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This study aims to determine the contributing factors to technical knowledge valuation at the related quadruple levels of commercialisation, including the idea, benchtop technical knowledge, prototype technical knowledge and commercialised technical knowledge, and then classify the factors by the valuation objectives.

The study method is descriptive-causal, and documentation tools of published scientific research articles in authentic local and international journals were used to extract the contributing factors to technical knowledge valuation. Moreover, the Likert spectrum-based questionnaire is used to determine the weight of each determined component. On the other hand, hierarchical analysis is used based on the extracted results from the distributed classification questionnaire among scholars to determine the allocable weight of each component.

The results indicate that at the idea step, the highest ranks among the contributing factors to technical knowledge valuation are for the indicators of innovation rate enhancement, novelty, creation of new products, profitability growth and dependence decline. In the benchtop technical knowledge step, the indicators of profitability growth, product quality enhancement, novelty, production risk drop, innovation rate enhancement, production costs drop, product price competitiveness and independence from rare machinery have the highest impact coefficients on valuation. Moreover, the prioritisation of factors in prototype technical knowledge shows that the indicators of productive risk decline, infrastructure, decrease in product delivery time, productivity growth and profitability growth are the most critical factors in technical knowledge valuation. Finally, profitability growth factors, production cost drop, productive risk drop, creating a new product, product price competitiveness and dependence decline determine the most valuable technical knowledge in the commercialisation phase.

The most salient innovation of the study involves the development levels of technical knowledge in the commercialisation cycle for determining the contributing factors to technical knowledge valuation and using multivariate decision-making methods to classify the so-called factors. The major limitation can be the context of the study because the paper was carried out by Iranian assessors and specialists using the experiences, opinions and approaches of opinion leaders based on the dominant social, cultural and accounting background of a developing country, not a developed one.

This paper is applicable because it elucidates the technical knowledge valuation factors for managers and owners of technological and knowledge-based companies to facilitate value determination and register the technical knowledge of innovative products in financial statements for the logical presentation of available intangible assets in the economic unit. Besides, in the high-tech area, collecting information from the contributing factors to technical knowledge valuation provides an opportunity to support intellectual property rights and facilitate transaction processes. Finally, in legal areas, in cases of breaching intellectual property rights relative to technical knowledge, the determination of technical knowledge value provides a solid basis for estimating the damage rate.

This paper aims to examine the causation linking financial technology to economic growth in the East African Community states from 1997 to 2019.

Autoregressive distributed lag is used. Gross domestic product per capita proxies economic growth, automated teller machines, point of sale, debit card ownership and mobile banking measure financial technology.

The results unveil a significant relationship between financial technology and economic growth. The findings show bidirectional causality between automated teller machine and economic growth, with unidirectional causation from economic growth to point of sales and internet banking, mobile banking and government effectiveness to economic growth. The error correction term is negatively significant, demonstrating a long-term convergence between Fintech measures and economic growth.

The governments should effectively enact and implement policies that protect investments in financial technologies to boost economic growth in the East African Community countries. The government should reduce taxes on financial technology equipment and related services. The use of automated teller machine, debit card ownership and internet banking should be encouraged through cashless transactions. Financial institutions should adopt cashless operation policies to encourage the use of financial technologies.

Research results on the bond between financial technology and economic growth are not conclusive. These studies demonstrate that technological innovations are double edged-swords, with both positive and negative sides. The results are conflicting; some reveal positive relationships, while others show negative links. Hence, research is required to fill the lacuna.

This paper aims to map the evolution of hydrogen-based technologies (HBTs) by examining the patenting activity associated to these technlogies from 1930 to 2020. In doing so, the study provides a novel perspective on the development of HBTs and offers implications for managers and policymakers.

We collected patent data at the level of patent families (PFs). Our sample includes 317,089 PFs related to hydrogen production and 62,496 PFs to hydrogen storage. We examined PF data to delineate the state of the art and major technical advancements of HBTs.

Our analysis provides evidence of an increasing patenting activity in the area of HBTs, hence suggesting relatively high levels of expectations on the economic potential of these technologies. US and Japan hold the largest proportion of PFs related to HBTs (about 60%), while European applicants hold the highest proportion of highly cited PFs (about 60%). While firms represent the applicant with the highest share of PFs, our analysis reveals that firms holding HBT PFs are primarily from the chemical sector.

While our analysis is limited to examining patent data which capture some aspects of the innovation activity around HBTs (namelly, patented inventions), our study enriches existing literature by performinng a patent analysis on a much larger sample of data when compared to previous studies.

Two main implications emerge from our study. Firstly, there seems to be an urgent need to support the emergence of a dominant design so as to facilitate the consolidation and diffusion of the HBTs, hence the transition to a more sustainable energy production. Secondly, the majority of HBT PFs are held by a small number of countries. This, in turn, suggests opportunities to develop cross-country cooperation (e.g. international agreements, research and technology offices) to support the development and adoption of HBTs globally.

Considering the results obtained in this study, from a social point of view, the attention that organizations have paid to hydrogen related technologies is evident. This suggests that the development HBTs can function as a social enabler for a sustianable energy transition.

Extant research has focused on the individual components of the hydrogen chain. As a result, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the progress made in the area of HBTs. To address this gap, this study examined HBTs by focusing on both production and storage technologies since their initial developments, hence adopting an observation period of about 70 years.

The authors investigate conditions that drive innovation performance in foreign-owned subsidiaries. The authors study five variables affecting innovation performance: organizational agility and digital capabilities as the main drivers and competencies and embeddedness in internal and external networks as complementary antecedents of innovation.

The authors draw on the neo-configurational perspective and apply fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to empirically test survey data from subsidiaries located in the emerging economies of Thailand and Vietnam.

While the authors find no single condition on its own determining innovation performance, the authors do find that in concert they form four configurations of high innovation performance. The results indicate that all configurations contain competencies, as well as that subsidiaries should prioritize between internal and external networks to complement agility, digital capabilities, to achieve high innovation performance. The authors also reveal intriguing contextual differences in the innovation performance configurations between the two host countries.

By incorporating causal complexity as well as substitutability and complementarity of innovation drivers, the authors extend the current understanding of subsidiary innovation performance outcomes.

This study aimed to examine the relationship between spiritual capital and small business innovation in a developing market economy and the highly religious society of Minangkabau.

A quantitative method was used by analyzing the data with partial least squares (PLS), comprising 278 entrepreneurial and high-growth aspiration small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) owners in a developing economy such as Indonesia.

The results showed that spiritual capital was a source of acquiring knowledge from innovation failure situations, serving as a catalyst for the occurrence of novelty and differentiation-related innovation.

The perspective of spiritual capital was provided within a religious community, showing that future reports should produce comparative analyses from varying contexts. Since understanding entrepreneurs' perspectives and spiritual capital situation remained ambiguous, the performance of qualitative analysis was crucial.

Entrepreneurs were expected to obtain considerable benefits from spiritual capital as a source of inspiration for differentiation and higher levels of novelty-related innovation. Similarly, policymakers should implement the capital and learn from failure to evaluate entrepreneurial SMEs concerning their capabilities.

Previous studies were unable to acknowledge an alternative source of innovation in a specific context, such as entrepreneurial SMEs with high-growth aspirations and spiritual capital. This is because capital contributes to innovation, helps in the assimilation of innovative knowledge and causes novelty-related innovation.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of novelty emergence in the context of an “off-line” open innovation system. Several contributions address novelty generation implying open innovation that is typically mediated by IT systems, while fewer address open innovation that takes place off-line, through new forms of collaboration happening in the so-called “physical spaces” and in widespread creativity contexts involving whole cities and territories. This research aims to clarify what the critical elements for novelty generation are, and how and why they interact in producing novelty.

This paper presents the case study of the Blackshape, a high-tech start-up that has become the Italian symbol of a new bottom-up economy that is grounded on high-education, a mix of territorial competencies and young initiative, and produces the development or growth of territories experiencing present or foreseen economic retardation for various reasons. This is a case in which novelty is emergent and takes place through exaptation. The case is used to elaborate an inductive understanding of the process of novelty generation through exaptation and follows a “conceptual composition” format (Berends and Deken, 2019).

This paper shows that initiatives building widespread creativity on the territory play a prominent role for emergent novelty generation, as they provide the context that sustains the efforts to keep on trying of entrepreneurs, welcomes unforeseen interaction and keeps interesting people on the territory that can be involved in random encounters. This paper adds that crucial contributions for the definition of the innovative project come from contributors that are expected to provide suggestions in other areas. Such prominent contributors are engaged in a sense “by mistake”, and here the randomness perceived by the actors experiencing it, because they are perceived to be able to provide some contributions, while they provide others that are more important to the project. This paper argues that such “perceived randomness” sustains a mechanism of selection of novelty generation partners that allows to go beyond the ability of actors themselves to design and foresee other actors’ contribution into the project. Finally, two other elements play a role: how the project is narrated, as well as, how the entrepreneurial team communicates their entrepreneurial competence for the project.

This theoretical understanding builds on only one case study; further research might validate the critical role of our understanding of novelty generation elements and help develop their dynamics further.

Many elements in our understanding of novelty generation have typically been understood as resulting from luck and randomness, leaving, therefore, very little hope to actors’ interest in supporting them. This paper claims that such elements and such dynamics can be sustained and novelty generation can indirectly be supported, for instance, by suggesting a high openness and sharing of one’s own project even to accidentally encountered actors, as one’s own ability to foresee how they might contribute to the project is very poor.

This paper provides a tentative understanding of the elements and dynamics of novelty generation through exaptation building on theoretical elaboration that is inductively triggered and stimulated by empirical evidence.

Knowledge management (KM) capability plays an important role in the promotion of firm performance in the knowledge economy era. However, empirical evidence on how KM capability affects firm performance is still limited. The study therefore aims to explore the impacts of internal and external KM capabilities on firm performance via the parallel mediation of efficiency-centered and novelty-centered business model innovations (BMIs).

The authors empirically analyzed a survey data of 295 Chinese innovative enterprises by applying partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

According to the results of PLS-SEM, the relationship between internal KM capability and firm performance is not significant, instead it is fully mediated by efficiency-centered and novelty-centered BMIs. External KM capability can directly and positively affect firm performance, while the relationship is also partially mediated by BMIs. Furthermore, the authors recognized the antecedent conditions for high-level and low-level firm performance by fsQCA analysis, which substantiate the above findings.

It not only enriches the literature that links KM and innovation management but also contributes to the new theoretical perspective on firm sustainable growth. Methodologically, it combines symmetric and asymmetric analyses together. Additionally, it provides some insights for managers to understand how KM capability drives firm performance through BMI.

Aerospace is a demanding technological and industrial sector. Several regulations and policies via innovative digital transformation have been integrated to impact production systems and supply chains, including safety measures. Studies demonstrated that the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies could enhance productivity growth and safety measures. The 4IR role in influencing airlines’ growth is yet to receive in-depth studies in South Africa. Thus, this study aims to investigate the role of 4IR technologies in influencing airlines’ growth in South Africa.

This research used a qualitative research method. Primary data were compiled via 56 face-to-face semi-structured interviews with major stakeholders. The study achieved saturation. A thematic method was used to analyse the collected data.

Findings reveal the nine major factors influencing South African airlines’ growth in the 4IR era. This includes investment in ergonomics applications and research, governance is driven by 4IR, collaboration and incorporation of 4IR concepts, partnership with drone technology and high precision and efficiency with 4IR. Others are reskilling and upskilling, investment in 4IR software, policies to promote 4IR usage in the industry and policies to reduce human interface.

Understanding the relative significance of 4IR technologies’ role in airlines’ growth can assist critical stakeholders in promoting innovative policies and regulations tailored towards digitalised aerospace. Thus, the study contributes to strategies to improve digital innovation, airline growth and safety as components of the air travel demands in South Africa.

The aim of the research is to examine in depth the relationship between financial support, entrepreneurship and economic growth in emerging African economies.

The study adopts the system-generalized methods of moments (sys-GMM) technique for data analysis and hypothesis testing on a sample of 34 African emerging economies (340 observations) from 2010 to 2019.

The results show that there is significant positive correlation between financial support, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. Moreover, entrepreneurship served as a partial mediator between financial support and economic growth in African emerging economies.

This research suggests that African governments should focus on entrepreneurial systems, which are essentially networks driven by the pursuit of individual opportunities and the promotion of new business creation; and introduce other forms of financial assistance, such as loans, loan guarantees, interest subsidies, technical assistance, insurance, etc.

The main novelty of the paper is that the authors empirically investigate the mediating role of entrepreneurship in the association between financial support and economic growth in 34 African emerging economies.

The purpose of this study is to check the impact of financial development on green technological innovation (GTI).

The sample size includes the 20-year (2001–2020) financial statistics of six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region countries. To check the proposed relationship, this research uses a series of econometric models including fixed effect, fully modified ordinary least square and robust least square models.

The statistical results imply that financial sector development has a direct significant impact on GTI. A developed financial sector can uplift green technological development by offering more loans to industrial sectors and the import of modern technology. The statistical analysis further reveals the positive impact of gross domestic product (GDP), foreign direct investment inflow and trade volume while the negative impact of resources contribution on GTI.

The findings suggest key policy suggestions regarding the role of the financial sector in promoting GTI in the GCC region.

The novelty of this study lies in its examination of the relationship between FD and GTI in the GCC countries, a region with its unique economic and environmental dynamics.