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Achieving continuous innovation performance still poses a major challenge to established companies as it requires high flexibility and adaptability in usually efficiently structured organisations. One way to tackle this challenge lies in establishing effective behaviours to successfully establish and apply innovation leadership mechanisms in an organisation. The emerging agile leadership style could provide such effective behaviours, as it addresses the demand for flexibility and adaptability on the organisational level. Despite these clear parallels research on the link between agile leadership and innovation leadership, and their possible combined contribution to drive continuous innovation performance is still in its infancy. Accordingly, the present study examines the behaviours of agile leaders to promote continuous innovation in established companies. It applies a discovery-driven research process of agile leaders to derive and categorise their behaviours. The subsequent comparison of the identified agile leadership behaviours with innovation leadership mechanisms from existing literature leads to eight specific, combined agile leadership principles within the three categories empowerment, performance enhancement, and support for continuous innovation. Eventually, this basis allows the conceptualisation of a first exploratory framework with the identified behaviours as possible enablers, and innovation leadership mechanisms as possible mediators for the continuous innovation performance, subject to test. These findings enhance existing theory by clarifying a possible link between agile leadership and continuous innovation. That way, practitioners can profit from concrete principles for agile leaders to inspire and enable continuous innovation in individuals and teams.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide fresh evidence and insights on a causal link from product market competition to the nature and scope of employee involvement using a case study of two Japanese manufacturing firms.

The firm’s investment decision on two kinds of innovation activities, discrete innovation and continuous improvement, is likely to be a key driver for the adoption (or lack thereof) of the high-performance work system (HPWS) and employee involvement programs. As product market competitionintensifies (e.g., rising international competition and weakening exclusivesupplier–manufacturer relationships), the firm is likely to shift its innovation strategy from bottom-up continuous improvement activities, which almost always accompany employee involvement, to top-down discrete innovation activities, which downplays employee involvement. Such a shift of the firm’s innovation strategy results in declining employee involvement.

This study will inform policymakers, practitioners of management, and the public about the importance of paying particular attention to the firm’s innovation strategy in understanding the interplay between product market competition and the HPWS and employee involvement.

In spite of the rich body of evidence on the effects of HPWS, there are at least two relatively unexplored yet potentially important questions: (i) The conditions under which the HPWS is best introduced and best sustained; and (ii) in what way the HPWS will need to evolve when external environments change. Our findings fill this important gap in the literature by providing novel evidence and insight on the causal link from product market competition to employee involvement.

The chapter covers a landscape and roadmap for business innovation, based on the consideration that the only measure of innovation is the value it creates. The challenge is to generate sustainable value today when value is a moving target and an expanding choice space for customers and providers. Additionally, the chapter will document one case and one challenge.

Three main findings in the chapter are: (1) value is on the eye of the customer; (2) invention is not innovation; it is a discovery as a result of creative processes that is often serendipitous and very difficult to predict or plan; and (3) innovation is to deliver and create value for a costumer through the commercialization and monetization of an offering.

Intrapreneurship (IP) and Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) are a paradigm in which the current global scenario of increased homeoffice and professional globalization can have the capacity to stimulate professionals’ autonomy and new business orientations able to re-invent new strategies, services, technologies and even leadership development. This study, of an exploratory nature, aims to analyze the synchronicities between IP and SHRM, raised by relational dynamics translated into leadership, organizational culture and individual practices having as a facilitating factor technology as an agent of change for continuous improvement (based on the Kaizen philosophy). It is supported by a qualitative analysis through a case study of a leading Portuguese group, Grupo Salvador Caetano, which has been in existence for 75 years.

The results demonstrate that dynamic relations are the synchronicities of IP and SHRM as long as stimulated and transmitted to collaborators, and that technology, facilitated these processes. The flexibility of SHRM, the sequence of delegation and implementation of relational dynamics must be the key for the synchronicities of SHRM and IP to be two phenomena that go side by side and contribute to more effective performance and evolution among collaborators, as they support each other in creating firms’ value for customers. Some contributions to theory and practice, raised through a logic of “in-house entrepreneurship,” are also presented at the end of the study.

The essential investments in new product development (NPD) made by industrial companies entail effective management of NPD activities. In this context, performance measurement is one of the means that can be employed in the pursuit of effectiveness.

Growing e-commerce and technology-led initiatives are the catalysts for digitization in the financial industry. Green (2020) states that there has been an increase in global funding in this sector from $111 billion in 2018 up to $135 billion in 2020. This surge in digital payments requires a payment technology company that understands the market needs of developing countries, has an agile approach and strong organizational practices. TPS is an agile company that has aligned itself to capture the untapped markets in developing countries through its best practices, perseverance, and continuous innovation by identifying and filling market gaps. The company is highly customer-centric and people-oriented. This case study explores the key practices and drivers of success for this company by outlining the main features of organizational strategy, competitive advantage, external and internal marketing practices. Looking ahead, the case asks whether agile practices, organic mindset, highly flexible customer orientation, and talent building practices influence the productivity and proficiency of the company or not.

New ways of working (NWW) change some fundamental processes in the workplace. NWW practices like teleworking, flexible workspaces, and flexible working hours lead to different behaviors of employees. But does the employment of NWW practices also have an impact on the innovation behavior of employees? This chapter explores this relationship and uses qualitative data from case studies to illustrate the complex linkages between three components of NWW and IWB.