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Prior innovation orientation research has mostly focused on performance consequences, with some recent work examining its relationship with innovative practices such as open innovation. Yet, despite this growing body of open innovation research, there are still gaps and limitations. Notably, most prior studies have been conducted in Europe, limiting their generalizability to the rest of the world, and are replicative, exploring performance and competitive outcomes. There is very limited work examining the potential limitations of open innovation. This study extends innovation orientation research and examines the limitations of open innovation in North America.

This study explores the relationships between innovation orientation and performance, open innovation and performance and innovation orientation and open innovation among 386 North American companies.

This study is novel as it examines the relationships between innovation orientation and performance, open innovation and performance and innovation orientation and open innovation among North American companies. The research uncovers a linear relationship between innovation orientation and performance, a correlation between innovation orientation and open innovation and a counterintuitive curvilinear relationship between open innovation and performance. The curvilinear relationship, shaped as an inverted u-shape, suggests there are limitations to the strategy's effectiveness, actionable insight to companies, consultants and scholars alike. In the discussion section, findings are further unpacked with regard to their implications for the scholarly literature. The paper concludes with managerial considerations for creating an innovation orientation and the most effective level of open innovation for maximum competitive and performance implications.

Beyond the innovation orientation and open innovation research contributions, this study offers managerial insight for executives seeking to enhance competitiveness and drive firm performance.

This study aims to explore the different effects of inter-community group networks and intra-community group networks on group innovation.

The authors used a pooled panel dataset of 12,111 self-organizing innovation groups in 463 game product creative workshop communities from Steam support to test the hypothesis. The pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) model is used for analyzing the data.

The results show that network constraint is negatively associated with the innovation performance of online groups. The average path length of the inter-community group network negatively moderates the relationship between network constraint and group innovation, while the average path length of the intra-community group network positively moderates the relationship between network constraint and group innovation. In addition, both the network density of inter-community group networks and intra-community group networks can negatively moderate the negative relationship between network constraint and group innovation.

The findings of this study suggest that network structural characteristics of inter-community networks and intra-community networks have different effects on online groups’ product innovation, and therefore, group members should consider their inter- and intra-community connections when choosing other groups to form a collaborative innovation relationship.

The study aims to add to the body of knowledge of open source tangible product management (also called open design). The objective is also to develop a guideline for efficient open source tangible product development and adoption.

The exploratory research design using secondary data (like newspapers, magazines, research articles, bogs, papers, etc.) is used to analyze open source tangible product design challenges and enablers. The success stories of Open Source Software projects (OSS) were studied for identification of critical success factors and further their relevancy was tested in the two popular cases of open source drug discovery (malaria and tuberculosis)

Open innovation has become a part of competitive strategy of current businesses. It requires an efficient intellectual property protection regime for its implementation. However, in a market dominated by proprietary benefits, the open source technology development can serve as remedy for innovation needs of neglected sectors. The OSS literature revealed managing two classes of factors, namely technology sponsor level factors and environmental factors for efficiency and effectiveness. The case study analysis in the context of applicability of these OSS critical factors showed their limitations in open source tangible products, and highlighted understanding additional challenges and remedies.

Open source innovation is a collaborative effort involving inputs from various/diverse players, hence monitoring the effort and motivation level of the contributors is a cumbersome task. Only the information that is available online and in print media is taken as research inputs in this work. Also the data taken were from two case studies; a lot more case studies in the open design domain can progress the theory. The implications of this study are far-reaching in the areas where profit motivated proprietary efforts lack in addressing societal need. It provides guidelines for addressing those unmet needs by developing products in a collaborative way without intellectual property hurdles.

The essence of open design is becoming more vital, and there is a pressing need to build theory to support it, which still is elusive and dispersed. The study fills the gap using secondary data and case study approach.

The purpose of this study is to examine the state of the literature on knowledge sharing in open source software (OSS) development communities by examining the existing research and identifying the knowledge gaps and opportunities that can inform areas for future research.

A systematic literature review was conducted of literature published between January 2011 and February 2023. A total of 24 papers were identified and reviewed.

The findings reveal that the literature on knowledge sharing in OSS development communities from developing countries are limited. Additionally, there exists a limited focus on the development of frameworks to support knowledge sharing in OSS communities. The transient nature of OSS development contributors’ results in knowledge loss; thus, knowledge retention needs further investigation.

This study only included papers whose titles, keywords or abstracts included the search keywords “knowledge sharing” and “Open Source Software”. While the keywords were carefully applied, when applying the search, it cannot be ruled that some relevant studies might have been missed. The study was also limited to conferences and journal papers published in English. Despite the limitations, the study provides a systematic review of knowledge sharing in OSS communities and presents findings that can be useful to researchers and practitioners interested in this area.

The study provides a systematic literature review of published papers and identifies themes and future research areas on knowledge sharing in OSS communities. Additionally, this review offers insights into future research avenues for theory, content and context on knowledge sharing in OSS development communities.

In socio-technical transition theory, resistance by existing technology and regime resistance plays a key role. The resistance is in the form of intentional improvements; eventually, the regime destabilizes and adopts the new technology, referred to as the sailing-ship effect. Researchers used a structural view and examined it as a strategic action and its relationship with new technology (competitive/symbiotic) in non-fast-changing sailing systems. This study uses a microlevel view and examines it in a fast-changing where products/services are developed by integrating existing technology with new product innovations; their success depends on addressing technical/market uncertainty. This study examines the sailing-ship effect in a fast-changing system and contributes to the socio-technical transition theory.

The authors need to examine the phenomena of the sailing-ship effect in its setting, and a case-study method is appropriate. The selected case provided diverse analytic and heuristic perspectives to examine the phenomena; therefore, it was a single case study.

In an IT scenario, the strategic actions decide and realize agility and competitive advantage by formulating appropriate goals with required budgets and coevolutionary changes to resources at product, process and organizational levels, addressing technical/market uncertainty. Moreover, the agility displayed by strategic actions determines the relationship with new technology, which is interspersed. Finally, it provided insights into struggle, navigation and negotiations, forming strategic actions to display the sailing-ship effect.

The study selected a Banking Financial Services and Insurance product of an IT Services company. As start-ups exhibit inherent (emergent) agility, the authors can examine agility as a combination of emergent and strategic actions by selecting a start-up.

The study highlights the strategic actions specific to an IT services company. It developed its product and services by steering clear from IT innovations such as native cloud and continuous deployment. It improved its products/services with necessary organizational changes and achieved the desired agility and competitive advantage. Therefore, organizations devise appropriate strategic actions to combat the sailing-ship effect apart from setting goals and selecting IT innovations.

The study expands the socio-technical transition theory by selecting a fast-changing system. It provided insights into the relationship between existing and new technology and the strategic actions necessary to manage technical and market uncertainty and achieve the desired competitive advantage, or the sailing-ship effect.

As the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) impacts the world, software practitioners are collaboratively working remotely from home. The pandemic has disrupted software practitioners’ productivity forcing changes to agile methodology adopted by software practitioners in software organizations. Therefore, this study aims to provide implication on the issues and recommendations for improving software practitioners’ productivity and also examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on agile software development.

This paper adopts a narrative literature review to provide early assessment based on secondary data from the literature and available document reports from studies published from 2019 to 2022 to explore software practitioners’ productivity and agile software development during the working from home directive amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 60 sources which met the inclusion criteria were used to provide preliminary evidence grounded on secondary data from the literature. Descriptive analysis was used to provide qualitative findings from the literature.

Findings from this study present the significance of working from home directive on agile software development and software practitioners’ productivity. More importantly, findings from the secondary data shed light on software practitioners’ productivity adopting agile software development amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the findings present virtual collaborative platforms used by software practitioners, technical and social barriers of agile software development during the pandemic and recommendations for remote agile software development.

This study explores the significance of working from home directive on software practitioners’ productivity during COVID-19 pandemic and further investigates how are software practitioners’ productivity adopting agile software development practices amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, this study discusses the challenges software practitioners currently face and offers some strategies to bridge the gaps in agile software development to help software practitioners, system developers, software managers and software organizations adapt to the changes caused by the pandemic.

Various scholars suggest that there is a lack of research on the recruitment in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and also a scarcity of theoretical basis for the recruitment procedures used by these companies. As the vast majority of studies concentrate on larger organizations, they may not accurately reflect the challenges faced by smaller-sized entities to profoundly and accurately comprehend their recruitment procedures. In addition, the use of technology in recruitment has grown in importance in today’s quickly evolving business environment, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic footprint. This study aims to examine the recruitment procedures used by SMEs and how they have been compelled to adjust to different extents to these technological improvements by the effects of the aforementioned epidemic.

With the aim to investigate the current recruitment practices in SMEs and the extent to which digital technologies are embraced by these companies within human resources (HR) procedures, this research relied on interviews with SMEs representatives. The qualitative methods used provided access to relevant data and insights, as they allowed close interactions with top managers and CEOs of ten companies from various sectors. Thus, the research results draw a vivid and reliable image of the procedures and practices used by small and medium-sized companies to attract, select and retain their staff.

This study’s findings are of increased interest to HR professionals, recruiters and managers in SMEs, who aim to attract and retain the best talent and optimize their recruitment strategies in a rapidly changing business environment, enabled by technological advancements. Effective HR recruitment procedures adapted to the specific needs of small and medium-sized companies can lead to several benefits for the organization, including improved employee selection, reduced turnover and increased organizational productivity.

Although the interviews examined here encompass recruitment techniques from SMEs in a variety of industries, the results’ generalizability is limited by the sample size and geography. Furthermore, the findings’ dependability is dependent on the accuracy of the data provided by the respondents.

This investigation confirms some of the theoretical underpinnings which point to the lack of formalized structures and procedures in the recruitment process in SMEs, which enjoy more flexibility in managing HR processes. In addition, the results reinforce the arguments indicating an adjustment between HR strategies or policies and organizational goals in smaller enterprises which adapt faster to changes in the market. Moreover, it becomes apparent that there is a relationship between the quality of job descriptions and the successful fit in attracting the right candidates for the open positions. Furthermore, digital technologies offer opportunities for expanding the recruiters’ reach to a wider audience and also support the selection stage, thus increasing the chances of finding suitable staff. As the need to shift from traditional recruitment to e-recruitment in SMEs has been highlighted in the literature, the qualitative research revealed that this need was driven on the one hand by the COVID-19 pandemic when these companies successfully adapted and implemented new online methods of recruiting, but also by the lack of skilled labor, leading to the expansion of recruitment to other parts of the country or even to other countries.

With regard to the proportion of men and women used in small and medium-sized companies, there is a clear need to involve and train more women in the predominantly male-dominated industrial and IT sectors. From this point of view, companies tend to devote more interest to integrating communities of women in these industries, as well as in key management positions. Another point of interest that the study highlights is the fact that SMEs have started to get creative with the benefits package they propose to candidates and focus on remote work, hybrid office–home working, or seasonal work to offer future employees a better work–life balance.

The added value of this investigation is filling the gaps in the current literature concerning recruitment procedures currently used by SMEs, the challenges they face and the solutions they advanced to solve them. Furthermore, SMEs often drive innovation and competition in the market and play a crucial role in the supply chain of larger companies, providing them with the goods and services they need to operate and supporting the availability and reliability of products from larger companies. They are often the driving force behind revitalizing local economies and creating new employment opportunities. Consequently, the underlying significance of this study is rooted in the need to modernize and simultaneously improve HR recruitment procedures through the integration of technology and a focus on innovation.

This paper aims to explore the effects of director network on open innovation. As an informal institutional arrangement, the director network is an important source for the enterprise to obtain external information, which provide resource basis for open innovation. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) as the top of management team could make short-sighted decisions for personal interests; this paper also investigates the moderating role of CEO short-sightedness between director network and open innovation.

This paper takes 4,102 Chinese listed companies from 2007 to 2020 as the research sample. By introducing network centrality and structural hole to measure director network and using data mining to extract key words related to CEO short-sightedness from annual reports, this paper constructs several multiple linear regression models to analyze the impact of director network on open innovation and the moderating role of CEO short-sightedness.

The analysis finds that director network can facilitate corporate open innovation. Enterprises can acquire more external resources in high centrality and structural hole of director network and promote ability for corporate open innovation. The relationship between director network and open innovation is negatively moderated by CEO short-sightedness. When the level of corporate governance and analyst attention is high, the negative effect of CEO short-sightedness on the innovation effect of directors’ networks is suppressed.

This is the first empirical paper to investigate the promotion effect of director network on open innovation as well as the negative moderating role of CEO short-sightedness. The findings bring new perspectives to the open innovation and enlightenments for practical activities from social relationship aspect.

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are increasingly recognized among technologies potentially driving the digital innovation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Nevertheless, the implications of AR/VR adoption in innovation processes have yet to receive much attention to date, with the need to explore the issues facilitating a systematic implementation in the SME context. This study aims to investigate the possible innovation paths of SMEs as a result of AR/VR adoption.

The authors performed a multiple case study research involving six Italian SMEs in manufacturing and service sectors that are investing in AR and/or VR solutions and are digitally innovating thanks to these technologies.

AR/VR solutions lead to different types of innovation in SMEs, i.e. for innovating product or service offerings, business processes or even the business model, when AR/VR extends to the company business logic. SMEs demonstrate being able to leverage internal sources with the essential commitment of top management and low resistance of employees in all kinds of AR/VR-enabled innovations. Conversely, they involve different external innovation sources according to the type of innovation pursued. Organizational issues emerged as more relevant than technological issues.

Results contribute to the literature on digital transformation of SMEs and provide managerial guidance on innovation sources and organizational issues to be considered to effectively deploy AR/VR solutions into specific innovation paths.

This study explores the impact of emergent technologies in the innovation process along with multiple perspectives, degree of complexity, and strategic importance in the SME context.

The purpose of this study is to identify the business strategies that entrepreneurs have formulated to establish the business with the intention of scaling up in the information technology (IT) sector in Chile, given that they have managed to scale up sustainably at an average annual rate of 73.3% and an average annual employee growth rate of 37% for four consecutive years after an establishment period of 25 months.

Three methodological steps were used to identify which strategic initiatives are relevant to the establishment of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on the path to scaling up. The first part consisted of identifying the literature and defining the research propositions and research questions. The second part was to prepare, collect and analyse the data to conduct the research by applying, transcribing, reviewing and coding the sources of evidence to explore how SMEs are able to develop strategic initiatives for the start-up process. The final stage was to validate the research proposal to identify potential strategic initiatives identified during the multi-case study.

As a result of the data analysis and empirical findings, three deliberate strategic initiatives were identified: staying engaged with customers, delivering successful business solutions and articulating social capital. However, in crisis situations, entrepreneurs readjust their strategies based on their management skills and an emergent strategic initiative was identified as securing the financial structure and revolutionising change. While this research was not designed to identify personal attributes, it did highlight the importance of adaptation and learning as a skill to drive the business model for scaling up during the establishment of their business.

It is clear that the study focused on Chile and cannot be replicated in other regions or sectors due to the characteristics of the sample itself, but it provides empirical evidence that there are cycles prior to scale up that need to be understood. The findings were empirically validated during the establishment phase, but the deliberate and emergent strategic initiatives that consolidated the SME to prepare for its scale-up process are not evident in the theory.

The IT sector will continue to grow and change after the pandemic, and the global economy will use more digital systems, creating new ways of working with the use of IT. This context will impact on SMEs where strategies, whether deliberate or emergent, will need to be part of the new business models, and therefore, caution should be exercised when using the results of this study. Public and private institutions should educate and guide entrepreneurs for the potential scaling up of their SMEs without having to wait 42 months, according to Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2021-2022 (Hill et al., 2022). Scaling up can begin as early as 25 months after establishment, breaking the paradigm of the theory that the SME must be established in a period of 3.5 years. This period cannot be generalised as business opportunities in the IT sector are faster. The research also contributes by reporting that contingency planning is relevant during the establishment phase.

Educational institutions and the public sector have made efforts to change business cultures regarding the importance of strengthening entrepreneurship, but teaching the emergent strategies that often challenge SME creation is not yet widespread in educational formats. This is a challenge not only for institutions but also for entrepreneurs trying to anticipate the constant changes in the global economy. This research provides an opportunity to create more dynamic business models with more conscious risk planning.

Although the literature has confirmed the findings, this research has provided a pre-scaling picture that links these two important stages on the axis of deliberate and emergent strategies. The findings confirm the importance of correctly embedding five strategic initiatives for the establishment of the SME if it is to continue on its journey towards business scale-up. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence in emerging economies on how entrepreneurs have found the right path to scale-up.