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A firm will seek an optimal balance between internal R&D and technology outsourcing when formulating its innovation strategy. This paper aims to provide a review of the determinants of firm's innovation strategy, and performs an empirical study on a sample from Chinese high‐tech industry, with the purpose of identifying two aspects of the issue: the choice patterns of Chinese firms over innovation strategy, and the innovation effect elasticity of different strategies.

The development of a multiple regression model supported by data from industry level and a statistic analysis.

Outsourcing is the major innovation strategy adopted by most Chinese high‐tech firms, especially technology import, which implies the imperfection of Chinese innovation service system. The empirical analysis also indicates the insufficiency of internal R&D expenditure and the weakness of absorptive capacity in Chinese high‐tech firms. Although, Chinese high‐tech firms prefer the outsourcing strategy in their innovation, the contribution of outsourcing is much smaller than that of internal R&D. When expenditures are increased by the same rate, the innovation output form internal R&D is twice the output of outsourcing. For improving Chinese firms' innovation efficiency, the reform of innovation service system is needed on the macro‐level, while on the micro‐level, it calls for firms to readjust their innovation strategy portfolio.

This paper will make up for the deficiency in current researches on innovation, which often apply firm samples in developed countries, and lack evidences from firm samples in developing countries. In addition, it will provide the decision‐making basis for Chinese Government's current actions in constructing and improving China's innovation service system.

The purpose of this paper is to review the strategic fit of competitive strategies, market orientation types and innovation strategies.

The paper is prepared by reviewing the relevant literatures on competitive strategies, market orientation types and innovation strategies as well as comparing and contrasting the common characteristics to attain fit.

The paper presents the criteria for distinguishing the different types of competitive strategies, market orientations and innovation strategies, along with a framework that fits a particular type of competitive strategy, market orientation and innovation strategy.

The paper provides an action framework based on characteristics of the competitive strategies (business strategy) along with the benefits of adopting a particular market orientation type and innovation strategy (functional strategies). This will facilitate the managers to execute appropriate competitive strategy that could well align with appropriate market orientation and innovation strategy.

This brief paper presents an original framework, with significant practical applications in a concise manner. The framework will provide a guide to the hotel top management in shaping and fitting an appropriate competitive strategies, market orientation types and innovation strategies.

The advancement of technology has brought much uncertainty in the access and utilization of information resources in academic libraries. This research sought to determine the extent to which academic libraries in Kenya engage in innovation and use innovative strategies. In addition, this study aims to identify the specific innovation practices and strategies used by these libraries to ensure they effectively address users’ information needs and remain relevant within the Kenyan context.

This study adopted a qualitative research design. Data was collected using face-to-face interviews that targeted key personnel in the academic library system, including the university librarian, the circulation librarian and the digital/systems librarian. In total, 21 respondents were interviewed in this study. Additional data was gathered by examining primary documents such as academic library policies, university websites and library brochures, among other sources. The study used purposive sampling techniques to select the population sample and the theoretical saturation to determine the sample size.

The study revealed a pressing need for change in the academic library landscape in Kenya. It established that the concept of innovation and innovation strategies is still new in academic libraries in Kenya, and libraries are still confined to traditional and routine duties. There is a lack of appropriate strategies for enhancing innovation practices/strategies in academic libraries. The paper, therefore, strongly recommends the reorganization of academic libraries in Kenya.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to analyze innovation strategies and practices in academic libraries in Kenya. This study sheds light on the puzzles facing most academic libraries in Kenya regarding innovation and innovation strategies. It introduces the importance of academic libraries to embrace innovation as a strategy to avoid disruptive innovation.

This article focusses on the hybrid strategy, a simultaneous combination of cost leadership and differentiation strategy. The study aims to examine the impact of hybrid strategy on firm performance through its anticipated positive effects on process and product innovation. In addition, we study the moderating role of adaptive capacity in the direct relationships of hybrid strategy with process and product innovation.

Structural equation modelling was used to analyse 1,842 Spanish firms with fewer than 250 employees. We randomly selected small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in Spain from the Spanish Central Business Directory (2021) database. The overall sample design was based on stratified sampling.

We found that hybrid strategy is positively related to firm performance and to process and product innovation. Additionally, in firms implementing hybrid strategies, process innovation fostered firm performance. Finally, adaptive capacity strengthened the relationships of hybrid strategy with process and product innovation. This sheds light on how and when hybrid strategy is most effective in fostering SME performance.

We highlight that SMEs need to establish strategies that use diverse resources and capabilities and not just generate competitive advantage using one strategy (cost leadership or differentiation strategy). This requires an agile and flexible systems and structures.

Our research provides novel results by proposing the adoption of hybrid strategies instead of pure strategies (cost leadership and differentiation strategy) as a way for SMEs to survive during crises. Unlike “stuck in the middle” strategies, our study demonstrates the importance of hybrid strategies in a comprehensive model that links them to innovation and firm performance, with adaptive capacity being a determining factor.

This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

The purpose of this study is to propose a model of a value cocreation strategy (VCS) for analyzing how enterprises adopt innovative, marketing, and design strategies to achieve their performance goals through cocreation.

In the present study, a case study was conducted to establish a preliminary model. Subsequently, 1,000 NPD project managers in information and communications technology industries were approached to complete a two-stage questionnaire survey. The first survey investigated the VCSs they adopted for their marketing, innovation and design activities (valid questionnaires recovered=283). The valid respondents completed a second survey measuring their NPD performance 18 months after launching a new product (valid questionnaires recovered=247).

A conceptual was constructed to explain the effects of innovation marketing and design cocreation strategies on NPD performance. A partial least squares method was used to test the model showing a good fit between the model and the survey data, indicating the applicability of the proposed model. The innovation marketing and design cocreation strategies of the enterprises affected their NPD performance. Enterprises adopting diverse cocreation strategies improved their NPD performance. The cocreation strategies in the model were independent and mediating variables to NPD performance. A qualitative comparative analysis was performed to examine which strategy configurations affected NPD performance and to explore any regular patterns in them. Finally, a cluster analysis was conducted to investigate four cocreation strategies: market development, technology improvement, cost direction and customer service.

Whether different industry categories involve different characteristics and whether different corporate cultures cause inconsistent result in value cocreation warrants further in-depth investigation. In addition, the two surveys conducted in this study were separated by 18 months, and thus, only the short-term NPD performance could be presented. Future studies are recommended to conduct an extensive exploration of different industries, administer long-term surveys, investigate the different levels of influence of various types of enterprise on the proposed research model or examine the degree of difference in the mechanisms and methods adopted for elevating innovation performance.

Enterprises can reference the proposed approach to optimize their product development and services according to their organizational resources and market advantages to increase their market coverage.

This study was the first empirical study to examine critical factors, such as product innovation, marketing, design and value cocreation strategies, and NPD performance by administering two-stage surveys. Enterprises can reference the proposed method according to their organizational resources and market advantages to develop products and services efficiently and face the ever-changing market.

Innovation is a complex process, one easily identified as being of critical importance for organisational success yet not easily managed. As international competition intensifies and product life cycles shorten, the pressure to innovate heightens. This paper compares the effectiveness of radical, incremental, and integrated innovation strategies on performance excellence. Hypotheses are tested in a cross‐sectional study of Australian and New Zealand manufacturing companies. Quantitative data was gathered from a large sample in a mail survey of manufacturing site managers and analysed using multivariate analysis techniques. Three performance excellence outcomes (customer satisfaction, productivity, and technological competitiveness) were used as dependent variables in the regression models. The major finding of the study is that a “bottom‐up” continuous improvement strategy is the preferred strategy to improve customer satisfaction and productivity in Australian and New Zealand manufacturing firms. On the other hand, a “top‐down” strategy is considered appropriate for increasing relative technological competitiveness. Surprisingly, an integrated strategy had the least explanatory power on performance excellence. This is consistent with the literature perception that firms have not reached a stage of systems integration and networking. The main implication of the study for practicing managers is that a continuous incremental improvement strategy is the major driving force behind any improvement effort, and that radical innovations should be used to “jump start” critical products, services, and processes intermittently. Once these strategies are in place, managers will be well on their way in achieving systems integration.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effect of intellectual capital (IC), management accounting information systems, internal process performance and customer performance (CP) on the relationship of strategies with financial performance (FP).

The population in this research was medium and large manufacturing company business units in Java. The business unit as the unit of analysis in this research is part of the organization that: is responsible for the production and marketing of a product or set of products; is formed by product type; has its own competitors which are different from competitors of other business units or divisions within a parent company; and has a manager who is responsible and has authority over the planning and implementation of strategies to achieve the specified profit target.

An innovation strategy that includes product innovation, process innovation and technology has an impact on FP if there is a good internal process performance, reliable management accounting information system and good CP. The internal process performance, which includes operations management processes, customer management processes, innovation processes and regulatory and social processes, optimizes the relationship of the strategy with FP. In this study, IC does not affect CP and internal process performance, nor does the management accounting information system affect FP. However, information systems affect FP through internal process performance and CP.

The originalities of this study are: the use of the continuous innovation strategy in an integrated manner between product innovation and process and information technology – this has never been conducted by other researchers, especially in Indonesia; the use of IC, management accounting information systems, internal process performance and CP as mediating variables; the use of an integrative approach by including variables of IC, management accounting information systems and non-FP as contextual variables related to contingency approaches that have never been conducted in previous research; the modeling of new related concepts with the one developed in the balanced scorecard; and using single mediating and multiple mediating on the influence of sustainable innovation strategies on FP.

The purpose of this research is to reveal how to improve the quality of entrepreneurship by exploring the key factor, opportunity development, impacting the innovation strategy of new ventures. It also introduces political and business ties as moderating variables to reveal the uniqueness of entrepreneurial activities in the Chinese context.

Empirical data from 215 entrepreneurs and top executives in Chinese new ventures were gathered through a survey and the statistical method used is the regression model.

The empirical results indicate that: (1) new ventures' opportunity creation positively impacts innovation strategy, while opportunity discovery has a curvilinear (inverted U-shape) impact on innovation strategy; (2) the relationship between opportunity development and innovation strategy is moderated by political and business ties.

This research analyzes and compares the effect of opportunity discovery and opportunity creation on new ventures' innovation strategy. This research further offers an in-depth understanding of the influence mechanism between opportunity development and innovation strategy among Chinese new ventures. Further, the results provide practical guidance for new ventures to develop innovation strategies and for Chinese governments to make entrepreneurial policies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what types of open innovation search strategies are associated with internal innovation activities in family and non-family SMEs within natural resource-based clusters.

This study is based on an empirical analysis of a sample of 245 Chilean firms.

Results suggest that while family and non-family SMEs do not significantly differ in terms of internal innovation activities, important differences exist in terms of open innovation search strategies. In particular, family SMEs search for new ideas and knowledge within their closest network of relationships (e.g. customers, suppliers and competitors), whereas non-family SMEs mainly focus on broader network relationships (e.g. universities, public institutions and fair trade organizations).

This study shows that within a natural resource cluster, the types of firm do matter. In fact, family and non-family SMEs use different open innovation search strategies to innovate; hence, this research may help and assist policy makers in tailoring innovation policies aimed at expanding the potential benefits of clusters for regional growth and development.

This research addresses the call to further investigate the link between family SMEs and innovation in developing countries, given that SMEs may also act as a lively player for regional development.

El objetivo de este artículo es investigar las estrategias de búsqueda de innovación abierta de las pequeñas y medianas empresas familiares y no familiares en un clúster basado en los recursos naturales.

Este estudio está basado en un análisis empírico con una muestra de 245 empresas Chilenas.

Los resultados muestran que no hay diferencias significativas en las actividades internas de innovación entre las pequeñas y medianas empresas familiares y no-familiares de la muestra. Sin embargo, se han encontrado diferencias en las estrategias de búsqueda de innovación abierta que utilizan de las empresas. Las empresas familiares buscan nuevas ideas y conocimiento para innovar entre sus contactos más cercanos (por ejemplo: clientes, proveedores y competidores). Las empresas no-familiares se enfocan en contactos más amplios (por ejemplo: tales como universidades, instituciones públicas y ferias internacionales).

Este estudio muestra que distinguir entre empresas familiares y no familiares dentro de los clúster basados en los recursos naturales es importante. Las pequeñas y medianas empresas familiares y no familiares usan diferentes estrategias de búsqueda de innovación abierta. Por lo tanto, nuestros resultados pueden ayudar al diseño de políticas públicas de innovación diferenciando empresas familiares y no familiares con el objetivo de potenciar los beneficios de los clúster para el crecimiento y desarrollo regional.

Este artículo intenta avanzar en la investigación relacionando innovación y pequeñas y medianas empresas familiares en países en desarrollo.