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The main point of these analyses is to find out the skills and capabilities engineers should have in order to act successfully in the field of innovation.

The main approach is the identification of the profiles which are expected by the enterprises and companies from their engineers. The actual literature and scientific studies are screened in order to identify evidences for the characteristics of innovative engineers.

This study shows that professional, methodological, social, and personal competencies are important factors for innovation engineers in order to be successful in their professional life.

The final result of this analysis can be used as a guideline for universities and institutes of higher education to enrich their study courses in engineering with important elements of innovation engineering in order to fill the gap between the requested profiles of innovation engineers companies need and the profiles of university graduates.

Firms engaged in new product development (NPD) have to achieve a balanced portfolio of NPD projects. Despite the large number of models purporting to support portfolio optimization, most of them do not take into account political bias in project selection decisions. This paper aims to analyze approaches of organizational politics to NPD project selection and their implications for NPD portfolio management and future research.

A review is made of the current literature at the intersection between organizational politics and NPD project selection. With regard to the underlying assumptions of organizational politics, similarities, differences, practical implications, and research perspectives are identified.

From the paper, insights could be gained into explaining the effects of organizational politics on NPD project selection. However, the differences in assumptions that can be generally observed in organizational politics are also reflected in the studies analyzed. Future research could benefit from integrating different political and methodological perspectives.

In order to reach a balanced NPD portfolio, the potentially dysfunctional biases which characterize political processes from idea generation to project selection should be addressed. A concept of NPD portfolio management is proposed which considers the management of power and politics.

This paper contributes to a more comprehensive overview of political approaches of NPD project selection and serves as a sound basis for future research. The relevance and implications of politics for NPD portfolio management are demonstrated.

The purpose of the underlying paper is to strengthen and develop the theory around (dynamic) relational capabilities for firm innovativeness and competitive advantage with focus on the resource knowledge. Therefore one objective is the development of a theoretical concept of DRC within the research fields of social system‐theory, relational and capability‐based view. Another goal is the evolvement of the four DRC concerning the interorganizational knowledge transfer between firms.

The theoretical part is based on a literature analysis in strategic management research. The authors propose a theoretical framework – DRC – predicated on social system‐theory, relational and capability‐based view. The discussion concludes by providing management implications for implementation of DRC to practitioners in firms.

The outcome of this paper contributes to the underlying conceptual work for strategic and knowledge management of firms. In detail a theoretical concept – DRC – for managing knowledge to generate innovativeness and competitiveness is developed. Furthermore, the paper provides some management implications on macro‐, meso‐, and micro‐level of firms to implement them.

For practitioners the paper gives implications for implementing the theoretical considerations.

The concept has proven to be useful in improving the interorganizational knowledge transfer and innovativeness and competitive advantage in firms.