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This study first aims to survey the state of user innovation in Iran and then identified barriers and incentives for user innovation in Iran.

In this study, a questionnaire (through 1,360 adults from Iran) prepared by De Jong (2016) was used to survey user innovation.

The results showed: the percentage of user innovators is high in Iran, there is no linear relationship between the income of a country and the percentage of the user innovators, there is a positive relationship between the education level and the percentage of user innovators in Iran, there is no linear relationship between the number of people educated in the scientific and technical fields and the percentage of user innovators. Finally, based on surveying users opinion in questionnaire, four incentives and five barriers in user innovation were identified that can help policymakers to improve their innovation policies.

Literature review in this field showed it was found that in a number of developed countries, the issue of user innovation has been addressed, but in Iran as a developing country, no such research has been conducted so far. In addition, it was found that so far, no comprehensive research has identified barriers and incentives for user innovation, so this study, first surveyed the state of user innovation in Iran and then identified barriers and incentives for user innovation in Iran.

Although the overall impacts of innovation and innovative practices have been emphasized in recent years, the effect on the growth of firms in Nigeria have not been proven. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of innovative practices on the growth of quantity surveying firms (QSFs) in Nigeria.

The study adopted the quantitative correlational research design in which a well-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from QSFs in South-West, Nigeria. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis to investigate the effect of innovative practices on the growth of QSFs.

The study reveals that there is a significant increase in the growth indices used for assessing QSFs, while all the innovation variables were found to be reliable. Based on the result of multiple regression analysis, the relationships were identified as follows: quantity surveying (QS) software influenced the size growth of QSFs; QS software and services affected client growth and profit growth; and all innovation practices impacted asset growth of QSFs.

Although the use of software tools has been found to negatively affect the size of QSFs and other growth indices, there is need for them to embrace innovative software applications for more quality service delivery. In addition, QSFs should formulate strategic objectives that will guide them in taking informed decisions for diversification.

The outcome of this study provides information and direction for innovation practices required to bring about the growth of QSFs.

Innovation is considered as an important tool to succeed and survive in periods of great uncertainty such as COVID-19 crisis. This paper aims to empirically examine the propensity to engage in product, process and organizational innovation under uncertainty among small and medium enterprises and how that propensity varies depending on the gender of the manager.

Using the results of 213 responses by managers of Armenian small and medium enterprises in the scope of GLOBE-2020 survey, the authors investigate the role of manager’s gender in encouraging innovative attitude under uncertainty. To measure the relationship between uncertainty and innovation (product, process and organizational), Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated between managers’ perception about the uncertainty and their perceptions of innovation within their companies compared to the players in the external environment. In addition, a linear regression was run between the three innovation types and uncertainty.

The results of our analysis confirmed the positive relationship between uncertainty and innovation. Moreover, our results indicate that male managers have a higher tendency to undertake innovation under external turbulence.

This study fills the gap in the literature by studying the relationship between uncertainty and innovation, focusing on SMEs during adversarial times, which in contrast to bigger companies are limited in terms of their resources and, hence, capacity to innovate. The paper examines the gender dimension as an internal factor affecting innovation under uncertainty in an under-researched country context of Armenia, where female entrepreneurs deal with unique challenges to engage in innovative activities.

Although employees' creativity is vital for firm innovation and overall performance, little is done to examine the potential association between creativity and employment. This paper investigates the contribution of employees' creativity, process and product innovations to firm-level employment growth.

The authors use data from World Bank Enterprise Survey and Innovation Follow-up Survey on 9503 firms covering the period 2012–2015 in 11 countries from sub-Saharan Africa and Heckman's two-stage estimation model.

This study's results indicate a positive role of creativity on firm-level employment growth. In addition, the authors find evidence for a complementary effect arising from the combination of creativity with managerial experience, staff level of education and their associated skills, in contrast, combining creativity with internal or external R&D results in a substitution effect. Interestingly, these synergy effects are pronounced for SMEs but absent for large firms.

Policy makers in developing economies of sub-Saharan Africa should stimulate company management to use free time offered to employees to be creative in the workplace as one of their key strategies to stimulate employment growth. This strategy is expected to be particularly fruitful among SMEs having some managerial experience and skilled stuff.

In contribution to innovative work practices and workforce creativity, the authors demonstrate that providing employees with free time could be an alternative way to enhance the focal firms' performance.

The prevailing view in the existing literature is that open innovations (OI) increase the innovative performance of enterprises. The author examines whether the same OI practices are equally important for sole entrepreneurs, micro firms, small firms, medium-sized and large enterprises in introducing radical innovations and which set of OI practices is best for a firm, given the firm's size.

In this study probit models were used on a sample of 915 innovative Serbian enterprises.

OI is important for all enterprises introducing radical innovations. However, not all OI practices are equally effective in each enterprise size group. The set of OI practices leading to radical innovations depends on the firm size. Cooperation with others is not important for sole entrepreneurs and micro and large companies in introducing radical innovations. Still, cooperation's role is predominant in small and medium-sized enterprises. Also, certain OI practices are important for all enterprises, whilst others do not contribute to radical innovations, regardless of the firm size.

Owners/managers can save considerably by avoiding the allocation of resources to OI practices that result in little to no contribution to radical product commercialisation. At the macroeconomic level, these findings can help policymakers create adequate (tailor-made) public policies to achieve innovation in each specific group of firms.

This study demonstrates that not all OI practices are equally important for achieving radical production solutions in each group of enterprises.

This study contributes to the literature on eco-innovation (EI) and the circular economy (CE) by providing insights into the factors of external knowledge absorption that facilitate the adoption of a subset of EIss called proactive-EIs. Proactive-EIs involve collaborations among multiple stakeholders, the use of technical knowledge and a greater level of investment than other innovations. In this study, the environmental actions taken by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in resource-intensive sectors in the European Union (EU) were observed, and elements related to the national context were compared.

The national innovation system (NIS) perspective was adopted using a multilevel framework to assess the determinants of proactive-EIs among SMEs in the EU. The framework involves three levels: micro- (environmental awareness), meso- (external collaboration and intra-industry agglomeration) and macro- (economic complexity, trade openness and government research and development [R&D]). The survey data of 6,188 SMEs in resource-intensive sectors were analysed using a binary logistic regression.

The results showed that public awareness, economic complexity and public sector R&D positively influenced SMEs' adoption of proactive-EIs, whereas external collaboration and sectoral agglomeration negatively influenced adoption.

Among the existing empirical studies on EI, areas related to external knowledge-based innovations and systematic assessments of heterogeneity among EU member states remain underexplored. This study contributed to the literature by assessing the conditions surrounding external knowledge absorption. The findings contribute to the green entrepreneurship literature in the context of developed economies and offer insights for managers and policymakers seeking to promote EIs.

Firms are the primary producers of innovations, and understanding how these agents acquire, update and manage the knowledge of their employees is central to understanding economic growth. However, in developing economies, technology adaptation plays a critical role in innovation compared to knowledge creation. Thus, this research investigates the role of human capital in innovation at the firm level in the case of a small developing economy, which ranks highly on several human capital dimensions but shows declining levels of investment in advanced human capital development in its manufacturing sector.

This research examines the relationship between innovation and human capital at the firm level in a small peripheral economy. The human capital theory is applied to a firm context to understand variations in innovative behavior depending on the size of manufacturing companies. The effect of several human capital dimensions on product innovation is estimated by applying binomial logistic regression models with firm and time-fixed effects.

This article contributes to innovation economics and public policy by highlighting that not all dimensions of human capital operate similarly for all companies in the context of developing economies. In such settings, technology adaptation plays a critical role in innovation. While employees' human capital endowments significantly impact small firms in that context, firm-level practices such as internal training are crucial for large companies. Consequently, policymakers should consider that firms' human capital endowments impact their innovative behavior differently to avoid one-size-fits-all policy design approaches in this regard.

Prior research on the relationship between human capital and innovation in developing economies was based on a cross-sectional approach. This research's unique panel dataset covering 11-year triennial innovation surveys enabled a modeling strategy that controls for time-invariant unobservable firm characteristics. Three aspects of firms' human capital have been analyzed human capital endowments, internal training and human resource management (HRM) practices for the first time longitudinally in a developing economy, enabling to contrast of empirical findings with policy design.

The study examines the effect of human and social capital-supporting human resource (HR) practices and structural capital-supporting culture on innovativeness and the mediating role of knowledge management (KM) processes in the knowledge-intensive Indian IT sector.

Using a quantitative approach, the authors collected data from 387 employees in 30 IT organizations via a questionnaire survey. The authors analyzed data using structural equational modeling using AMOS 26.

The results indicate complete mediation of KM processes between human capital-HR (HCHRP), social capital HR (SCHRP), bureaucratic culture (BOC) space and innovativeness. KM processes partially mediated the effect of innovative-competitive culture (IOC) on innovativeness. KM processes have a robust predictive capacity for innovativeness, suggesting that human capital-supporting HR and innovative-competitive culture significantly contribute to KM Processes and innovativeness, respectively.

This study provides practical insights to HR and knowledge managers to leverage their HR practices and organizational culture for improving innovation performance in KISO.

The paper adds to the intellectual capital and KM literature by exploring the mediating role of the KM process in the underlying mechanism suggesting that intellectual capital can enhance HR and culture, leveraging a firm's knowledge resources for innovativeness. It fills a research gap by providing original evidence based on primary data collected from India's IT sector.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between strategy intent (product-service innovation intention) and outcome (product-service innovation outcome), and the role that external sources of innovation play in influencing this relationship.

Using data obtained from the community innovation survey, we apply a logit regression to a sample of 1,419 Portuguese firms. By examining the moderating effect of open innovation breadth, we assess how the relationship between differentiation intent and outcome is contingent upon the involvement of external stakeholders.

Our findings reveal that the relationship between differentiation intent and outcome is contingent upon the moderating effect of open innovation breadth. Our analysis suggests that the negative influence of different sources of innovation can be addressed by adopting a paradox lens.

This research provides valuable insights for managers. By simultaneously pursuing a differentiation strategy and engaging in collaboration with external sources, firms may compromise their ability to effectively differentiate their offer. Managers should consider the potential tensions arising from internal and external stakeholder relationships to optimize their innovation strategies.

This study contributes to the existing literature by shedding light on the role of external innovation sources in influencing the relationship between differentiation intent and outcome and the importance that information systems may have in this relationship. By exploring the moderating effect of open innovation breadth, we provide a nuanced understanding of how firms can navigate organizational tensions and leverage innovation for competitive advantage.

The purpose of the study is to investigate how small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can effectively collaborate for eco-innovation using the business modes of innovation framework to emphasise three types of collaboration: “science, technology, and innovation” (STI), “learning by doing, using, and interacting” (DUI)-Vertical and DUI-Horizontal.

This analysis uses data from 838 SMEs in the Basque Country (2018–2020) to evaluate the effects of the three types of collaboration on eco-innovation. The authors employ a propensity score-based method to address potential bias associated with endogeneity in innovation studies.

The findings suggest that DUI-Vertical collaboration has a positive relationship with the development of product, process and marketing eco-innovation. Furthermore, DUI-horizontal collaboration is the most effective collaboration mode for SMEs, positively impacting their overall eco-innovation portfolio. Finally, STI collaboration is positively associated with product eco-innovation.

Policymakers should support SMEs by designing programmes that facilitate collaboration between competing firms to stimulate eco-innovation, but potential challenges of coopetition must be addressed. Rather than a generic, one-size-fit-all approach, SMEs' managers should identify the most appropriate partners corresponding to their specific eco-innovation goal, ensuring a more effective and targeted. Collaboration between science partners and SMEs should be reinforced by approximating the SMEs' needs more effectively.

This study contributes twofold. Firstly, the authors investigate whether the STI and DUI modes of innovation are determinant factors in the introduction of various types of eco-innovation. Secondly, the authors contribute to the literature on business modes of innovation by differentiating between DUI-Vertical (i.e. suppliers, customers and consultancy) and DUI-Horizontal (i.e. competitors) collaboration, thus highlighting the complexity of DUI collaboration forms.