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This paper aims to analyze the characteristics of Brazilian micro and small businesses (MSBs) and the main lessons derived from the largest small business innovation support program in the country, the Local Innovation Agents – Agentes Locais de Inovação (ALI) Program.

In total, 34 papers were selected from the Web of Science and Scopus databases (28), as well as from the Revista de Administração e Inovação – RAI (6), a seminal Brazilian innovation journal. The papers were analyzed in terms of the regional context, methodological approach and main findings. Regional complementary analyzes of some program figures were also performed by Spearman correlation and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests.

The review revealed a low innovation level among Brazilian MSBs and that the platform (incremental product) and brand (marketing) innovation dimensions were the most developed across different regions and industries. Reviewed papers also showed that all MSBs were able to improve innovation over the program independent of previous management and innovation levels, besides positive relationships between management and innovation. The complementary analysis provided a regional panorama of the program figures and corroborated MSBs innovation improvement.

This review analyzed relevant papers and figures related to the program, summarized main lessons and provided future research venues.

Different innovation strategies reviewed may be implemented by MSBs owners. Policymakers may also benefit from the program experience.

Despite the high number of publications and the relevance of the largest Brazilian innovation support program, there were still no literature reviews comprehending the diverse lessons derived from the ALI Program, as well as a regional panorama of the program figures.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into firms' innovation competencies and to develop an instrument to examine the key innovation competencies that contribute to integrated services.

Data were collected via the initial 80‐item questionnaire given to innovation‐related key figures within the Taiwanese communications industry (sample size 500; valid response rate 75.4 percent). The initial 80 items of innovation competencies and development procedures of measurement instrument were explored, exploited, and analyzed. The instrument validity of the multi‐aspect innovation competencies measure was evaluated through assessing convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity.

Research results indicate that five‐dimension and 17‐item constructs the measurement instrument of innovation competencies for integrated services. An examination of individual dimensions' effect on “overall innovation competencies” shows that industry specific (0.45) is the most important dimension, followed by market related (0.23), technology related (0.14), product related (0.13), and organization related (0.13).

This study is conducted in only one industry (communications) and one country (Taiwan).

Integration capabilities of different innovation competencies of a firm is vital for the successful development of integrated services, and out of all the innovation competencies, industry‐specific innovation competencies are the most important. A firm should then identify potential markets and trends and fully utilize their human resource capabilities to develop innovative services, along with senior executives' awareness and acceptance of risk.

This paper may be the first to identify the measurement instrument of innovation competencies for integrated services and will expand the scope of service innovation research.

From Europe moving forward into Asia, the Silk Road has the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) on the way. These countries alphabetically include: “Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.” While these countries have long been dependent on oil for development, they are currently planning to reduce this dependence and consider innovation as an important mean for future development. This chapter explores the past progress of innovation in the GCC countries; and highlights future directions ahead. In this respect two end countries of the Silk Road, Italy and China, are also considered. The chapter views innovation from the wide angle of the Global Innovation Index, which has 7 main dimensions, consisting of 21 sub-dimensions, which are refined into 81 international indicators. An approach for looking into the current state, the past progress, and the future directions of innovation in the countries concerned is developed and followed using available data. Although the outcome is based on the currently available data, the approach can be re-used for newer data providing continuous benefits to directing future development.

Cumulative capability models are dominating frameworks explaining how manufacturing organizations gain their performance capabilities, such as quality, delivery, flexibility and cost. When innovation capabilities are excluded from the framework, the models are incapable of explaining how companies sustain substantive capabilities in a changing environment. Responding to this gap, the purpose of this paper is to propose and test a “sand cone” cumulative capability model that includes the innovation competitive performance alongside the competitive performance of quality, delivery flexibility and cost.

Two competing cumulative models were proposed. The extended cumulative capability model hypothesizes the development of innovation in sequence with other competitive performance dimensions. The affected with innovation cumulative model hypothesizes innovation performance as a predecessor of other performance dimensions. The models were tested using a multimethod approach on a representative sample of 500 manufacturing companies. An analysis of correlations among competitive performance, frequencies of plants following prescribed sequences, fit statistics of covariance-based structural equation modeling and analysis of strength and statistical significance of path coefficients enabled us to select a model that best represents the collected data.

The findings reveal that innovation competitive performance operates as a predecessor of quality, delivery, flexibility and cost and is developed in relation to these performance dimensions. The modified model also provides a theoretical explanation of how innovation performance helps to sustain reliable production systems that can perform consistently over time within a tolerable range of quality, delivery, flexibility and cost performance.

The results are significant for practitioners, especially for companies that are operating in volatile environments because the results provide insight on how to develop innovation competitive performance in relation to quality, delivery, flexibility and cost performance.

This study extends the cumulative capability models with innovation competitive performance. It advances the contingency approach on cumulative capability models.

The purpose of this study is to propose a multidimensional view of social innovation.

It offers a detailed analysis of the activities performed by ADEL (Agência de Desenvolvimento Econômico Local) – a regional non-governmental organization located in one of the poorest regions of Brazil – which is succeeding in engaging young people in the promotion of local development. The case was analysed drawing on the dimensions structured by researchers of one of the main centres of social innovation in the world, the Centre de Recherche sur Les Innovations Sociales (CRISES) based in Canada.

The results found characterize ADEL as a social innovation based on the dimensions of social innovation described in the CRISES’ conceptual encyclopaedia (Tardif and Harrison, 2005). The results highlight the singularities of the case studied, which allowed the elaboration of a revisited table of dimensions proposed by the CRISES’ researchers.

For future studies, using the CRISES’ table as reference of analysis for other social innovations, the possibility suggested is the quantitative exploration of these dimensions.

The originality of this article lies in the fact that it presents a representative social innovation for the Brazilian semiarid.

This paper aims to provide a nuanced understanding of philosophies underpinning social innovation based on the action research strategies applied in the field.

Literature review was conducted to identify action research strategies referred to in the social innovation literature. Through stratified purposive sampling, the authors then selected nonprofit organizations, each closely associated with one of the strategies. Qualitative content analysis was applied to documents published by these organizations for an in-depth exploration of how the action research strategies frame the three dimensions of social innovation, namely, the product, process and empowerment dimensions.

The authors identified four broad action research strategies referred to in the social innovation literature. Each strategy inspires four distinct narratives of social innovation centered around key concepts: prototyping, evidence, asset-building and co-creation.

The methodology used is characterized by depth rather than scope. Although diverse types of documents were used, the documents are limited to publications by four institutions. A deductive approach using the categories should be used in future empirical research.

The paper contributes to the discussion about different schools and research agendas in the field of social innovation. In particular, the authors examine the action research strategies adopted in the field, shedding light on incompatible views and strategies within certain research clusters while identifying common ground between authors belonging to different schools.

Addresses the standardization of the measurements and the labels for concepts commonly used in the study of work organizations. As a reference handbook and research tool, seeks to improve measurement in the study of work organizations and to facilitate the teaching of introductory courses in this subject. Focuses solely on work organizations, that is, social systems in which members work for money. Defines measurement and distinguishes four levels: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. Selects specific measures on the basis of quality, diversity, simplicity and availability and evaluates each measure for its validity and reliability. Employs a set of 38 concepts ‐ ranging from “absenteeism” to “turnover” as the handbook’s frame of reference. Concludes by reviewing organizational measurement over the past 30 years and recommending future measurement reseach.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the contingent use of rational, intuitive and political decision-making in R&D.

This research is based on a study in an R&D department of a multinational high-tech firm in the Netherlands. The study consists of a case study design, focusing on four embedded cases, longitudinally studying each case.

The literature distinguishes three dimensions of innovation decision-making processes: rational, intuitive and political. By studying these interwoven dimensions over time, this study finds that the dominant use of each of these dimensions differs across the innovation process. There is an emphasis on intuitive decision-making in an early phase, followed by more emphasis on political decision-making, and moving to more emphasis on rational decision-making in a later phase of the R&D process. Furthermore, the predominant choice in a specific innovation phase for one of the three decision-making dimensions is influenced by the decision-making dimension that is dominantly employed in the preceding phase.

This study contributes to the innovation decision-making literature by developing and applying a model that distinguishes rational, intuitive and political decision-making dimensions, the interactions among these dimensions in innovation decision-making in R&D, and the contingency of these dimensions upon the innovation phase. It calls for further research into the contingent nature of innovation decision-making processes.

For practitioners this study has two relevant insights. First it highlights the importance and usefulness of intuitive and political decision-making in addition to the prevailing emphasis on rational decision-making. Second, practitioners may be more alert to consciously changing their dominant decision-making approach across the phases of the innovation process. Third, companies may adjust their human resource policies to this study’s findings.

The literature on rational, intuitive and political decision-making is quite extensive. However, research has hardly studied how these decision-making dimensions develop in conjunction, and over time. This paper reports on a first study to do so and finds that the dominant use of these dimensions is contingent upon the phase of the R&D process and on the decision-making dimensions used in earlier phases. The study suggests that using a contingency approach can help to further integrate the debate in research and practice.

University–industry (UI) collaboration is essential for knowledge and technology exchange between higher education institutions and industries, enabling enterprises to accelerate innovation. However, few studies have investigated the collaborative innovation mechanism through which UI collaboration can enhance the accumulation of firms' intellectual capital (IC) and how this, in turn, affects their innovation-driven development.

Drawing from the knowledge management and collaborative innovation theory, this research proposes a theoretical framework of the inter-organization relationship between enterprises and universities to investigate the influence mechanism of UI collaboration, including academic engagement and commercialization, on corporate performance as well as the mediating role of IC by employing survey that covers 177 UI collaborations.

Empirical results show that human capital and relational capital fully mediate the relationship between academic engagement UI collaboration and corporate economic performance, while human capital partially mediates the relationship between commercialization UI collaboration and corporate economic performance. Additionally, structural capital and relational capital partially mediate the relationship between academic engagement and corporate innovation performance, while structural capital fully mediates the relationship between commercialization and corporate innovation performance.

This study empirically investigates how academic engagement and commercialization impact corporate performance (i.e. innovation dimension or economic dimension). It uncovers this relationship's underlying mechanism by documenting the IC's mediating impact.

This study aims at offering a comprehensive thesis about the relationship between different cultural values and innovativeness.

Building on the human emancipation perspective and using data from Hofstede’s, Schwartz’s, and Inglehart’s cultural frameworks, the authors conduct a cross-national investigation into the effects of cultural values on national innovativeness.

The analyses show that emancipatory cultural dimensions such as rationality, secularity, self-expression, individualism, low uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, mastery and autonomy have significantly positive associations with national innovativeness. The opposing cultural values, such as traditionalism, religiosity, survival, collectivism, high uncertainty avoidance, short-term orientation, harmony and conservatism, have negative associations with national innovativeness.

This study contributes to the literature by putting forward a comprehensive and theory-driven explanation of the relationship between cultural values and innovativeness, by using all of Hofstede’s, Schwartz’s and Inglehart’s dimensions, by incorporating ethnic, linguistic and religious diversities and by applying alternative measures of the national innovativeness.