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Manufacturers’ specific investments (SIs) in a specific partner that are of lower value when used in an alternative relationship, such as training employees and tailoring systems to achieve better cooperation, can help improve market performance. However, previous studies lack a simultaneous focus on a manufacturer’s SIs in its upstream and downstream partners. The purpose of this study is to address the effects of manufacturers’ SIs in their suppliers and customers on the two types of innovation and market performance individually and jointly and the mediating effects of radical and incremental innovation on relationships between SIs and market performance.

This study tests proposed relationships based on data collected from 206 manufacturers in China using regression methods.

Results show that SIs in customers directly and indirectly affect market performance through radical and incremental innovation. However, SIs in suppliers cannot directly improve market performance but indirectly enhance market performance through radical innovation. Furthermore, results also show the interaction of SIs in suppliers and customers is positively related to market performance and radical innovation.

This study contributes to the literature on SIs by identifying supply chain SIs (SCSIs) through simultaneously focusing on SIs in suppliers and customers and exploring the direct and indirect effects of SCSIs on market performance. This study also contributes to the innovation literature by empirically verifying incremental and radical innovation as effective intermediaries that help convert SIs into the actual performance improvement.

A firm's geographic boundaries represent an important demarcation line when searching for new knowledge. Prior research on geographic search has generated conflicting results concerning its influence on firm innovation outcomes. The purpose of this study is to fill the gap by examining how and under which conditions geographic search affects firm radical innovation performance.

This study hypothesizes a positive association between a firm's geographic search and radical innovation performance, which is mediated by potential absorptive capacity (PAC). It further proposes that the influence of geographic search on PAC will be moderated by a firm's collaborative network. Drawing on a random sample of 286 Chinese manufacturing firms, the theoretical model is tested.

The study's results show a positive relationship between geographic search and radical innovation performance, which is partially mediated by PAC. Moreover, attributes of collaborative networks (i.e. diverse location of and strong relational ties with partners) are observed to enhance the positive effect of geographic search on PAC.

This paper advances the understanding of how and when firms can better capture the benefits of geographic search in the development of radical innovation.

The objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between leaders' forgiveness and organizational performance using radical innovation as an explanatory variable.

The study was conducted in a sample frame of 11,594 Spanish companies. A total of 600 valid questionnaires were obtained. The structural equations were used to validate the proposed hypotheses.

Results confirmed the hypotheses proposed in the model: the authors provided, through structural equations, empirical evidence of the relationship between leaders' forgiveness and organizational performance, mediated by radical innovation. Leaders' forgiveness promotes radical innovation and, in turn, performance.

The sample of companies is heterogeneous in terms of firm turnover, size and age. The study is focused on radical innovation.

The present study may help to develop more humane policies to manage human resources, by taking into account employees' feelings and needs.

The business field is closer to competitive values and has traditionally underestimated the importance of leaders' forgiveness. This is one of the few studies that empirically analyze the consequences of leaders' forgiveness within organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of market, technology, and entrepreneurial orientations (EOs) on both innovation and firm performance. It analyzes the mediating effects of incremental and radical innovation within the context of entrepreneurial firms in Turkey, an emerging economy.

This study empirically analyses the impact of strategic orientations on firm performance through innovation with a sample of 818 small and medium enterprises in Turkey. To test the proposed model, LISREL is used.

Proactive market orientation (MO) and technology orientation (TO) lead to radical innovation, while responsive MO strongly affects incremental innovation. EO impacts performance directly and indirectly via both incremental and radical innovation.

Finding suggests that senior management of firms, especially in emerging economies should encourage marketing managers to focus on key trends of markets, both existing and emerging. These marketing managers should find and work with lead users to improve radical product development. This means that those managing marketing need to be well schooled in technology, and they should also possess a proactive MO.

The present study employs a two-part view of the MO construct (responsive and proactive MO). This conceptualization provides a greater degree of precision in the use of the MO concept which was rarely employed in prior studies. Moreover, this paper views strategic orientations as drivers of innovation and examines how radical and incremental innovation mediate the effects of MO, EO and TO on firm performance. Finally, this is one of the few studies to look at all of these factors simultaneously and to include the two-part view of MO.

Empirical results remain unclear as to whether organizational unlearning can improve radical innovation performance. The purpose of this study is to investigate how, and under which conditions, organizational unlearning influences firms’ radical innovation performance.

Drawing on the knowledge-based view, this study develops a theoretical model that hypothesizes a positive relationship between organizational unlearning and radical innovation performance, which is mediated by knowledge generation strategies. It also proposes that the impact of unlearning on knowledge generation strategies will be moderated by dysfunctional competition. Using survey data from 191 Chinese manufacturing firms, the hierarchical regressions were used to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results show that organizational unlearning not only impacts radical innovation performance directly, but also indirectly affects radical innovation performance through two distinct types of knowledge generation strategies: (internal) knowledge creation and (external) information searching. Moreover, dysfunctional competition plays a dual role, strengthening the positive relationship between organizational unlearning and information search and weakening the positive relationship between organizational unlearning and knowledge creation.

The present research broadens the understanding of how to promote radical innovation performance, which has great potential to improve the performance of firms on the market. Specifically, it deepens the knowledge of how organizational unlearning facilitates radical innovation performance by focusing on two distinct types of knowledge generation strategies as the crucial links, and enriches existing literature on the effectiveness of organizational unlearning in a dysfunctional competitive environment.

Practicing organizational unlearning for firms’ long-term success requires firms to develop and implement appropriate knowledge generation strategies in accordance with the characteristics of market competition in their operating environment.

This study offers new insights into how and under what conditions organizational unlearning affects radical innovation performance, enhancing the understanding of how organizational unlearning can be implemented to drive firm radical innovation.

Due to the constantly increasing competitiveness along with the complexity of knowledge, firms perceive collaboration as a key strategy that preserves firms' radical innovation performance. In this context, this paper aims to examine how firms’ partners’ diversity in open innovation activities influences the development of radical innovations, critical for social development. In particular, this study analyzes how the functional and geographical breadth of the firm’s collaboration portfolio affects its radical innovation performance. Furthermore, it also explores the role of firm size as a moderator in the relationships proposed.

This research employs panel data analysis, using a sample of 4,677 Spanish firms, with data sourced from the PITEC database.

The results of this study show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the functional and the geographical breadth of collaborations and the firms’ radical innovation performance. Moreover, this study finds partial support for the moderating role of firm size, in the sense that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms vary in their optimal number of diversity of partners.

This research provides a better understanding on how partners’ functional and geographical diversity, along with organizational characteristics such as firm size, affect how firms benefit from collaboration for innovation. This study shows that both SMEs and large firms experience diminishing returns when their collaboration networks become overly diverse in pursuit of radical innovation, due to increased costs. However, in SMEs, the turning point occurs at a later stage, consistent with the idea that small firms need broader functional networks to access complementary and novel resources they usually lack.

This paper examines the effect of market knowledge on market success of product innovativeness and the moderating role of absorptive capacity. We separated market knowledge into market diversity and market significance components and examined their effects on radical product innovation performance.

This paper adopted the secondary database study. Excluding cases with missing values of main variables, a total of 1,219 Taiwanese manufacturing firms from the Third Taiwan Technology Innovation Survey (TTIS3) database were used to test the hypotheses. A moderated hierarchical regression approach was utilized to analyze the data.

The results revealed that the relationship between market diversity and radical product innovation performance is a predominantly positive concave downward curve. In contrast, the relationship between market significance and radical product innovation performance is a predominantly negative concave downward curve. Furthermore, the results also indicated that absorptive capacity has different moderating effects on the relationships between market diversity/significance and radical product innovation performance. Absorptive capacity enhances the negative effect of market significance but suppresses the positive effect of market diversity on radical product innovation performance.

This paper is the first research which contributes to examining the relationship between market knowledge and radical product innovation sale performance.

This study aims to examine the joint effect of internal quality integration and product innovation on financial performance by considering the mediating roles of incremental and radical product innovation.

A theoretical framework was developed using the organizational capability view. Based on empirical survey data collected from 209 Chinese manufacturing firms, this research uses structural equation modeling and the bootstrapping method to test hypotheses.

The results show that internal quality integration positively impacts incremental and radical product innovation and financial performance. Further, incremental product innovation can promote radical product innovation. Both incremental and radical product innovation partially mediate the relationship between internal quality integration and financial performance.

The findings provide practical guidance for manufacturing companies to engage in quality integration and product innovation. Managers should encourage the internal functional departments to coordinate quality integration while promoting incremental and radical product innovation to occupy a larger market and achieve higher performance.

This research contributes to the literature in two ways. First, this study expands the theoretical research framework of the joint effects of quality integration and product innovation on financial performance. Second, through testing the mediating role of product innovation, this study provides empirical evidence for the intermediate role of internal quality integration for improving financial performance.

This study deals with the impact of resource scarcity on the innovation performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this paper is to scrutinise whether resource scarcity among SMEs has an effect on their innovation performance.

The sample was based on panel data for 302 SMEs from the mechanical and electrical engineering sectors. Firms were divided into four groups by resource scarcity: human resource scarcity, financial resource scarcity, both types of resource scarcity and no resource scarcity. To test for significant inter-group differences in innovation performance, multivariate analysis of covariance and a multiple discriminant function analysis were carried out.

The results indicated that resource scarcity can have a positive effect on incremental but not radical innovation performance in SMEs. However, the authors found this to be true for financial resource scarcity only.

These results may not be applicable to all SMEs, as the authors only focused on the industries of mechanical and electrical engineering. Future studies should focus on analysing the internal structures of SMEs that led to this study’s results. More research should also be conducted on ways that resource-limited SMEs can appropriately conduct radical innovations. Finally, resources should be made available for both practitioners and academics, explaining why the acquisition of resources is not always be the best option in response to limited resources.

These results indicate that resource-constrained SMEs, especially those that struggle with limited finances, should concentrate their innovation activities on incremental rather than radical innovations.

This study closes the knowledge gap as to whether it is beneficial for resource-limited SMEs to focus on either incremental or radical innovation. From the theoretical viewpoint, the resource-based view provides two strategies for resource-limited SMEs: acquiring new resources or recombining available resources. The authors were able to clearly demonstrate for the first time that the recombination of resources is especially important for SMEs that specifically wish to pursue incremental innovation.

While anecdotal evidence suggests that performance-based contracts (PBCs) may foster innovation in buyer-supplier relationships, the understanding of the underlying mechanisms is limited to date. The purpose of this paper is to draw on transaction cost economics and agency theory to develop a theoretical model that explains how PBCs may lead to innovation.

Using data on 106 inter-organizational relationships from the Dutch maintenance industry, the authors investigate how the two main features of PBCs – low-term specificity and performance-based rewards – affect incremental and radical innovation.

The authors find that term specificity has an inverse-U-shaped effect on incremental innovation and a non-significant negative effect on radical innovation. Furthermore, pay-for-performance has a stronger positive effect on radical innovation than on incremental innovation. The findings suggest that in pursuit of incremental innovation, organizations should draft contracts with low, but not too low, term specificity and incorporate performance-based rewards. Radical innovation may be achieved by rewarding suppliers for their performance only.

The findings suggest that in pursuit of incremental innovation, organizations should draft contracts with low, but not too low, term specificity and incorporate performance-based rewards. Radical innovation requires rewarding suppliers for their performance only.