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Adapting to external and internal transformations is a difficult task that managers and scholars must face while attempting to keep their organisations alive and well-established. This chapter explores the various decision-making tools that can assist practitioners and scholars to improve their understanding of the external scenario to determine the contemporary appropriateness of these approaches for analysing the environment and their implications for various types of organisations. The chapter investigates the barriers and drivers of these methods and proposes existing alternative paradigms created by academics and practitioners to analyse and comprehend the context. It demonstrates how these decision-making tools can be implemented by providing examples and case studies.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the moderating effect of digital transformation (DT) on the relationship between innovation capacity and the performance of agrifood businesses.

Based on a structured questionnaire, data on 98 agrifood small and medium-sized enterprises operating in Spain were collected. The data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling to test the proposed model and study the moderating effect of DT on the relationship between the innovation capacity and performance of agrifood businesses.

The study finds support for the hypotheses and shows the existence of a direct positive relationship between the DT and performance of agrifood businesses. Developing new practices focussed on customer service and performing actions such as improving sales, promoting a new product or service and including a post-sales service influence the capacity of a business to undertake DT.

Future studies should include other factors in the analysis. For example, the impact of knowledge transfer and research and development (R&D) on agrifood businesses' performance should be studied. Education and training, as well as having a diverse network, can help develop and boost businesses' capacity to use and apply the required innovation. Networks play an important role in learning how to apply DT.

This quantitative study is the first to examine the moderating effect of DT in the Spanish agrifood sector on the relationship between innovation capacity and performance. The study examines the role of the DT of companies and explores the competitiveness and efficiency tools that digitalisation offers. Innovation capacity is crucial for the application of these tools.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between strategy intent (product-service innovation intention) and outcome (product-service innovation outcome), and the role that external sources of innovation play in influencing this relationship.

Using data obtained from the community innovation survey, we apply a logit regression to a sample of 1,419 Portuguese firms. By examining the moderating effect of open innovation breadth, we assess how the relationship between differentiation intent and outcome is contingent upon the involvement of external stakeholders.

Our findings reveal that the relationship between differentiation intent and outcome is contingent upon the moderating effect of open innovation breadth. Our analysis suggests that the negative influence of different sources of innovation can be addressed by adopting a paradox lens.

This research provides valuable insights for managers. By simultaneously pursuing a differentiation strategy and engaging in collaboration with external sources, firms may compromise their ability to effectively differentiate their offer. Managers should consider the potential tensions arising from internal and external stakeholder relationships to optimize their innovation strategies.

This study contributes to the existing literature by shedding light on the role of external innovation sources in influencing the relationship between differentiation intent and outcome and the importance that information systems may have in this relationship. By exploring the moderating effect of open innovation breadth, we provide a nuanced understanding of how firms can navigate organizational tensions and leverage innovation for competitive advantage.

Firms are driven to ride on the digital wave in today’s open innovation ecosystem. This study aims to explore the effect of digital transformation (DT) on knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) firms’ innovation ambidexterity, namely, radical versus incremental innovation, respectively. Meanwhile, the authors evaluated the moderating role of the complexity of R&D collaboration portfolio (i.e. organizational diversity and geographic diversity) in the above relationships.

Using a panel data set of 171 Chinese listed firms in the information and communications technology services industry from 2010 to 2018, the proposed hypotheses were empirically attested.

It is found that DT has a positive relationship with radical innovation and an inverted U-shaped relationship with incremental innovation. In terms of the R&D collaboration portfolio, organizational diversity positively moderates the relationships between DT and innovation ambidexterity, respectively. The geographic diversity weakens the inverted U-shaped effect of DT on incremental innovation; however, its moderating role in the link between DT and radical innovation is not empirically verified.

Extant scholars mainly addressed the interplay between KIBS firms and their manufacturing clients, while this study reveals the different consequences of DT on KIBS firms’ innovation ambidexterity to highlight the role of KIBS firms is an independent and essential innovator in a knowledge-driven economy. Notably, the findings contribute to knowledge management (KM) and R&D literature by confirming the diversity of the R&D collaboration portfolio is a critical KM strategy for KIBS firms to develop and promote external knowledge resources.

Introduction: Cost competitiveness, customer focus, and sustainability compliance are essential for new-age firms to survive and succeed in the VUCA market environment. This study examines how automobile corporations have improved cost competitiveness, productivity, and product quality.

Purpose: This study examines the importance of cost competitiveness, customer focus, and sustainability compliance for the long-term survival of organisations in VUCA markets, looking at the practical efforts made by automobile corporations to enhance cost competitiveness, productivity, and quality.

Methodology: The study utilises a comprehensive analysis of the strategies and initiatives implemented by the selected automobile companies. It involves a review of relevant literature, case studies, financial data analysis, and interviews with key industry experts, providing a holistic understanding of the actions taken by these organisations to achieve their goals.

Findings: The study reveals that cost competitiveness, customer focus, and sustainability compliance are critical factors for the long-term survival and success of organisations in the automotive industry. The analysed automobile companies have undertaken practical efforts to improve cost competitiveness, enhance productivity, and ensure high-quality products, enabling them to navigate the challenges and maintain a competitive edge.

Significance: The findings of this study contribute to a deeper understanding of the importance of cost competitiveness, customer focus, and sustainability compliance in the automotive industry. It highlights the need for organisations to constantly monitor both qualitative and quantitative profit to avoid complacency and ensure long-term efficiency. The study’s insights are relevant to businesses operating in other sectors, as they face similar challenges in the VUCA market environment.

Due to e-commerce growth, technological advancements and environmental concerns, developing a more nuanced service portfolio has become a critical issue for last-mile logistics service providers. Concurrently, consumers are adopting new modes of consumption. This paper aims to investigate the potential for last-mile logistics service providers to act as intermediaries in access-based consumption and to revitalise their service offerings through product-service systems – a pioneering strategy not executed in the market yet.

This strategic customer foresight study uses a quantitative survey of 1,000 respondents and an online focus group comprising 10 early adopter consumers to investigate emerging last-mile service models. Potential service concepts were identified through the survey, and two distinct concepts were subsequently selected for evaluation and co-development within the focus group. The research was conducted in partnership with an SME logistics company in Finland.

The consumers expressed selective interest in access-based consumption related to the proposed offering of essential household goods. Young adults and consumers in early middle age living in the city centre emerged as the most potential user groups. Economic reasons and short-term needs were the primary motivations for adopting access-based consumption.

The study showed that engaging consumers in a customer foresight process is viable for SMEs innovating their offerings and demonstrates how the process works in practice.

Documented cases of customer integration into foresight processes are rare in earlier research, and this paper extends the knowledge base through a multidisciplinary examination of future consumer behaviour in the last-mile logistics domain. The paper also expands the limited literature on the role of logistics in access-based consumption.

Despite increasing focus among scholars and practitioners on the design of product-service systems (PSS), there exists no compilation of current knowledge on the role played by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in designing such systems. Thus, this paper sets out to identify and organise the existing research and suggest questions for future research.

A systematic literature review was performed to identify and provide in-depth details on key themes in the literature addressing the design of PSS in SMEs.

This paper identifies five themes in the literature on the design of PSS in SMEs: motives, challenges, SME characteristics, methods and digitalisation. The themes are interrelated, and SME characteristics seem to be at the core as they are related to all the other themes. Gaps in the current knowledge are identified, and questions for future research are suggested.

The suggestions for future research provide a starting point for expanding the research on PSS design and devising practical support for SMEs.

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 investigate how international entrepreneurial firms (IEFs) successfully commercialise innovative products/services internationally. In doing so, the authors examined the role played by the international dynamic marketing capability (IDMC) in the relationship between explorative and exploitative innovation and commercialisation. In addition, the authors also evaluated how the breadth and depth of international networks facilitate IEFs in upholding the effects of the IDMC to influence commercialisation.

To test the research model, structural equation modelling is used based on time-lagged survey data drawn from 201 Malaysian IEFs. To validate the results, additional robustness tests and endogeneity analyses have been performed.

The findings show that the IDMC positively mediates the relationship between explorative and exploitative innovation and commercialisation. Furthermore, the finding exhibits that the effects of the IDMC on commercialisation are positively moderated by the breadth and depth of international networks.

Given the fragmented and general nature of the extant marketing research on the IDMC, the study contributes to the international marketing literature by providing rich and nuanced pertinent knowledge. This study advances dynamic capability theory in relation to IEFs by establishing the IDMC as a functional capability suited to enable them to successfully commercialise the products/services resulting from explorative and exploitative innovation.

This study aims to explore the determinants (bank-specific, industry-specific and macroeconomic) of income diversification across interest income and non-interest income as well as for non-traditional income sources (non-interest income) from 2004–2005 to 2021–2022.

An unbalanced data set comprising 110 Indian commercial banks with 1480 observations is sampled in this study. Because of the bounded nature of the dependent variables (proxies of income diversification), the panel Tobit regression model is used.

The findings reveal that income diversification is positively influenced by bank size, technological advancements, cost–income ratio, return on assets, market competition and inflation in the economy. However, the decision to diversify income sources is adversely impacted by the capital ratio, GDP and financial intermediation ratio. Moreover, factors such as asset quality (loan loss provisions) and liquidity ratio do not directly influence the diversification strategies in the Indian banking industry.

The present study uses an extensive set of variables to provide insights into key factors for bank managers, regulators and policymakers to consider before developing diversification strategies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the various bank-specific and macroeconomic determinants that affect income diversification in the Indian banking sector. The current study also investigates new variables such as technological advancements and a market concentration index for measuring competition, which have not been investigated in existing literature concerning bank income diversification in the Indian context.