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History is full of companies that were once innovative leaders but lost their innovative ability. The purpose of this paper is to explore, from a firm‐level perspective, organizational characteristics for continuous innovation in rapidly changing industries.

Findings from 28 interviews at Google Inc., are compared to previous research on organizational characteristics for continuous innovation.

Google's organization can be viewed as a dynamic and open corporate system for continuous innovation, involving the entire organization and supported by an innovation‐oriented and change‐prone top management and board. The relative importance of eight organizational characteristics in this corporate system is elaborated upon.

There is a need for empirical research contributing to the development of a more comprehensive analytical framework for continuous innovation, including the role of culture and selection/facilitation of self‐organizing individuals in innovation processes; and to study how to organize for both continuous innovation and continuous improvements.

The importance of factors such as culture and the selection of individuals, identified in the empirical study, needs to be considered by managers, and might influence their understanding of how to sustain continuous innovation over time.

This paper provides, from a firm‐level perspective and based on a unique access to empirical data, increased understanding of organizational characteristics conducive to continuous innovation in rapidly changing industries, and highlights the importance of characteristics that received less emphasis in previous research literature.

The success of corporate innovation is based less upon the success of a single innovation program than on a holistic and overarching corporate innovation system integrating various activities. Taking this perspective, the purpose of this paper is to extend existing research on the design of innovation programs.

Utilizing an inductive theory-building case study approach, this study provides a detailed analysis of how one of the largest and most successful German technology companies structures its many innovation activities.

The analysis identifies key elements of innovation programs and suggests three configurations that illustrate how these generic elements can be structured so as to offer the best fit with the underlying logic of the respective innovation program. Furthermore, this study highlights how the identified configurations come together to deliver overarching strategic innovation goals.

Existing research too often focuses solely on single innovation programs. The current research is among the first to take a holistic and overarching perspective, considering different innovation programs within a single company and analyzing their configuration and their interplay.

Based on the institutional background of mandatory requirement of performance-based executive equity incentives, this paper aims to investigate the impacts of executive equity incentives, vesting periods and vesting performance conditions on corporate innovation.

The empirical analysis is based on the detailed data of equity incentives in China’s listed companies from 2006 to 2014, the Tobit method is implemented to estimate the regression coefficients, and the instrumental variable (IV) approach, Heckman two stage regression, propensity score matching and difference-in-difference models are adopted to solve the problem of endogeneity in several robust tests.

This paper documents that equity incentives and vesting periods are significantly and positively related to corporate innovation measured by R&D investment and patent applications, yet requirements on vesting performance impede corporate innovative activities. Specifically, compared with non-equity incentive companies, the R&D investment and the number of patent applications of equity incentive companies are 40 and 46.2 per cent higher, respectively. A one year increase in equity incentive duration can correspondingly increase the R&D investment by 15 per cent and the patent applications by 18.3 per cent. However, a one standard deviation increase in industry-adjusted ROE target reduces corporate R&D investment by 5 per cent and the patent applications by 8.39 per cent. The main empirical findings still hold after several robust tests.

This paper confirms that the impact of performance-based compensation system on corporate innovation depends on its structure. Specifically, the empirical findings suggest that equity incentive plans being correctly designed can enhance corporate innovative activities, but myopic managers will damage the corporate innovation.

This paper investigates the influence of equity incentive structure on equity incentive effect based on the institutional background of mandatory requirement of performance-based executive equity incentives. It provides an opportunity to understand the mystery of equity incentives, which helps to enrich the structure of equity incentive theoretically. The empirical evidence confirms the importance of tolerating short-term failure and extending the horizon of managerial decision-making on promoting innovation. Overall, the research indicates that only well-designed equity incentive plans can promote innovation, which contributes to regulators and practitioners to form a rational understanding of the premise of equity incentives in promoting innovation and provides a reference for their decision-making.

The purpose of this study is to explain the following questions: First, whether the executive equity incentive has an impact on enterprise innovation and digital transformation; Second, if there is any influence, whether there is difference between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises in the research conclusions; Third, whether the digital transformation of enterprises has had an intermediary effect between executive equity incentive and enterprise innovation; Fourth, whether the proportion of independent directors in the corporate governance mechanism has a regulatory effect.

In the context of China's promotion of “digital China” construction and high-quality development of economic innovation, this paper takes Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies in 2011–2019 as a sample, empirically studies the linear and nonlinear relationship between executive equity incentive and enterprise digital transformation and innovation, and further considers the regulatory effect of heterogeneous property rights and the proportion of independent directors, with a view to improving the reform of China's enterprise equity incentive system make contributions to enterprise innovation and digital transformation.

The results show that executive equity incentive has a positive role in promoting enterprise digital transformation and innovation, and enterprise digital transformation has a positive role in promoting enterprise innovation; Digital transformation of enterprises has a partial intermediary effect between executive equity incentive and enterprise innovation.

First, it expands the research on the economic consequences of enterprise salary incentive system. Second, it expands the research on the specific role path of enterprise digital economy transformation. Third, provide new ideas for the reform of corporate governance mechanism.

This paper aims to examine a possible new construct of corporate innovation behavior. It proposes consideration of corporate innovation activities that occur outside of traditional innovation program constraints, and seeks to expand the historical definition of what constitutes useful innovation in an organization.

The paper is an early exploratory study and uses primary observation of numerous cases in the automotive, electronics, and energy industries, in addition to a wide review of the body of literature on innovation.

The paper provides significant evidence that unauthorized organic innovation may routinely occur within corporations, that this type of behavior may positively add to company revenues, and that similar innovation techniques may be effectively diffused on a broader scale within the organization.

Because of the chosen qualitative approach of this initial study, the research results lack generalisability. Preliminary findings merit additional study, and researchers are therefore encouraged to further refine and test the concepts.

The paper includes implications for the further development of emergent innovation processes within corporations, which may ultimately lead to enhanced profits. It suggests that emergent innovation may be significantly important to long‐term corporate viability.

The paper fulfils an identified need to examine the impact of organic innovation that develops and thrives outside traditional approved corporate innovation strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the impact of equity market valuation and government intervention on the research and development (R&D) investments of listed companies in China and their relationship.

Using a manually collected R&D database in the period 2007–2015, this paper constructs a sample of 6,595 firm–year observations and applies the methods of pooled OLS regressions to examine the effects of market valuation and government intervention on corporate R&D expenditures.

This paper finds that market valuation enhances corporate R&D investments, but there is no evidence that government intervention may significantly affect the R&D investments. Government intervention also decreases the sensitivity of corporate R&D investment to stock price, which implies that government intervention weakens the promotion of market mechanism to corporate R&D investment. Furthermore, these effects are stronger in the non-state-owned firms and the non-regulated industries.

This study suggests that the functional borders of markets and government should be reasonably defined and markets play a decisive role in resource allocation to improve corporate innovation and national innovation.

This paper provides a micro view of the relationship between market and government at the stage of transitional economy in China as well as directions for further research on the relationship between stock prices and corporate investments.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the general trend of globalization, the role of transnational corporations in the process of globalization and China's integration in the global economy through the linkage of trade and foreign direct investment. China's governmental national technology innovation system and also the progress of R&D system of enterprises of various ownership systems to date are described and analyzed. China's technology innovation system is analyzed both from the macro side and from the micro side within the context of globalization, and the prospect of China's technology innovation system is projected.

Philosophical concept applied to analysis of the theme and structure of this paper is based on the philosophy of Lao‐tzu, yin and yan concepts in Chinese, and dialectic in Western terminology. Concepts of general system theory or system approach are used throughout this paper.

The major finding in this paper is that both necessary and sufficient condition should be created for China to establish an innovative country.

This paper is original and analyzes simulation ship between ownership system and technology innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the strength of corporate governance influences the firm’s ability to retain their key knowledge workers or inventors.

This paper links agency and innovation theory to develop the hypotheses. Agency theory predicts that the interests of employees are counter to those of firm owners. The authors predict that as shareholder power grows as corporate governance strengthens, inventors who are highly productive, and those who pursue risky but valuable exploratory innovation will leave the firm. Given prior scholarship in innovation theory establishing the critical contributions that new knowledge creation and exploratory innovation make to firms’ competitive advantage, the authors consider whether stronger firm-level corporate governance leads to the erosion of the firm’s competitive advantage. The hypotheses are empirically tested using generalized least squares estimation on a data set that combines data on firms, their patents and the governance provisions these firms adopt.

Using a 10-year sample of publicly traded US firms, the authors find that stronger corporate governance erodes the very foundation of a firm’s innovation capabilities. Stronger corporate governance reduces management job security, which makes managers more risk-averse. This heightened “managerial myopia” results in increased departures of highly valuable inventors employed by the firm. The authors show that these departing inventors are more productive inventors than those who remain and engage in more exploratory R&D than the remaining inventors at the firm.

The findings raise questions on the appropriateness of the adoption of governance provisions strengthening shareholder rights in firms pursuing innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the linkage among three factors – shareholder‐manager relationships (or corporate governance), customer supplier relationships, and innovation, for two groups of UK firms in the speciality chemicals and electrical equipment industries.

This research was exploratory. In total, 12 companies were studied in depth. The level of innovation was measured through a questionnaire and interviews were carried out with managers, important customers and suppliers. A comparison of management practices was established between the more and the less innovative companies.

This research finds a close connection between shareholder‐manager relationships, customer and supplier relationship management and innovation. The firms subject to arms‐length relationships with shareholders (as UK‐based public limited companies) had more distant relationships with suppliers and customers and poorer innovative performance.

The validity and reliability of the conclusions require the undertaking of quantitative studies. Other aspects apart from those explored could affect the level of innovation of companies.

In the more innovative companies, strategic and investment plans tend to look to the long‐term (five years plus). And, customers and suppliers are involved from the beginning in the development of new products and production processes. Lack of shareholder engagement strongly inhibits “long‐termist actions”, which include the development of such close relationships with customers and suppliers.

This paper is the first to look at the possible link between corporate governance, customer and supplier relationship management and the level of innovation and has research and practical implications.

This study aims to examine how and when digital platform capabilities drive technological innovation from a strategic information perspective, regarding information flow and information quality as mediators and business intelligence analytics as a moderator.

This study engaged corporate executives in surveys and obtained 182 firm data and then tested the hypotheses using linear regression models and the robustness using the structural equation model.

Digital platform capabilities drive corporate technological innovation through access to strategic information, i.e. strategic information mediates between digital platform capabilities and technological innovation. Business intelligence analytics increases the influence of strategic information on technological innovation.

This study underlines the importance for companies to construct digital platform capabilities to access strategic information to achieve technological innovation and the role of business intelligence analytics in processing strategic information.

This study finds a new perspective, strategic information, to explain the mechanisms by which digital platform capabilities drive firms’ technological innovation. In addition, the robustness of the resource-based view in understanding digital platform capabilities is stressed.