Search results

This work aims to investigate the current financial structure of Italian agri-food micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to understand how MSMEs face innovation challenges, which are also required to support sustainable development.

To reach the goal, an empirical longitudinal analysis is performed on a sample of Italian agri-food firms. In detail, to highlight the changes in the use of financial sources between 2013 and 2019, a descriptive ratio analysis is carried out on the data extracted by the AIDA database. In addition, statistical analyses were performed, including t-tests and U Mann–Whitney. Finally, a fixed-effects model is created to analyse the panel data. To ensure homogeneity, the sub-sectors of production and transformation are separately considered.

The financial structure analysis shows an increase in the equity percentage in the funding sources, attributable to an attempt to compensate for the reduction of banks' funding. However, even though this change has not compromised firms' profitability, the undercapitalisation of companies is still present. Therefore, more equity investments are required to support the innovation process.

The value of the present research is to highlight the choice of using new alternative financing sources instead of traditional banks' credit to implement sustainable and innovative development Italian agri-food sector (AFS). This choice is forced by reducing finance from banks and other financial institutions because of the credit crunch. This issue is even more relevant, considering that MSMEs have structural financial problems but have to fulfil the mission of pursuing innovation in the same way as large companies. Therefore, this paper expands the literature on agri-food, delving into an issue typical of MSMEs and combining agri-food with the need for innovation.

Innovation is a process that enables organizations to sustain and prosper in a competitive business environment. This study aims to understand the key drivers of innovation within organizations from the lens of employees.

This study uses a grounded theory approach based on semi-structured in-depth interviews of 20 professionals working in information technology (IT) firms. Judgmental sampling was adopted to select the respondents. Open coding, inductive analysis was conducted on the interview transcripts to generate relevant themes.

Emerging themes indicate that innovation within organizations can be triggered as a response to client requirements or the employees’ inherent urge to innovate. Certain factors such as user engagement, formal organizational processes and practices, informal collaborative practices, the role played by experts and leaders and upskilling were seen to enable innovative outcomes within organizations.

Findings from this study will allow leaders to activate the identified drivers by designing suitable organizational processes and strategies to nurture a successful innovation culture within their teams.

This grounded theory-based study looks at drivers of innovation within IT organizations from the perspective of employees.

As an important driving factor of digital innovation, distributed innovation has received extensive attention from academia and business circles in recent years. However, extant works lack a discussion on the influence of distributed innovation on digital innovation performance. Drawing on the opportunity perspective, the study constructs a moderated mediating model to address how distributed innovation directly affects enterprises' digital innovation performance. Particularly, it investigates the moderating and mediating effects of IT-enabled capabilities and digital entrepreneurial opportunities on the above correlation.

With a survey data set of 399 Chinese science and technology enterprises, the study conducts hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) and bootstrap to test the study’s hypotheses.

Results demonstrate that (1) distributed innovation positively enhances enterprises' digital innovation performance; (2) digital entrepreneurial opportunities partially mediate the positive relationship between distributed innovation and digital innovation performance; (3) IT-enabled capabilities positively moderate the relationship between distributed innovation and digital entrepreneurial opportunities; (4) IT-enabled capabilities positively moderate the mediating role of digital entrepreneurial opportunities in the relationship between distributed innovation and digital innovation performance.

This is an empirical study on the impact mechanism of IT-enabled capabilities and digital entrepreneurial opportunities on the relationship between distributed innovation and digital innovation performance in China. It advances theories related to distributed innovation, digital innovation and digital entrepreneurial opportunities, and provides decision-making references for the enhancement of digital innovation capabilities of science and technology enterprises.

Drawing on open innovation and knowledge-based view, this study was initiated by investigating the fact that despite the growing literature on external knowledge being important for bridging the knowledge gap across the new product development (NPD) processes, gaps exist to explore as to what are the potential knowledge sources and their contribution for the Fuzzy-Front end (FFE-) (i.e. idea-generation) phase of the NPD process?

Thirty-seven open-ended interviews with the NPD managers in large firms from the Chemicals and Electronic industries have been conducted to collect the data following thematic analysis into NVIvo 12.

The findings reveal customers, suppliers and external research organizations are the potential knowledge sources. Each of the sources delivers distinct knowledge for FFE of the NPD process. The empirical analysis of this study demonstrates that each of the potential knowledge sources though bridges the knowledge gap that innovative firms seek for the FFE of the NPD process, however collaboration with such sources incurs significant costs, risks, resources, capabilities and management practices which differs noticeably among different kinds of knowledge sources.

Managers must need assessing not just the gains but also the pains associated with each of the knowledge source before deciding to make additional investments in terms of resources and capabilities dedicated to learning from them while considering any of these for the FFE.

This new conceptualization of FFE offers a better theoretical and practical rationale for how and what types of different sources of knowledge can bridge the knowledge gaps for the FFE of NPD processes provided that innovative firms have necessary resources to entail a successful collaboration.

The objective of this chapter is to identify the key characteristics of Global Services businesses that will thrive and achieve success in the future. These factors are integrated into three main pillars, which we refer to as the Triple-Win. The first and most obvious pillar is technology as a tool. The second pillar is the design and sustainability of the business model, without which the previous factor would be merely a cost and not an investment. And last but not the least, there is the purpose which gives meaning to the proposal, focusing on the human being and their environment. The DIDPAGA business model sits at the intersection of these three elements.

This paper examines the effect of market knowledge on market success of product innovativeness and the moderating role of absorptive capacity. We separated market knowledge into market diversity and market significance components and examined their effects on radical product innovation performance.

This paper adopted the secondary database study. Excluding cases with missing values of main variables, a total of 1,219 Taiwanese manufacturing firms from the Third Taiwan Technology Innovation Survey (TTIS3) database were used to test the hypotheses. A moderated hierarchical regression approach was utilized to analyze the data.

The results revealed that the relationship between market diversity and radical product innovation performance is a predominantly positive concave downward curve. In contrast, the relationship between market significance and radical product innovation performance is a predominantly negative concave downward curve. Furthermore, the results also indicated that absorptive capacity has different moderating effects on the relationships between market diversity/significance and radical product innovation performance. Absorptive capacity enhances the negative effect of market significance but suppresses the positive effect of market diversity on radical product innovation performance.

This paper is the first research which contributes to examining the relationship between market knowledge and radical product innovation sale performance.

This study investigates the direct influence of ambidextrous leadership on employees’ innovation behaviour, the mediating role of innovative self-efficacy and harmonious work passion, and the moderating role of Zhong-Yong thinking.

The authors conducted a series of questionnaire surveys to collect data in three time periods and from multiple sources; 332 supervisor–subordinate matched samples were obtained. The hypothesised relationships were tested using structural equation modelling and ProClin.

Ambidextrous leadership is positively associated with employees’ innovation behaviour, while innovative self-efficacy and harmonious work passion play mediating roles. The analysis further confirms that innovative self-efficacy and harmonious work passion play a chained double-mediating role between ambidextrous leadership and employees’ innovation behaviour, while Zhong-Yong thinking plays moderating roles between ambidextrous leadership and innovative self-efficacy and between ambidextrous leadership and harmonious work passion.

This study demonstrates the influence of ambidextrous leadership on employees’ innovation behaviour, specifically the role of ambidextrous leadership, and extends the relationship’s theoretical foundation. It is also expected to provide inspiration and serve as a reference for local Chinese management.

Drawing upon insights from knowledge-based theory and the learning perspective, this study aims to explore safeguarding strategies in open innovation. Geographic diversity and collaborative breadth can effectively protect proprietary innovations that limit knowledge leakage concerns.

Using a cross-industry sample from the Taiwanese Technological Innovation Survey III, which covered 1,519 firms, the authors investigate the conditions under which partnership portfolios affect radical innovation.

The findings suggest that the partnership portfolio has an inverted U-shaped influence on radical innovation and that this relationship is moderated by geographic diversity and collaborative breadth. This work identifies a balance in the tension between diverse partnership portfolios and knowledge leakage with regard to open innovation activities.

This study provides senior managers with an indication of the relationships between partnership portfolios and innovative knowledge protection, identifying the geographic diversity and collaborative breadth that serve as safeguards to prevent leakages of a firm’s innovative knowledge.

This study makes an original contribution to the empirical exploration of innovation knowledge protection and provides new insights into the field of open innovation. The authors, thus, balance the tension between partnership portfolios and knowledge leakage.

This study aims to explore the associations between leadership styles (i.e. transformational and ethical) and innovative work behavior within higher education institutions (HEIs), additionally investigating the mediating role of work engagement and the moderating role of psychological empowerment.

The basis of this study rested upon adopting a cross-sectional research framework. The data were acquired from a sample comprising 825 academic staff and 275 leaders across 226 HEIs in China. Employing a quantitative methodology, the researchers used AMOS version 26.0 and SPSS version 22.0 for statistical analysis.

The results indicated that leadership styles (i.e. transformational and ethical) positively affected innovative work behavior, both directly and indirectly (via work engagement). Also, psychological empowerment moderated the linkage between leadership styles and innovative work behavior but not the association between work engagement and innovative work behavior.

Despite some existing literature having discussed the correlation between leadership styles and innovative work behavior, there appears to be a conspicuous dearth of research endeavoring to explore the mediator (i.e. work engagement) and the moderator (i.e. psychological empowerment) within the above nexus, especially in the context of HEIs. Thus, this study can be considered original, introducing novel perspectives and substantial contributions to the management literature on HEIs. In addition, it offers insights for organizational managers.

Given the importance of frugal innovation for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in developing countries, this study aims to explore the role of IT resources on frugal innovation through the mediating roles of knowledge sources and to what extent the relationship between sources of knowledge and frugal innovation is strengthened or weakened under the moderating effects of market turbulence.

This is an empirical study. Data were gathered from 355 SME employees of Pakistan through a questionnaire survey; the variance-based PLS-SEM approach was used to analyze the data.

Findings reveal the significant impacts of IT resources on different aspects of frugal innovation, namely, frugal functionality (FF), frugal cost (FC) and frugal ecosystem (FE). Moreover, the paper highlights the mediating roles of sources of knowledge in the relationship between IT resources and frugal innovation in frugal functionality and frugal cost. Findings also revealed that the moderation of market turbulence strengthens the effects of sources of knowledge on frugal functionality and ecosystem, but surprisingly weakens the relationship between sources of knowledge and frugal cost.

To bring a deeper understanding of the significant role of IT and knowledge sources, future research should examine the potential moderating role of environmental factors or perceived organizational support or mediating role of knowledge management processes in the relationship between IT resources and frugal innovation.

The paper provides a valuable understanding and novel approach for directors of SMEs in developing countries to improve their frugal innovation capability through IT and knowledge resources.

This study contributes to bridging research gaps in the literature and advances how IT resources, directly and indirectly, help firms improve frugal innovation capability via mediating roles of sources of knowledge.