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Drawing on a sensemaking perspective, this study aims to theoretically and empirically investigate the effects of participative corporate political activity (PCPA) on radical innovation and how regulatory uncertainty and technological uncertainty affect firms’ choice of PCPA as well as its effectiveness on radical innovation.

Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the research model based on survey data collected from 227 Chinese manufacturing firms.

The results indicate that PCPA has a significantly positive effect on radical innovation. Both regulatory and technological uncertainty are positively related to PCPA. In addition, regulatory uncertainty strengthens the positive relationship between PCPA and radical innovation, whereas technological uncertainty weakens this relationship.

This study reveals that firm managers should be mindful that PCPA is beneficial to firms’ radical innovation activities in China. Additionally, although regulatory uncertainty and technological uncertainty can drive firms to engage in PCPA to cope with the ambiguity they experienced, managers should also be alert to the complicated role of environment forces in enlarging or discounting the positive effect of PCPA on radical innovation.

The findings offer fresh insights into the use of PCPA to manage the uncertain external environment when pursuing radical innovation activities in China.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how boundary-spanning demand-side search (BSDSS) fuels radical technological innovations as well as how innovation appropriability moderates this relationship. In particular, based on Teece’s (1986) argument regarding the appropriability of innovation, the authors divide factors to influence innovation appropriability into two types: external institution related and internal capability related.

This study employs a survey methodology. Specifically, the authors collected a sample composed of 150 high-tech manufacturing Chinese firms.

Results show that BSDSS has a positive effect on radical technological innovations. Further, the authors find that dysfunctional competition and political ties negatively moderate the main effect, whereas firms’ legal and IPRs protection capabilities positively moderate the main effect.

One major limitation is that the findings are based on data derived from Chinese firms, which may limit the generalization of the findings.

The findings suggest that firms competing Chinese market, both Chinese and foreign firms, should actively leverage BSDSS to boost radical technological innovations. Chinese firms should pay attention to the negative roles of appropriability hazards originating from external institutional environment. Foreign firms in Chinese market should be cautious on potential dysfunctional competition from local competitors, such as imitation and intelligence property violation, and enhance appropriability through building internal capabilities, such as legal and IPRs capabilities.

The study highlights the crucial roles of BSDSS in radical technological innovations, as well as the moderating roles of innovation appropriability. These results provide new insights into the drivers of radical technological innovations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the proper matches between institutional business ties (to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and to banks) and firm capabilities (technological capability and marketing capability) in impacting the radical innovation of manufacturing firms in China.

Using the samples of 208 manufacturing firms in China, this study runs three regression models to test all hypotheses.

Ties to SOEs and ties to banks are positively related to radical innovation of manufacturing firms in China. Further, the technological capability and marketing capability have different functions on moderating the relationship between institutional business ties and radical innovation.

The results imply that managers of manufacturing firms should strive to establish close connections to those organizations that are set-up by government in China. In addition, managers should cautious about the synergies between different institutional business ties and different internal capabilities, and properly matching them to develop radical innovation.

This study enriches and extends the managerial ties literature by going beyond previous narrow focus on either business ties or political ties to address a particular type of organization that is set-up by the governments but operate in the business world. The findings of proper ties-capabilities matches provide nuanced understandings to dynamically manage external resources and internal capabilities for the synergetic benefits (e.g. radical innovation). This study also offer a theoretical paradigm (i.e. resource management model) for manufacturing firms to lessen the striking tension between the urgent needs for radical innovation and the hostile ground for conducting radical innovation.

This study is to compare the impact of organizational agility and flexibility on performance of each type of product innovation (radical vs incremental innovation). Additionally, the moderating effect of technological turbulence on the relationship between the two types of organization is examined.

Based on gaps in the existing literature, the survey data are collected from managers who are in charge of developing new products in three industries: food and beverage, chemical and machinery (N = 431). Confirmatory factory analysis is used to verify measurement items and regression analysis is used to test hypotheses.

The results show that organizational agility increases performance in radical innovation both in a certain situation and an environment with technological turbulence. In contrast, the impact of organizational flexibility is limited to increasing performance in both radical and incremental innovation performance in a certain situation.

Our study extends the knowledge of organizational agility and flexibility in the domain of product innovation. Adaptation of organization to respond the technological turbulence will stimulate creativity of new product development teams to produce new useful ideas and transform these ideas to product innovation. The different types of organizing a new product development team to handle technological turbulence will provide different results in product innovation performance. In addition, the findings provide a recommendation on how the organization of a new product development team can improve performance in each type of product innovation under technological turbulence.

This study aims to build a theoretical model including intermediate-level outside-in marketing capabilities (ILOIMC), radical and incremental technological innovations and management innovation.

This research used 272 pairs of survey questionnaires from Chinese firms’ managers to examine the hypotheses.

The results indicate that ILOIMC enhance management innovation by stimulating radical technological innovation. Furthermore, the mediating effect of incremental technological innovation depends on technological turbulence.

This study may have several limitations which future research could try to overcome: cross-sectional data, Chinese samples, exclusive focus on ILOIMC, sociotechnical approach to innovation typology and measuring ILOIMC as a first-order variable.

ILOIMC can significantly improve innovations in technology and management systems by using customer value and market information.

This study proposes a new taxonomy to classify marketing capabilities into lower-level inside-out marketing capabilities, ILOIMC and higher-level outside-in marketing capabilities. It also provides an explicit discussion and examination of the influence of ILOIMC on technological and management innovations and the contingency effect of technological turbulence. Thus, it responds to Musarra and Morgan’s (2020) call for more research into the mechanism that explains when (the conditions under which) and how (the process by which) outside-in marketing capabilities could contribute to firm innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the effect of radical innovation and incremental innovation on the competitive advantage of Jordanian industrial companies and identify the moderating role of technological intensity.

For this study’s purposes, 303 questionnaires from employees of 30 manufacturing firms were analysed. Convergent validity and discriminant validity tests were performed through structural equation modelling in the Smart-PLS programme. Data reliability was confirmed. A bootstrapping technique was used to analyse the data. Multi-group analysis was performed to investigate the moderating role of technological intensity.

Empirical results showed that both radical innovation and incremental innovation explain 60.2% of the variance in competitive advantage and that both constructs have a statistically significant effect on competitive advantage. The results also revealed that the relationship between radical innovation and competitive advantage is modified through the high-tech industries. Meanwhile, the relationship between incremental innovation and competitive advantage is modified through the low-tech industries.

This cross-sectional study provides a snapshot at a given moment in time, a methodological limitation that affects the generalization of its results and the results are limited to one country, Jordan.

This study promotes the idea of focusing on radical and incremental innovation to enhance competitive advantage in the Jordanian manufacturing sector and knowing the effect of technological intensity in this relationship.

This study has important implications for leaders in the Jordanian manufacturing sector in general, as the study highlights the importance of radical innovation and incremental innovation to enhance the competitive advantage, especially in light of the technological intensity in this sector, and thus, increase the innovative capabilities of this firms, which leads to an increase in the level of competitive advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the management of hazards arising from the make-buy choice in the face of radical technological change. This sourcing choice can lead to distinctive exchange and hierarchical hazards. This study’s main interest is in investigating the research question “How can firms reduce those distinctive exchange and hierarchical hazards arising from the make-buy sourcing strategy when dealing with radical technological change?”

The author develops hypotheses that the in-house retention of outsourced component knowledge will likely reduce exchange hazards arising from the buy strategy choice. And prior exploratory technological experience will likely reduce hierarchical hazards arising from the make strategy choice. The author explores the US mountain bicycle industry from 1980 to 1992 to test the developed hypotheses. For endogeneity arising from the make-buy sourcing decision, the author uses Heckman’s two-stage switching regression model.

The major findings are that the in-house retention of outsourced component knowledge and prior exploratory technological experience is distinctive moderating factors improving performance of a buy strategy and a make strategy, respectively.

Since the extant literature tends to focus on which of the two sourcing strategies provides the greatest performance advantages in the face of radical technological change, there is a strong implication to suggest that if a firm performs poorly with one sourcing decision, the firm should switch to an alternative one. Different from the expositions of the literature, this study elevates the understanding regarding how firms can improve the performance of their current sourcing orientation rather than whether they should switch from one sourcing strategy to another.

Business firms are subject to accelerating technological change and related changes in the strategic value framework. Mistakes due to the misperception and misunderstanding of technology impacts have been very costly. The purpose of this paper is to investigate, describe and model the process of technological evolution as a dynamic value framework for strategy and related decision making.

The research centered on the evolution of technology‐value vectors and their economic and strategic impacts. Information was collected from various known academic and professional publications. The paper also benefited from feedback gained from the presentation of an earlier version at ISMOT, 2007, Hangchow, China.

The paper indicates firms often have difficulty transitioning from one phase of a technology‐value vector to another, especially when presented with a super radical innovation, possibly because of strategy and related decision making. The adaptability of firms, from phase to phase, may be improved by a clearer perception and understanding of the relevant technology‐value vectors or vector.

As the technology‐value vector model is new and offers many new perspectives it will be subject to further research, refinement and validation. It is best used to assess and explore medium to high technology. It does not explore specific market aspects such as preferences, place and time which are left to future research.

The model develops a tool and concepts for a clearer view and understanding of the economic/market forces impacting medium to high‐technological evolution. It is expected that this will lead to improved related strategy and decision making in medium to high technology firms.

The paper develops and describes a model of the evolution of the technology‐value vector, which may act as a dynamic framework for strategy in medium to high‐technology industries. The research may have many other uses, including the management and planning of technology.

This study aims to investigate the relationships between radical innovation, market forces and political/business relationships in China by combining social capital theory and contingent theory. The paper focuses on how two types of managerial ties (i.e. business and political ties) impact firms’ capacity for radical innovation. It also examines the different moderating effects of market forces (i.e. demand uncertainty, technological turbulence and competitive intensity) on the linkage of managerial ties with radical innovation in the Chinese transitional context.

A systematic literature review on managerial ties, radical innovation and market forces in emerging markets provides the theoretical foundation of our conceptual model and hypothesis. Using a survey sample of 119 Chinese firms, the authors conduct a regression analysis on the theoretical model and hypotheses.

The results show that business ties have an inverted U-shape effect on radical innovation, while political ties have a positive impact on radical innovation. Furthermore, the market forces in transitional economies (i.e. demand uncertainty, technological turbulence and competitive intensity) have different moderating effects on the relationships between two types of managerial ties and Chinese firms’ radical innovation.

This study adopts its data set from the Chinese context. It would be necessary to replicate this research in other transitional economies because of specific differences between China and other transitional economies.

Findings from our study indicate that firms which wish to succeed in radical innovation may need to adapt their tie-based strategies according to different market settings.

The paper is original in its comparative investigation of the effect of business ties and political ties on radical innovation in contingent transitional market environments using a combination of social capital and contingent theories.

This research aims to address how a firm can mobilise resources through interfirm relationships to bridge technological discontinuities.

This research adopts a processual single case study to undertake an empirical investigation from the perspective of a technology-bundled net as the research boundary.

This research produces three key findings. First, mobilising resources across firm boundaries to create an adequate bundling of product, process and marketing technologies is the cornerstone of bridging technological discontinuities. Second, resource mobilisation between firms in the transition to a new technological trajectory is affected by the sediments accrued in the existing (old) trajectory. Third, technological discontinuities may be competence-enhancing, and their radical effects may originate from non-technical causes.

This paper contributes to the research of radical innovation from an interaction and networks perspective and also by focusing on resource mobilisation taking place in the transition from an existing technological trajectory to a new one. In particular, this paper takes into account the relatedness of resources and the influences of past interaction underpinning an old trajectory in the bridging of technological discontinuities.