation in tourism and hospitality businesses. It also explores ways to quantify innovation in this sector.

The authors quantitatively analysed innovation in tourism and hospitality using extensive data from companies’ annual reports. They further adopted multivariate regression to test how CEOs’ experience affects enterprise innovation.

Results demonstrate that CEOs’ academic education and rich work experience can promote corporate innovation. The authors also identified a mediating role of the tone of narrative disclosure in annual reports between CEOs’ academic education and corporate innovation. The imprinting effects of career experience and educational experience appear both independent and interactive.

CEOs are more inclined to engage in corporate innovation when influenced by the combined imprinting effects of strategic management training and work experience. Additionally, leaders should consider how communication styles indirectly influence innovation activities.

This paper introduces an integrated perspective that blends imprinting theory and episodic future thinking to bridge knowledge gaps regarding the interaction of CEOs’ past experiences. This work enhances understanding of how CEOs’ imprinted experiences, together with their capacity for envisioning future scenarios, can drive corporate innovation.

This study investigates the application of collaborative inquiry within innovation management, employing platform thinking to address challenges of generalizability and relevance. The aim is to integrate Collaborative Inquiry methods, characterized by participatory, diffuse, and reflective practices, to transform research into a tool for impactful change in organizations in the field of innovation management.

A longitudinal participatory case study approach focuses on the IDeaLs case—a research platform that collaborated with multiple companies over several years. The data gathered and analyzed comes from the research project within the research platforms over the first two editions and from the research platform management and coordination activities.

The study introduces the Collaborative Research Platform Approach (CRPA), demonstrating its effectiveness in addressing typical constraints of traditional research methodologies through a real-world application within the IDeaLs case. The findings highlight the CRPA's potential in fostering a dynamic, co-creative research environment that bridges theoretical knowledge with practical applications, thus enhancing both scholarly and organizational outcomes while pursuing a future change within the organizations.

There are two main research implications. First, it proposes platform thinking as a theoretical lens to read a multi-stakeholder phenomenon in the research domain, confirming its nature of value-creation mechanisms, using it outside the business model and strategic space. Second, it offers a methodological contribution by presenting the CRPA framework.

The CRPA framework offers organizations a structured approach to managing collaborative research projects that align with both academic rigor and practical relevance. Companies engaged in the study reported enhanced ability to implement actionable insights from research, influencing real-time decision-making processes.

By fostering collaborative engagements across multiple stakeholders, the CRPA promotes a research culture that values inclusivity and practical impact, potentially leading to broader societal benefits through improved innovation management practices.

This paper contributes to the innovation management field by proposing the CRPA, which integrates principles of Platform Thinking with Collaborative Inquiry. This novel approach is designed to improve the applicability and scope of innovation research, offering a robust framework that enhances engagement and utility across academic and business domains. It uses platforms as a theoretical lens to read a multi-stakeholder environment in the research domain.

This study aims to examine academic staff’s engagement with sustainable development goals (SDGs) in higher education institutions.

The triangulation, convergence model of the mixed methods research design was adopted as the strategy for inquiry. A total of 56 questionnaires and 25 interviews were used to collect the data, and this was buttressed by document review and use of secondary data obtained from Scival.

The results show moderate levels of engagement of academic staff with the SDGs. However, SDGs familiarisation is not correlated with the rate of localisation. The lack of funding deflated political will by university management, demotivated academia and shrinking government support are the leading impediments to SDGs localisation.

The results could be improved by using a larger sample size equally distributed across disciplines. Triangulation of academics’ views with those of students and non-academic staff could have improved the understanding of other dynamics involved in the localisation of SDGs by university teaching staff.

The results point towards the need for a university-based framework that interweaves national, institutional, thematic, structural and personal aspects into the SDGs implementation matrix. The underlying determinants of successful localisation of SDGs by academia need to be addressed through a bottom-up approach.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first attempt in Zimbabwe to exclusively look at University teaching staff’s engagement with SDGs.

The aim of this research is to elucidate the correlation between open innovation, digital strategies and networking in enhancing agricultural enterprises within the new perspective of Agrifood 5.0. As such, it contributes to making businesses more competitive, especially in the Italian agricultural sector, where small and medium-sized enterprises are highly fragmented. Numerous studies have asserted that the competitiveness of actors operating within a specific territory is closely linked to local identity and image enhancement. Agricultural organizations are undergoing a profound transformation, with technological assets emerging as catalysts for new synergies. Advanced technologies such as robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT) and automation (AI) are emerging as differentiating elements capable of further advancing the agricultural sector, transitioning it from Agrifood 4.0 to Agrifood 5.0. The empirical analysis of the research shows a positive correlation between a collaborative attitude and a propensity for innovation. Indeed, the data demonstrated that digital strategies and open innovation positively influence competitiveness in agricultural SMEs.

The methodology employed in this study is mixed, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The quantitative aspect involves analysis of the dataset from the Italian Statistical Institute (ISTAT) through logistic regression, while the qualitative component entails analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with a sample of 174 agricultural cooperatives in southern Italian regions (Campania). This approach allows for a comprehensive understanding of the research topic, capturing both numerical trends and nuanced insights from interviews.

After analyzing the data from the 7th General Census of Agriculture conducted by ISTAT, a clear understanding of the sector has emerged, revealing several potential research avenues. It is evident that innovation in the agricultural sector is often driven by the largest and best-capitalized production entities, primarily located in Italy. Conversely, smaller agricultural entities can benefit from networking as new technological assets act as catalysts for new synergies, innovation and competitiveness.

Enhancing the relational contribution within the network and humanizing a fragmented sector are crucial elements for promoting open innovation. Network structuring facilitates the transmission of managerial knowledge, contributing to an overall increase in the intellectual and relational capital of the agricultural sector. These factors, combined with open innovation, enhance the competitiveness of individual firms and elevate the brand of the entire sector, creating a conducive environment for transitioning toward Agrifood 5.0. This transition is characterized by increased interconnection, continuous innovation and overall prosperity. Specific studies on this topic are lacking in Italy, particularly in the southern regions. Therefore, this contribution focuses on investigating the Campania region.

The novelty of this study lies in its investigation of the relationship between agricultural enterprises and innovation in the context of enterprises networking strategies (i.e. associationism and/or cooperation), promoting competitiveness. The limitations of this study are related to the dimension of the sample selected and its relationship with other productive sectors.

This research paper aims to evaluate the sustainability knowledge and background of students, staff and faculty regarding current university sustainability practices and individual behaviors at Central Michigan University (CMU); to compare sustainability background and knowledge based on academic discipline of enrollment or employment; and to assess sustainability awareness and interest of the campus community to guide future sustainability initiatives and resources at CMU.

An electronic cross-sectional survey was used to collect anonymous responses through Qualtrics, and then results were analyzed through SPSS. Analyses were performed based on the academic structures at CMU.

This research has found that students in STEM fields are more inclined to have pro-sustainability attitudes, knowledge and behaviors, compared to those studying the arts and business. Additionally, results indicate that there is a significant difference in knowledge between the students, and the staff and faculty respondents regarding sustainability knowledge and application, with the staff and faculty consistently demonstrating more pro-sustainability knowledge and behavior.

While research has previously been conducted on sustainability attitudes and behaviors, this research is unique because it ties sustainability knowledge to academic discipline. Additionally, it serves to gauge which sustainability programs and topics members of the campus community are most interested in, and which areas they are most willing to support.

This paper aims to present insights on the governance of sustainability transitions in higher education in Africa. The authors interrogate the research literatures on the governance of socio-technical transitions in water, electricity, transport and waste management, and identify barriers and enabling factors that enhance transformative practices in universities.

The analytical framework proposed in this paper combines the elements of governance network theory (GNT) and transition topology. The framework of this study is grounded in an actor-centric approach using GNT to understand networks conducive to sustainability transitions. Events and governance networks were mapped on a transition topology to visualise organisational and institutional changes over time. The study engaged students, management, academic and administrative staff in building a community of practice towards sustainability. This research is based on qualitative content analysis grounded in interview data, focus group discussions, workshops, webinars and secondary data analysis.

The findings show that the university has consolidated a sustainability vision and targets, but several factors prevent the community from achieving these targets, including hierarchical decision-making processes, a multitude of disjointed committees and fragmentation in the campus community.

This research adds to an emerging body of literature in the field of sustainability in higher education with two contributions. Firstly, the study presents a novel perspective(s) on the governance of sustainability transitions by combining the literatures on governance and sustainability transitions using a new methodological approach of transition topology to show organisational and institutional changes. Secondly, the study presents new empirical evidence for improving the governance of sustainability transitions in a diverse and highly unequal African university community in the process of (de)colonisation of knowledge and governance.