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Digital start-ups have limited resources. With the demands of rapid growth, digital start-ups need to rely on their ability to explore external knowledge and exploit it into swift innovation. Developing absorptive capacity is an alternative to overcome this difficulty. This study aims to demonstrate how the potential and realized an increase in absorptive capacity enables organizations to innovate moderated by structural ambidexterity. Empirical evidence places more emphasis on the impact of absorptive capacity on innovation but still leaves the “black-box” question of innovation and how potential absorptive capacity (PACAP) can achieve realized absorptive capacity (RACAP).

This study tests, with a structural equation model, samples collected from 143 digital start-ups in Indonesia.

The finding of this study suggests that PACAP influences the ability to innovate only if RACAP mediates it and structural ambidexterity positively moderates the relationship between these two variables.

First, this study uses digital start-up organizations as respondents. Second, this study explores the role of the structural ambidexterity that moderates the relationship between PACAP and RACAP manifested in digital start-ups organizations that are identical to temporary companies with limited resources. Third, digital start-ups have a fast-growth life cycle, unlike regular companies. Finally, the validated scale is based on data collected entirely from digital start-ups located in Indonesia, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to other industry contexts.

Start-ups suffer from the ability to innovate that increases their propensity to fail. They overcome this failure by increasing the absorptive capacity of the founding team to improve their ability to innovate. Because of limited resources available at digital start-ups, the flexibility of their management style can overcome these barriers, allowing the pursuit of both knowledge exploration and exploitation in a balanced way.

Most of the studies explained that the ability to innovate comes from absorptive capacity. In fact, they do not explore PACAP and RACAP and their relationships. Moreover, the studies also indicated that the contextual ambidexterity moderated PACAP and RACAP. Meanwhile, digital start-ups in this study revealed that structural ambidexterity with two dimensions, i.e. shared value, and behavioral integration, enables and positively moderates the relationship between PACAP and RACAP.

This study examines the propensity to innovate in automation of family firms (FFs) based on the socio-emotional wealth (SEW) perspective.

This study’s analysis is based on three aspects. First, the authors consider three main non-economic goals and priorities of FFs: the family’s relationship with employees (read as to care for their satisfaction and well-being); the inner pride of building and maintaining the family and firm image and reputation; and the inner feeling to be socially responsible. Second, the authors consider how these goals and priorities vary among FFs according to four dimensions: family ownership, the presence of family members on the board of directors, the involvement of young successors, and the presence of founding and later generations. Finally, the consequences of automation are considered: lower firm employment, lower employees’ satisfaction and well-being, and higher firm productivity. The analysis is based on a sample of 4,150 Italian firms.

The analysis revealed that FFs are less prone to innovate in automation than non-FFs. Specifically, family ownership, the presence of family members on the board of directors, and the presence of founding generation are negatively associated with innovation in automation. Instead, the involvement of young successors and the presence of later generation are positively associated with innovation in automation.

To the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first investigation that, based on SEW, examines how FFs act on the decision to innovate in automation, thereby providing empirical evidence.

Universities, when collaborating with industry, are generally assumed to be the motors for innovation. Inspired by a case on a university’s collaboration with small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a regional strategic network (RSN), this paper aims to put forth how the university makes important contributions through transferring knowledge on innovation processes that is a teaching role, rather than sees itself as the party producing innovations. This paper describes and discusses the university’s teaching role and its consequences in university-industry collaborations for innovation.

Empirically, the paper departs from a mid-Swedish RSN where nine SMEs started to work with a university. Interviews with representatives of the nine SMEs participating in the innovation project, along with university and RSN representatives, comprise the main data source. The paper analyzes the university’s teaching role and the consequences of it.

Findings point at how the SMEs developed structured innovation processes, improved their market intelligence and increased their efficiency in providing new solutions. The university facilitated knowledge, while the SMEs responded through creating knowledge both on how to innovate and in terms of innovations.

The teaching role, which would mean that the university stays with one of its core functions, indicates a need to rethink university-industry collaboration related to expectations and role division. Moving from producing innovations to facilitating knowledge on how to innovate, would, for universities, mean that they minimize those conflicts emerging from their various roles and indicate that the production of innovation is placed at those devoted to run and grow businesses.

This chapter presents the many premises of this book. It first discusses the book’s central questions and lays out the design of the large multi-national and multi-method study, carried out across Northern Europe. It also places the book at the interdisciplinary space between contemporary innovation economics and cultural and social theory. It then discusses the complex set of social processes that have conditioned the phenomena that the book studies – how and why are the contemporary audiovisual media industries co-innovating and converging with other sectors including education, tourism and health care? Within this framework, it discusses the effects of the broader individualisation and mediatisation processes, of media convergence, of the emergence of cross-media or transmedia strategies, of the evolution of the service and experience economies and of the emergence of creative industries policy frameworks.

Business model innovation is a key element for firms' competitiveness. Its development can be supported by the establishment of an actor-oriented scheme to overcome hierarchical structures. The actor-oriented scheme is characterized by intra-organizational networks of relationships that can be established and dissolved between individuals. However, we lack an empirical perspective about its establishment; therefore, the purpose of this research is to advance our understanding of intra-organizational networks for supporting business model innovation.

Individuals create and manage knowledge aimed to innovate the business model through cognitive search and experiential learning mechanisms. Knowledge is spread within organizations by using intra-organizational advice networks, whose patterns reflect the presence of an actor-oriented scheme. This work applies social network analysis to network data from a multi-unit organization specializing in personal care services. We use a Logistic Regression-Quadratic Assignment Procedure to analyze intra-organizational network data on managers' advice exchange related to the learning modes of cognitive search and experiential learning.

Our research empirically identifies the main elements of an actor-oriented scheme in a business model innovation process. We find that managers are able to self-organize, because they are not influenced by their organizational roles, and that commons for sharing resources and protocols, processes and infrastructures enable advice exchange, thus showing the presence of an actor-oriented scheme in business model innovation process.

This research is based on a cross-sectional database. A longitudinal study would provide a better understanding of the network evolution characterizing the innovation process.

The results of our study support organizational decision-making for business model innovation.

This study provides empirical evidence of how an actor-oriented scheme emerges in a business model innovation process.

This paper explores whether, in the context of university–industry (U–I) collaboration, new innovation strategies can be developed through actors' interactions, the exchange of resources and the co-creation of value for and within the system. In the context of the U–I relationship, the innovation perspective can highlight the need to develop strategies that elicit new formulas of value co-creation, which then facilitate innovation as a result of actor collaboration.

A total of 45 public universities in Spain, representing 95% of the total, participated in qualitative research. Personal in-depth interviews with technology transfer officers (TTOs) were conducted by an external firm; in a second phase, two of the researchers conducted eight interviews with the directors of TTOs in those universities with higher rates of transfer.

Findings reveal that enterprises with a technological focus are strengthening their relationships with universities and attempting to build a university business ecosystem by designing strategies for value co-creation such as co-ownership, co-patenting, and co-invention.

The empirical research is conducted in Spain, and results should be interpreted according to this context. Future research should examine new contexts (other countries) to improve the robustness of the data and enrich the results, thus enabling generalization of the management consequences.

The results provide a means to design strategies under a new collaborative and innovating logic. The theoretical framework contributes to theory, with implications for management.

The innovation of meaning paradigm is a strategy to radically innovate product and service meanings. While researchers have focussed on the role of product and retail space meanings as interlinked in the pursuit of innovation, no investigation has been directed towards understanding when the two meanings differ. This research explores how companies can manage two different meanings offered through their retail services and the products sold.

Due to the highly intangible and subjective nature of meaning, as well as the exploratory aim of the research, a case study approach has been adopted. In particular, the research compares two case studies of similar companies in the beauty industry. Data were triangulated across three different sources: a panel of experts, ethnographic research in the two companies' stores and extensive academic and practitioner publications.

Findings suggest that innovating the service meaning can be a viable strategy to differentiate a retail offering the product meaning which is no longer perceived as different with respect to competitors.

The study applies the innovation of meaning concept to retail services, distinguishing the meaning given to the store from that given to products, thereby offering managers a strategy to innovate a suffering retail format.

This chapter establishes the conceptual and analytic framework for the book. It relates not only to much of the existing work in evolutionary and institutional economics, but also to work in cultural science and cultural semiotics domains as well as in media convergence and transmedia studies. The central concept it first deploys is ‘innovation systems’ as applied in national, regional, international and sectoral contexts. It then builds on the general theory of economic evolution by Kurt Dopfer and Jason Potts and reviews the tools this theory provides to carry out a meso-level analysis of industries co-innovating and converging. It then proposes a new concept – ‘cross-innovation’ – to refer to the emergence of new structures and ‘rules’ at the boundaries of existing industries.

Micro and small enterprises (MSEs) play a crucial role in the development of any country by generating innovative ideas. However, they face inherent restrictions that hinder their innovation capabilities. It is essential to support innovation policies to overcome these barriers and foster innovation. This study aims to explore how innovation policies can reduce barriers to innovation in MSEs using the lens of innovation capabilities.

Through a multiple case study, the authors examined eight MSEs in São Paulo (Brazil) and five in Florence (Italy) to conduct this study. These countries share a similar level of importance when it comes to MSEs.

Current innovation policies could be more effective for MSEs if certain barriers they encounter are faced and resolved, such as limited financial resources and a scarcity of qualified workers. These barriers directly affect two key elements of their innovation capability: financial resources and human resources. Therefore, it is essential to develop innovation policies that target these elements directly to enable MSEs to overcome these obstacles and thrive.

This study aims to enhance the knowledge of how innovation policies can help alleviate obstacles to innovation and how they can influence the various components that comprise the innovation capability of MSEs. This research can be valuable for policymakers as it provides insight into which innovation policies impact each aspect of innovation capability, enabling them to choose the most suitable policy based on the specific needs and local circumstances of the MSEs.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies on knowledge creation for innovation purposes by assessing the relationships among the variety of I4.0 technologies adopted (breadth I4.0), the penetration of these technologies within the firm’s value chain activities (depth I4.0) and the mediating role of both internal (inter-functional (IF)) and external [with knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS)] collaborations in this process.

The study employed a quantitative research design. By administering a survey to entrepreneurs, chief operation officers or managers in charge of the operational and technological processes of Italian manufacturing firms, the authors collected 137 useful questionnaires. To test this study's theoretical framework and hypotheses, the authors ran regression and mediation analyses.

First, the results highlight the positive link between breadth I4.0 and depth I4.0. Moreover, the results show the key role played by increased collaboration among the firm’s business functions and by relationships with KIBS in creating knowledge to innovate processes and products when I4.0 technologies are adopted.

The variety of I4.0 technologies adopted enables a firm to use such technologies in various value chain activities. However, the penetration of I4.0 into the firm’s value chain activities (depth I4.0) does not per se directly imply the production of new knowledge, for which a firm needs internal collaboration among different business functions, in particular with the production area, or collaboration with external partners that favor I4.0 implementation, such as KIBS.

To achieve innovation goals by creating new knowledge, especially in the manufacturing industries, firms should encourage internal and external collaboration when I4.0 technologies are adopted. Moreover, policy makers should not only consider fiscal incentives for the adoption of such technologies, but also encourage the building of networks between adopting firms and external actors.

The study is one of the first attempt that provides empirical evidence of how I4.0 enables the creation of knowledge to innovate processes and products, highlighting the relevance of collaboration both within the company and with external partners.