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This study aims at developing a better understanding of the relationship between network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability and further examines the moderating effect of open innovation.

This paper adopts hierarchical regressions to validate the theoretical model and collect the patent data of the top 54 firm patentees in the smartphone industry as empirical sample. Using patent citation network data, this paper estimates the relationship between open innovation, network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability.

This paper empirically shows that structural embeddedness exerts a negative effect on incremental innovation capability, while relational embeddedness is positively related to incremental innovation capability. And open innovation strengthens the relationship between network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability.

This paper shifts the focus of the determinants of incremental innovation capability from internal factors to the external network features by exploring the linkage between network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability. A counterintuitive conclusion is that structural embeddedness shows a negative effect on firm's incremental innovation capability. Furthermore, in contrast to most previous studies, which only focus on the direct effect of open innovation on the firm's incremental innovation capability, our study examines the moderating effect of open innovation on the relationships between network embeddedness and incremental innovation capability. At last, the results provide practical guidance for firms to occupy the beneficial network positions and adopt appropriate open innovation strategies to improve their incremental innovation capability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of four organizational culture traits, consistency, cooperativeness, effectiveness and innovativeness, on radical and incremental type of service innovations, which leads to new service market performance (NSMP).

The data are collected through a cross-sectional survey of 171 bank managers in Bangladesh and analyzed through structural equation modelling using SmartPLS software.

The results reveal no impact of “consistency” as a cultural trait on “radical” and “incremental” service innovations. “Cooperativeness” and “innovativeness” impact incremental and radical service innovations positively. “Effectiveness” impacts radical service innovations positively. Radical and incremental service innovations impact NSMP significantly.

These findings add to the knowledge in terms of how organizational culture can make service innovations happen in the growing banking industry in a developing market.

The model links organizational culture traits (internal/external and flexibility/control focussed) with radical and incremental service innovation.

Despite the keen interest in radical and incremental innovation, few studies have tested the varying impact of firm-level factors in service sectors. This paper analyses how collaboration with existing and prospective users and investments in knowledge management (KM) practices can be adapted to maximise the outputs of radical and incremental process innovation in a knowledge-intensive business service industry.

Original survey data from 166 information technology service firms and interviews with 13 executives provide the empirical evidence. Partial least squares-structural equation modelling is used to analyse the data.

Collaboration with different types of users, and investments in KM practices affect radical versus incremental process innovation differently. Collaboration with existing users influences incremental process innovation directly, but not radical innovation; and prospective user collaboration matters for radical, but not incremental innovation. Furthermore, for radical innovation, investments in KM practices mediate the impact of prospective user collaboration on innovation.

While collaboration with existing users for incremental process innovations does not appear to generate significant managerial challenges, to pursue radical innovations firms must engage in intensive collaboration with prospective users. Higher involvement with prospective users requires higher investment in KM practices to promote efficient intra- and inter-firm knowledge flows.

This study is based on a large-scale survey, together with management interviews. Radical and incremental innovations in the service industry require engagements with different kinds of users, and the use of KM tools.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical and empirical exploration of link between organization intellectual capital and knowledge flows with its incremental and radical innovation performance.

This paper adopts relevant literature of social capital and organizational learning to examine the impact of intellectual capital and knowledge flows on incremental and radical innovation based on surveying 95 firms. To test the research hypotheses, regression analysis is used.

Results of the study show that human capital and top-down knowledge flows significantly and positively influence both incremental and radical innovations. Social capital and bottom-up knowledge flows do not have any significant impact on incremental or/and radical innovation. Organizational capital has a positive impact on incremental innovation as expected.

The results offer several practical implications for business managers to harvest its knowledge bases resident in the firm’s different forms appropriately to make innovation successful. Particularly, knowledge resident in human capital and organizational capital is useful for making incremental innovation. Especially, new knowledge, new skills and new perspectives resident in human capital are crucial important for making radical innovation. Both incremental and radical innovations are positively influenced by dynamic managerial capabilities.

This study contributes to literature by providing new evidence linking organization intellectual capital and knowledge flows with its innovation performance. Especially, the missing link between top-down knowledge flows and radical innovation is empirically examined. Value of this study is that social capital and bottom-up knowledge flows are not universally beneficial for enhancing innovation and their impacts on innovation performance are context dependent and more sophisticated than it is recognized in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of tacit knowledge in incremental innovation, which has hitherto been neglected.

Qualitative case analysis was used to focus on two large Japanese pharmaceutical companies’ development of new antihypertensive drugs. The study uses interview data and documentary research materials to explore the knowledge bases of the companies’ research teams as they refined an existing drug to produce new products – a process of incremental innovation.

Explicit knowledge (chemical structure of preceding drug) was used in both successful and failed cases of drug discovery. In the two successful cases, the tacit knowledge of key researchers, based on their long-term experience of related research, provided insight into developing compounds with good in vivo efficacy, which led to successful clinical development.

The findings suggest that tacit knowledge may play an important role in incremental innovation processes, and that its influence on product development should be considered in such ways as team and organization structure.

This study addresses a gap in the literature regarding the impact of tacit knowledge on incremental innovation processes. It is often assumed that incremental innovation is based on existing technology. This study suggests that tacit knowledge may play a hitherto largely unrecognized role in incremental product development.

This paper aims to analyze the extent to which the influence of external knowledge search activities on firms’ incremental innovation capability, and the moderating roles of the relatedness between the partners’ technological bases and a firm’s network embeddedness in the innovation network.

In this empirical research, the authors collected a sample of patents in the UAV industry over the period of 2004–2018. Then the authors examined the direct role of external knowledge search on firms’ incremental innovation capability and the joint moderating effects of technological proximity and network embeddedness.

We found that external knowledge search in innovation networks positively affects firms’ incremental innovation capability. Moreover, we discovered that high technological proximity to other peers positively strengthens the impact of firms’ external knowledge search on their incremental innovation capability. Finally, the findings suggested that the relationship between a firm’s external knowledge search activities and its incremental innovation capability is stronger for high technological proximity coupled with high network centrality or poor structural holes in innovation networks.

This study adds value to open innovation literature by pointing out a positive relationship between external knowledge search and firm incremental innovation capability. Furthermore, this study reinforces the key joint contingent roles of technological proximity and network embeddedness. This study provides a valuable theoretical framework of incremental innovation capability determinants by connecting the different perspectives.

Given the important role of innovation capability in helping firms to innovate and adapt to a fast-paced and unpredictable environment, the purpose of this study is to investigate and deepen knowledge of how transformational leadership affects radical and incremental innovation via the mediating role of positive psychological capital.

The paper used structural equation modeling and cross-sectional design to test proposal hypotheses based on the empirical data collected from 379 participants in 89 manufacturing and service firms.

The results of this study revealed the positive and significant influence of transformational leadership on radical and incremental innovation. The findings highlighted the mediating role of individual psychological capital in the relationship between transformational leadership and aspects of innovation capability.

Organizations should invest and stress on practicing transformational leadership style for their managers/directors to foster and enhance individual psychological capital and innovation capabilities.

The paper has extended theory of innovation management by discussing and highlighting the important role of transformational leadership and psychological capital in fostering specific aspects of innovation namely radical and incremental innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between relational capital and supply chain collaboration (SCC) and how this relationship relates to innovation. The authors propose a theoretical framework to illustrate the effect of relational capital on three dimensions of collaboration and radical and incremental innovation.

The paper has a quantitative approach. The authors conducted the survey to collect the data from 225 suppliers in the Hunan province of China. The proposed model is tested with exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The findings show that relational capital can facilitate information sharing and benefit/risk sharing when firms work together to achieve innovation. Furthermore, the results indicate that relational capital leads to radical innovation through facilitating information sharing among firms and helps in generating incremental innovation by encouraging firms to share risks and benefits with their partners.

The findings of this study give some suggestions for managers of the firms in terms of building their collaborative strategies. Managers should exploit relational capital to build successful and long-term collaboration. Also, through relational capital, managers can share information to create radical innovation or pool risks and share benefits with their customers to achieve incremental innovation.

This study provides a nuanced understanding of the relationship between relational capital, different dimensions of SCC and innovation in the context of a developing economy. Moreover, the findings provide a clearer understanding of the collaborative mechanism of relational capital and collaboration to achieve radical and incremental innovation.

Building on the sociotechnical systems theory (STS), the purpose of this paper is to investigate the direct impacts of the social and technical QMs (ISO 9001) practices on both incremental and radical product innovation and the direct relationships relaying QMs (ISO 9001) as a sociotechnical system with incremental and radical product innovation.

The paper opted for a survey instrument to collect quantitative data from 82 Moroccan certified ISO 9001 firm. A partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the research hypotheses.

Results show that the social and technical QMs (ISO 9001) practices do not have a significant relationship with incremental and radical product innovation when they are taken in isolation. However, when ranged together to constitute a whole sociotechnical system of QMs (ISO 9001), QMs (ISO 9001) prove to have a strong positive and significant impact on incremental product innovation and a weak positive and significant impact on radical product innovation.

Because of the small sample size that might weaken the significance of the results and the use of cross-sectional data, this research may lack a large statistical generalizability vis-à-vis the analytical generalization.

The results provide useful implications for managers, suggesting that in order to develop their product innovation, they must ensure that both QMs (ISO 9001) social and technical practices achieve a high level of integration without allowing some quality practices to take over.

Based on the STS, this study is the first to focus primarily on the role of the multi-dimensional structure of QMs (ISO 9001), i.e. social and technical practices, in incremental and radical product innovation.

This study deals with the impact of resource scarcity on the innovation performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this paper is to scrutinise whether resource scarcity among SMEs has an effect on their innovation performance.

The sample was based on panel data for 302 SMEs from the mechanical and electrical engineering sectors. Firms were divided into four groups by resource scarcity: human resource scarcity, financial resource scarcity, both types of resource scarcity and no resource scarcity. To test for significant inter-group differences in innovation performance, multivariate analysis of covariance and a multiple discriminant function analysis were carried out.

The results indicated that resource scarcity can have a positive effect on incremental but not radical innovation performance in SMEs. However, the authors found this to be true for financial resource scarcity only.

These results may not be applicable to all SMEs, as the authors only focused on the industries of mechanical and electrical engineering. Future studies should focus on analysing the internal structures of SMEs that led to this study’s results. More research should also be conducted on ways that resource-limited SMEs can appropriately conduct radical innovations. Finally, resources should be made available for both practitioners and academics, explaining why the acquisition of resources is not always be the best option in response to limited resources.

These results indicate that resource-constrained SMEs, especially those that struggle with limited finances, should concentrate their innovation activities on incremental rather than radical innovations.

This study closes the knowledge gap as to whether it is beneficial for resource-limited SMEs to focus on either incremental or radical innovation. From the theoretical viewpoint, the resource-based view provides two strategies for resource-limited SMEs: acquiring new resources or recombining available resources. The authors were able to clearly demonstrate for the first time that the recombination of resources is especially important for SMEs that specifically wish to pursue incremental innovation.