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The purpose of this paper is to identify relevant gaps in human capital (HC) related to innovation performance, which might be the basis for creation of more effective innovation strategies.

The proposed approach contains the following four steps: HC survey, assessment of HC value drivers, identification of gaps related to the HC value drivers and recommendations for an innovation strategy based on identified gaps. The HC survey includes 554 managers from Serbian companies within seven different industries.

The biggest gaps in observed Serbian industries are related to crucial HC value drivers for innovation process, such as innovativeness, education and knowledge sharing and social skills.

Although there are limitations in measuring HC and innovation drivers, this approach seems to be valid in recommending more effective innovation strategies/policies on micro and macro level.

This research reveals potentials and barriers within HC in different Serbian industries, crucial to innovation, pointing to the initiatives which might improve innovation performance across Serbian industries. The identification of HC gaps across industries is valuable for gathering sounder intelligence of the sources of innovation and fine-tuning of national innovation strategy according to specific features of industries.

The proposed approach integrates a new perspective into current innovation measurement paradigm. It includes gaps within HC in the assessment of innovation performance, which might foster intangible innovation potential.

This paper investigates the relationship of both technological (product and process) and non-technological (organizational and marketing) innovation with the gender wage gap at firms.

Using employer–employee level data from Estonia, the authors estimate Mincerian wage equations, in order to show how innovation at the firm level is associated with the gender wage gap. Next, the authors use propensity score matching (PSM) to study the effects of the movement of men and women into innovative firms, how this shapes the gender wage gap at firms.

The authors find that both technological and non-technological innovation are associated with a larger gender wage gap at firms. The relationship between innovation and the contemporaneous gender wage gap at firms reflects to a significant extent the different selection of men and women with different time-invariant characteristics to innovative firms. Further, the authors find that movement of men and women to work at innovative firms is in longer term associated with larger gains in wages for men. The authors also observe that the relationship of innovation with gender wage gap is stronger in the case of women with children.

Much of the prior analysis focuses on the effects of technological innovation on gender-related labour market outcomes. The authors show here that the relationship of innovation at firms with higher gender wage gap is not only specific to technological innovation, but is more general, and is observed across different types of innovation indicators, including non-technological innovation. This study's results suggest that the effects of innovation on gender wage gap may reflect to an extent the higher demand for flexibility of employees for work purposes at innovative firms, which may increase the gender wage gap, especially between men and women with children.

The textile industry is a labor-intensive industry in which where innovation-oriented studies are conducted intensively. However, identifying potential innovation gaps for a firm operating in the textile industry is not easy and greatly influences the firm's future success. To this end, this study aims to propose a novel integrated approach for the pre-assessment of the firm-level innovation process.

The proposed approach uses two important tools: the technology capability audit tool and innovation audit tool. The proposed approach integrates these tools to discover possible innovation opportunities for firms. The proposed approach is called the innovation gap finder model (IGFM).

A real case study in the textile industry is conducted to show how IGFM works in practice. The results of this study show that decision-makers can easily identify existing innovation gaps using IGFM.

Firms must first identify innovation gaps in order to initiate achievable projects in line with their current situation. Addressing a firm-level pre-assessment of the textile innovation process helps achieve growth and enables the firm to know what it should do in the near future. By identifying innovation gaps by considering the innovation processes at the firm level, it is also easier to prepare an action plan on what and how to do in accordance with the firm's own culture. There is no specific tool developed to discover potential innovation gaps in the literature. To fill this gap, a novel integrated approach is proposed for a pre-assessment of firm level innovation process in this study. The proposed approach can also accelerate the establishment of the “idea-invention-innovation” path within the firm.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the pay gap between the management and ordinary employees influence corporate technology innovation.

This study built a tournament model based on inventor innovation and career promotion. In addition, the authors use IV-GMM estimation method to address the possible endogeneity issue in the regressions.

Based on the unbalanced panel data of patents and pay gap in 1,501 Chinese listed manufacturing firms during 2001-2015, this paper finds that the pay gap could lead inventor innovation and improve technology innovation. The pay gap could encourage corporate innovation significantly: 1 percent increase in pay gap may increase the number of patents by 2 percent in the next year. The pay gap between the management and ordinary employees facilitates corporate innovation via two possible channels. First, inventor innovation and career promotion. Inventors are selected into the management mainly based on their innovation output. The larger the pay gap, the more innovation incentives and patents would gain. Second, investment increase in technology innovation. The pay gap and more patents that inventors gain would increase the ratio of inventors promoted to the management, who tend to pour more resources into R&D activities and absorb more inventors to the management due to their sectionalism and R&D preference. The above two channels constitute a positive feedback mechanism among technology innovation, inventor promotion and increase in R&D investment.

This paper highlights that pay gap between the management and ordinary employees is an important issue that could encourage corporate innovation. The conclusions imply that pay gap could encourage inventors to work hard and produce more patents, which could help them to enter into the management such as executives or directors.

This study contributes to the current literature by implying that pay gap could have positive effects on innovation through theoretical and empirical analysis. Also, this study finds that inventor promotion due to the pay gap is a critical channel to stimulate corporate technology innovation.

With the fierce competition in a knowledge economy, knowledge-intensive enterprises (KIEs) make technological progress in their catching-up processes through implementing product innovation and process innovation. In this study, the aim is to understand the determinants of enterprise innovation type in China's catch-up environment. Further, this paper intends to deal with two related questions. First, what effect does the internal knowledge base have on KIEs' technology innovation activities? Second, considering the technology gap and technology development speed, what are the different impacts of the knowledge base on the type of technology innovation activities?

This paper collected data from 212 KIEs in China through a two-stage questionnaire survey, combined with statistical data for research. The hypothesis was tested by regression analysis. Specifically, descriptive statistics and regression analysis are introduced to test the hypothetical relationship between the knowledge base and technology innovation. Meanwhile, multiple regression is used to test whether there is any difference in the influence of technology gap and technology development speed on enterprise knowledge base and technology innovation. Finally, the corresponding robustness tests are done.

This study finds that in a sample of Yangtze River Delta KIEs, firms' knowledge base influences innovation types. Specifically, the knowledge base width (KBW) and knowledge base depth (KBD) positively influence process innovation, and KBD positively affects product innovation. Regarding the effects of catch-up context factors on KIEs’ innovation choice, a wide technology gap tends to positively influence product innovation in industries with high levels of KBW. Moreover, when technology development speed is high, its potential positive influence on process innovation will be more significant for industries with deeper knowledge bases.

This paper fills the research gap that existing studies ignore the relationship between types of technology innovation and knowledge base dimensions, especially for KIEs. First, this paper deepens the understanding of the impact mechanism of KIEs' existing knowledge base on innovation activities; the unique use of resources by enterprises is the basis of enterprises' competitive advantage and will become enterprises' competitive advantage. Second, this study indicates that against different backdrops of technology gap and technology development speed, enterprises with different knowledge bases will adopt different types of technology innovation activities. Third, this paper shows that a wider technology gap provides broader innovation space, so the technology gap plays a pulling role in KBW and product innovation, thus pushing forward enterprises' technological catch-up.

The USA is the world’s largest economy, but is it a leading innovation nation? As economies mature and slow in growth, innovation will prove to be a key driver in maintaining transient advantage. This article presents a pulse on innovation in the USA as F1000 C-suite executives weigh in on their organization’s innovation health. It also compares the US score with proxy benchmark measures in other countries, and provides operational and strategic considerations to advance innovation platforms in US organizations. Managers will gain insight into common hurdles faced by some of America’s most prominent companies, as well as how to improve innovation practices in their own organization.

This current article reports on findings of innovation health in the USA based on responses from 1,127 F1000 executives (manager level and higher). F1000 executives report their innovation culture through completion of an innovation culture model survey developed by the authors. The F1000 is a listing created by Fortune magazine detailing the 1,000 largest companies in the USA based on revenues. This survey is considered one of the largest surveys on innovation culture in the USA to date.

One of the leading questions that this survey set out to answer is the current measure of innovation orientation amongst America’s largest organizations. Our findings suggest that US business is just beginning to catch the wave of innovation. Other major findings include: innovation amongst the F1000 is average at best; innovation is random and incremental; innovation strategy is missing in most organizations; there is an executive/employee innovation perception gap; innovation governance is missing; employees can not be blamed for a lack of innovation; and companies that fail to innovate will struggle even more.

There are a number of operational and strategic considerations presented to support the advancement of innovation in organizations. These include considerations around the leadership, resources, knowledge management and execution to strategically support innovation.

This is an original contribution in that it uses a scientifically developed model to measure innovation culture. It is the largest survey of innovation to date amongst the US Fortune 1000, and the finding present considerations to advance the innovation agendas of organizations.

This study aims to investigate the gender diversity within innovation and entrepreneurship teams and the perceptions of gender imbalance in digital skills among team members in Kazakhstan, a Central Asian country belonging to the Global South.

Primary data were collected from ten leading firms in Kazakhstan's manufacturing, construction and oil and gas sectors, which have international connections or perspectives. The members of the research and development (R&D) departments of these firms completed an online, structured closed-question questionnaire anonymously. A total of 169 completed responses were analyzed using regression analysis, controlling for company size and sector, with gender as the independent variable.

The gender diversity within innovation teams is not as high as anticipated, even though there is a substantial representation of women in the scientific workforce across many firms. Similarly, there is a gender gap in entrepreneurship teams involved in business innovation, although it is slightly less pronounced. Female employees report a greater disparity compared to their male counterparts. Surprisingly, over 60% of both male and female respondents agree that women lack the same level of digital expertise and knowledge as men.

The findings of this research should be interpreted in light of the fact that they are based on a perception-based survey. Local firms exhibit skepticism toward external researchers due to privacy concerns, making their participation challenging. However, it is noteworthy that the survey targeted front-line workers in the innovation and entrepreneurship field, providing informed perspectives that strengthen the study's outcomes.

This study reveals that while women form a considerable proportion the scientific workforce, gender diversity in innovation and entrepreneurship teams is lacking in a Global South country. Gender imbalance in innovation and entrepreneurship is thus present in both developing and developed countries, highlighting the need for interventions to promote gender diversity at the firm level.

The purpose of this paper is to examine two approaches to measure and diagnose innovation excellence.

The paper is a conceptual model for innovation excellence and a measurement system is developed. A Danish survey forms the empirical basis for the study, where a simple approach (by using stated importance of different innovation activities) and an advanced approach (by using derived importance based on structural equation modelling and PLS estimation) are demonstrated, discussed and compared.

The findings in this paper indicate good support for the developed model. When comparing the two approaches for identifying and prioritising improvements, both equalities and differences are found and discussed.

This study in this paper is limited to one Danish manufacturing company, which is considered to be one of the most innovative and excellent companies in Denmark. However, it is desirable to apply the model in other companies and industries.

This paper offers a model to understand and measure innovation results and its enablers, and the application of the model will give companies a better chance of attaining innovative excellence.

The paper provides a novel model for innovation excellence, which is based on a solid theoretical foundation, has been proven in practice, and can be an effective framework for identifying and prioritising improvements within innovation.

Innovation in rural tourism and hospitality (RT) is a complex process that involves the exchange of knowledge and resources between many actors and the interrelationships between those actors in the business environment. The purpose of this paper is to provide structure to this “knowledge and resource ecosystem” through a thorough systematic review of the extant literature.

The current study uses a time-tested and reproducible systematic literature review process to identify and analyse 79 research papers that have discussed innovation in RT.

Through content analyses, this review identifies critical stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem, as well as the enabling and hindering roles these stakeholders play in innovation. The thematic analysis uncovers three key research foci: stakeholders and their roles, outcomes of innovation and business model innovation. The review also identifies types of innovation and critically analyses the bibliographical research profile. The authors summarise the findings in an RT innovation ecosystem model, which includes the various actors and their knowledge and resource sharing roles within the business environment.

This is one of the first systematic reviews to concentrate on RT innovation and, within that focus, on knowledge and resource networks in particular rather than on innovation in tourism in general, which was the focus of prior reviews. The authors encourage cross-pollination of ideas by introducing theories from the strategic management, innovation, knowledge management and business model innovation literature wherever appropriate. To consolidate and present the findings on the innovation process’s antecedents and outcomes, the authors present an ecosystem of innovation within the RT framework.