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The purpose of this paper is to test the mediating role of three types of innovation (product, process, and organizational) in the relationship between manufacturing flexibility and performance.

Building on the resource‐based view, the paper examines the indirect effects of manufacturing flexibility on organizational performance considering product, process, and organizational innovation as mediating variables. A sample of 159 Spanish firms is taken to test the proposed theoretical model through structural equations modeling using the partial least squares approach.

The effect on organizational performance of adopting a flexible productive system is mediated by incorporating product, process, and organizational innovation. This paper calls for caution in defending flexible manufacturing systems as universally efficient solutions, and argues that their productivity is linked to the complementary introduction of organizational and technological innovations.

Firms that pursue manufacturing flexibility should develop innovation capabilities to obtain an improvement in organizational performance. Therefore, managers should bear in mind that the mere fact of adopting a flexible manufacturing system will not guarantee improvements in firm performance. If manufacturing flexibility is to help improve company performance, managers should use this flexibility to generate organizational capabilities based on product, process, and organizational innovations, since these are capabilities that can create competitive advantages.

Operations management literature has not reached a consensus about the effect of manufacturing flexibility on organizational performance. This paper helps both academics and managers to gain a better understanding of this question by considering the mediating effect of three types of innovation (product, process, and organizational) in this relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the information sourcing practices of small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) associated with the development of different types of innovation (product/process/market/organizational). The relationship between different types of innovation and firms' performance is also to be examined.

The paper is based on a quantitative study of a sample of SMEs located in the Northern Savo region in Finland. The entrepreneurs completed a questionnaire pertaining to, for example, whether their firms had introduced novel innovations and what were the sources of information behind these innovations.

The introduction of novel product and market innovations appears to be associated with the use of more or less freely accessible information sources. The findings also indicate that the introduction of novel product, process and market innovations is positively associated with firms' growth. None of the types of innovation studied was found to have a positive relationship with firms' profitability.

As the analysis was based on self‐reported data provided by the entrepreneurs of SMEs, the authors had to rely on their judgment regarding the novelty of the innovations they had introduced. Moreover, as the study was conducted in a single region with its idiosyncratic features, the generalizability of the findings to other regional contexts remains somewhat ambiguous.

The study suggests a need to re‐evaluate the innovation‐related services available to firms in the regional innovation system. The findings also imply the need for entrepreneurs and their firms to upgrade their competences in order to enhance their innovation and networking capabilities.

Relatively modest amounts of research have addressed the information sourcing practices of SMEs in relation to different types of innovation, both in terms of the object of change and the extent of change. The paper addresses this.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the influences of green product innovation and product process innovation on two constructs of green innovation casual chain: green product competitive advantage and green new product success. The impacts of green product competitive advantage as a partial mediator in the link between green product/process innovations and green new product success are also examined.

A model with four constructs is presented and tested on a sample of 203 R&D project leaders of electronics firms operating in China using quantitative methods.

It is found that green product and process innovations are positively associated with green product competitive advantage and green new product success, and green product competitive advantage partially mediates the relationships between green product/process innovations and green new product success. It is also found that green product innovation exerts a stronger influence on the consequential constructs than green process innovation.

The positive causalities among the constructs suggest that green innovation is more than a branding support. It pays to pursue green innovation. Green product innovation is demonstrated to have a positively stronger influence on both green product competitive advantage and green new product success than green process innovation. The difference in impact signals that when operating under limited resources, green product innovation should be pursued first.

The article addresses the gap in green innovation theory concerning the associations among the key constructs of green innovation causal chain. It is the first green innovation research ever conducted in the e‐industry in China. The causalities identified can be leveraged to improve Chinese e‐industry players’ innovative and competitive capabilities and to encourage them to stay proactive in addressing challenges arising from environmental issues.

Existing innovation frameworks suggest that manufacturing firms have traditionally developed a complementary model of technological innovations comprising process and product innovations (e.g. Oslo Manual). This article presents digital service innovation as a novel form of technological innovation that is capable of enhancing the performance of firms in certain manufacturing industries.

Drawing on technological innovation and digital servitization fields of research, this study argues that digital service innovation, in manufacturing contexts, complements traditional sources of technological innovation, so increasing the profit margins of firms. This effect is significant in industries characterized by business-to-business contexts, high presence of link channels and long product life spans (e.g. manufacturing and computer-based industries). Predictions are tested on a unique sample of 423 Spanish manufacturing firms using parametric (t-test) and nonparametric (fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, fsQCA) approaches.

The results of this analysis show that a necessary condition so that manufacturing firms can increase profits is the deployment of simultaneous process and product innovations. It also reveals that optimal configuration requires that digital service innovation be undertaken, particularly in machinery and computer-based manufacturing industries. Hence, all three sources of technological innovation are brought together in order to reach the highest levels of company performance. The evidence suggests that technological innovation and digital servitization are closely interrelated in highly innovative manufacturing contexts.

This study's originality and value reside in the fact that it reveals the existence of firms incorporating digital service innovation – a new, technological innovation dimension that challenges existing innovation frameworks – to complement traditional technological innovation sources, namely process and product innovation. Moreover, the study conceptualizes and empirically tests the value-adding role of digital services in firms' technological innovation portfolio.

This study explores the role of the key dimensions of farmers' entrepreneurial orientation – namely proactiveness, risk-taking, innovativeness and intentions – as drivers of product, process and market innovation in the context of one coffee MSP in Uganda.

Empirical data from 152 coffee farmers were analyzed via confirmatory factor analysis and partial least square multi-variate statistics.

Findings highlight, first, that farmers' proactiveness significantly drives their product innovation and, to a lesser extent, process innovation. This effect holds when considering key control variables, such as access to key resources and associated actors. Second, more surprisingly, farmers' innovativeness hampers market innovation. Third, entrepreneurial intentions per se did not play a significant role in farmers' innovation. Fourth, the adapted measurement of risk-taking from the Western literature did not suit well the Ugandan coffee farming context.

These results lead to methodological implications for the measurement of farmers' risk-taking, innovative and proactive attitudes, as well as market innovation in rural Africa. Furthermore, they expand the role farmers' entrepreneurial orientation on product, process and market innovation in a rural African context.

Multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) are often claimed to play an important role in stimulating farmers' innovation and enhancing rural development. Nevertheless, little is known yet on if why some farmers participating in MSPs may innovate more than others. This paper addresses this gap by shedding light on the role of farmers' entrepreneurial orientation.

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.

The combination of different knowledge sources has been considered conducive for innovation performance. While the literature has advanced regarding the combination of knowledge inputs as in internal and external research and development (R&D), the evolvement of knowledge blend from customers and competitors has also received substantial attention. The purpose of this paper is to delineate the sources of information from the customers into private and public and examine their direct effect on firm-level innovation. While the extant literature is mixed regarding this, no clear-cut results have emerged yet on the effect of knowledge combination from the private and public customers with internal R&D and human capital on innovation activities. This study, however, shed more lights on the inconclusiveness of the effect of knowledge diversity on firm-level innovation.

Using the microdata from the German Community Innovation Survey 2013, the authors employ a binary instrumental variable treatment model with Heckman selection, a suitable strategy to estimate binary variables to cope with a possible endogeneity issue.

The paper demonstrates that knowledge from customers in the private and public sector, and competitors are positively and significantly associated with innovation. The authors find evidence of a positive and significant effect of the combination of firm internal knowledge competencies with information from the public sector. In contrary, the blend of knowledge competencies with information from customers in the private sector and information from the competitors results in decline to innovation. The results also show that the blend of internal R&D with knowledge source from the customers in the public sector appears to have a stronger influence in the manufacturing sector than services. The results offer strong evidence of the positive link between knowledge diversity and firm-level innovation performance.

The results have significant managerial implications on the role of the blend of different sources of information in supporting a compelling internal knowledge development to optimise innovation performance.

This study is foremost to focus on knowledge sources from the customers in the public and private sector and its relationship with R&D and human capital in supporting a successful introduction of innovation.

Drawing upon information processing theory (IPT) and natural resource-based view (NRBV), this study analyses the role of social media technologies (SMT) on internal and external environmental collaboration and green innovation (green product, process and managerial innovation).

This study took in-depth empirical research by developing a survey questionnaire to identify the relationship between SMTs, environmental collaboration and green innovation. The respondents of the questionnaire were supply chain professionals working in the manufacturing industry of Pakistan. The survey collected 475 responses, which were tested through PLS-SEM using Smart-PLS.

The study results indicate that SMTs positively influence both internal and external environmental collaboration. Furthermore, internal environmental collaboration (IEC) fosters green products and green managerial innovation. In contrast, external environmental collaboration (EEC) fosters green processes and green managerial innovation. This study has also tested the mediation of IEC and EEC, which shows that both IEC and EEC mediate all the relationships except green process and green product innovation. The results also revealed that innovation capabilities moderate the relationship between environmental collaboration and green innovation.

Though this study has various practical implications, it is not free of limitations. First, the data were collected from Pakistan, and the results may only be compared with other developing countries. Second, few social media platforms have been considered, but they are increasing in numbers and could be used in upcoming studies. Third, green innovation in the context of products, processes and management is considered, but the concept is evolving, and its other indicators can be taken in upcoming studies.

This study addresses the implication of SMTs, environmental collaboration, innovation capabilities and green innovation, which are helpful for managers and policymakers to design policies.

This study provides the seminal operationalization of SMTs in environmental collaboration and green innovation. This study emphasizes innovation capabilities that firms should adopt.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of open innovation (OI) cooperation strategies on innovation outcomes of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), considering the mediating effect of firm age. The data come from six Spanish regions in the period 2009–2011. The authors analyse the impacts of two different types of innovation cooperation (with market and institutional agents) on four types of innovation outcomes: product, process, organisational and marketing.

The analytical method is based on logit regressions in order to assess the impact of OI variables on SMEs’ innovation outcomes. The regressions include a number of control variables related to the characteristics of the business, the entrepreneur and the environment.

The empirical results show that OI plays a significant role in explaining the innovation outcome of SMEs. Firm age is found to moderate this relationship. R&D cooperation with market agents exhibits the highest relationship to innovation, while the impact of institutional cooperation is comparatively lower.

There are few studies on OI addressing OI practices in SMEs. This research contributes to shedding light on the role of OI in innovation processes in SMEs. It also shows how this relationship changes depending on the partner, the type of innovation and the age of the firm.

Eco-innovation has been identified as a source of gaining a competitive advantage on a global scale. To build upon that, this study aims to deepen the understanding of eco-innovation in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and investigates the impact of having a clear eco-innovation strategy on a company's sustainability and performance.

A sample of 249 SMEs located in Portugal and the UK participated and structural equation modelling (SEM) was applied to explore the relationship among the constructs.

The findings reveal that both internal and external factors influence the design of an eco-innovation strategy. However, the relevance of external factors seemed to be more significant for Portuguese SMEs. This study concludes that product/process eco-innovations and green innovation systems are determinants for sustainable performance in SMEs. In contrast, the environmental technologies and organisational eco-innovation dimensions are not determinants. This is observed both in Portuguese and UK SMEs.

Most studies in the field tend to explore the role of eco-innovation in large organisations. This study takes a different approach by exploring its impacts on the sustainable business performance of SMEs. Furthermore, it combines data from two countries, which constitutes a strength and gives the opportunity to explore this phenomenon empirically.