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This paper aims to explore how companies access resources through network relationships when developing service innovations. The paper identifies the types of resource that companies seek from other actors and examines the nature of relationships and resource access strategies that can be applied to access each type of resource.

A longitudinal, multi-case study is conducted in the field of technical business-to-business (b-to-b) services. An abductive research strategy is applied to create a new theoretical understanding of resource access.

Companies seek a range of resources through different types of network relationships for service innovation. Four types of resource access strategies were identified: absorption, acquisition, sharing, and co-creation. The findings show how easily transferable resources can be accessed through weak relationships and low-intensity collaboration. Access to resources that are difficult to transfer, instead, necessitates strong relationships and high-intensity collaboration.

The findings are valid for technical b-to-b services, but should also be tested for other kinds of innovations. Future research should also study how actors integrate the resources gained through networks in the innovation process.

Managers should note that key resources for service innovation may be accessible through a variety of actors and relationships ranging from formal arrangements to miscellaneous social contacts. To make use of tacit resources such as knowledge, firms need to engage in intensive collaboration.

Despite attention paid to network relationships, innovation collaboration, and external resources, previous research has neither linked these issues nor studied their mutual contingencies. This paper provides a theoretical model that characterizes the service innovation resources accessible through different types of relationships and access strategies.

The research question is how can a company implement a circular innovation in a supply network context? Leveraging the main conceptual and interpretative models of the industrial marketing and purchasing thinking, this study aims to investigate the interplay between the process of circular innovation development and the changes in the structure and dynamics of the supply network in which innovation takes place.

This research applies a case study design focusing on participant interaction dynamics. The case relates to an industrial company producing an innovative coating solution for compostable packaging. The data used to develop the case study came from multiple sources but primarily from semistructured interviews that cover the implementation of the circular innovation and the configuration of the circular network.

The dynamics of interconnected relationships can configure a circular network that interconnects business and non business actors through vertical, horizontal and heterogeneous relationships. The network configuration is supported by the new mobilizer actor that facilitates the sharing of circular knowledge within the circular network, together with the sharing of a market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation within the supply network, through the educational learning path.

This paper aims to contribute to a new understanding of how circular innovation can be developed, adopted and diffused. In a network, when circular innovation takes place, the focal issue is not the new product or technology in itself but how such innovation is developed and implemented by and through the reconfiguration of the business and non-business relationships into circular network.

Partners' knowledge is an essential source of knowledge for organizations in the collaborative innovation. Exploratory innovation is an innovation strategy that is significant to the organization and is characterized by learning and absorbing new knowledge for new products and technology. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of partners' knowledge utilization on exploratory innovation and to analyze further the moderating effect of previous competitive and collaborative relationships between organizations on the above relationships.

In this study, the patent data of 1,636 organizations in the nano-biopharmaceutical field collaboratively from 1998 to 2020 are used as a sample. The knowledge networks and collaboration networks are constructed through the patent data. A negative binomial regression method is used to conduct the empirical study.

The results indicate that partners' knowledge utilization has an inverted U-shaped effect on exploratory innovation. The competitive relationship steepens the inverted U-shape effect of partners' knowledge utilization on exploratory innovation and makes the turning point to the left. The collaborative relationship steepens the inverted U-shape effect of partners' knowledge utilization on exploratory innovation and makes the turning point to the right.

This study is the first to examine the impact of partners' knowledge utilization on exploratory innovation and to explore the role of the competitive and collaborative relationships between organizations. It extends current research in organizational innovation and knowledge management by providing insight into partners' knowledge utilization.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of technological diversification (TD) on enterprise innovation performance, meanwhile focusing on the moderating effects of various organizational slack (i.e. absorbed and unabsorbed slack) and ownership types (i.e. state-owned or privately-owned) in the context of Chinese listed firms.

This study formulates five hypotheses based on organization and agency theories. Our empirical analysis employs a fixed-effect regression estimator with a unique panel dataset of Chinese-listed manufacturing firms and 13,566 firm-year observations over 9 years from 2012 to 2020.

Our findings show that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between TD and innovation performance, varying with different types of organizational slack and ownership. In state-owned enterprises (SOEs), unabsorbed slack negatively moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship; however, in privately-owned enterprises (POEs), this relationship is positively moderated. Although absorbed slack has negative moderating effects in both SOEs and POEs, its impact is only significant for POEs.

Our results imply that organizational slack has a contrasting impact on the relationship between TD and innovation performance when the type of ownership varies. Therefore, the managers that intend to achieve optimal innovation performance through TD should understand how organizational slack can be leveraged.

This study contributes to the existing literature by applying the relationship between TD and innovative performance to the transition economy, as well as examining the double-edged sword impact of state ownership on firm innovation performance.

Research on relationships between firms' degree of internationalization (DOI) and innovation performance has been mixed, and moderators of these relationships need to be explored. We focus on patents granted as an indicator of innovation performance and explore the moderating role of firms' home-country languages on the DOI–innovation performance relationship. We argue that in countries with languages that always require speakers to grammatically mark the future, firms will focus less on the future value of patents, which should moderate DOI–innovation performance relationships.

We use an unbalanced panel consisting of 567 firm-year observations of 64 different large automotive suppliers from the year 2007 through 2019. This database was analyzed using negative binomial models with a 3-years lag structure and firm controls.

Results show a U-shaped DOI–innovation performance relationship, but only for firms from countries that do not always require speakers to grammatically mark the future. Additionally, a firm's status as being from a country where dominate languages always require speakers to grammatically mark the future has a direct negative relationship with innovation performance.

Limitations are that the sample included a large number of firms from one country (i.e. Japan) and focused on a single industry. Additionally, we used a narrow operational definition of innovation performance (i.e. patents) and relied upon a single methodology. In terms of implications, we identify one moderator that helps explain mixed results of past DOI–innovation performance research, and we identify a direct relationship between language and innovation performance. Hence, future research in this area should control for the dominant language type of firms' home countries.

To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine how language moderates DOI–innovation performance relationships and also relates to innovation performance directly.

The aim of the study was to investigate the differential effects of interpersonal relationships across functions on product and service innovation, and to examine the moderating role of market competition.

This study was based on a survey of senior and middle managers from 149 pharmaceutical firms in China.

Interpersonal relationships between employees across functions (IR-E) have a stronger impact on product innovation than do interpersonal relationships between managers across functions (IR-M), but IR-M have a stronger impact on service innovation. Market competition strengthens the effects of IR-M on both product and service innovation, but it attenuates the effect of IR-E on service innovation.

Although the effects of interpersonal relationships across functions are crucial to cross-functional interactions, these effects have received little attention in the literature. By identifying the potential “backfiring” effect of dual-level interpersonal relationships, this study contributes to knowledge of cross-functional relationships. It also deepens understanding of the relationship between cross-functional relationships and organizational innovation, especially in the service setting.

Public-private innovation (PPI) is often claimed to contribute to societal welfare, to bring positive effects to the public sector and to open new markets to private firms. Engaging in public-private relationships for innovation is, however, also recognised as challenging and problematic. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the managerial and strategic challenges faced by private firms when engaging in public-private relationships for innovation.

This qualitative study presents ten firms’ engagement in public-private relationships. Half of them are experienced in innovation in public-private relationship, the other half are engaging in public-private relationships for the first time. Cross-case analysis brings insight into how these different types of firms strategize for handling relationships with public partners.

Contrary to non-experienced firms, experienced firms deliberately build a long-term strategy for engaging in PPI in expectation of outcome from more than a single project. They not only engage in building an understanding of the public using setting, but also seek to bridge with the public developing and producing setting to a greater extent than less experienced firms. The experienced firms utilise relationships with actors in the wider public network as a device and an asset for overcoming challenges and for reaping benefits from their engagement.

The study outlines the characteristics of strategizing among the most experienced firms and their special ability to embrace the complexity of the public sector network while working simultaneously on developing innovation for specific public counterparts.

The paper aims at summarizing the state of knowledge on the relationship between a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its innovation performance.

The research relied on a systematic literature review with the use of SALSA (Search, AppraisaL, Synthesis, Analysis) and backwards-snowballing methods. The search encompassed one electronic database – Scopus. Finally, the set of papers analyzed amounted to 24 publications. The relationship between innovation and CSR reported in these papers were synthesized in the form of a mapping review.

The results indicated the lack of scientific consensus on many aspects of the relationship studied. CSR was assumed to influence innovation performance, and inversely, innovations were presumed to have an impact on the company’s CSR. However, the relation’s determinants were strongly diversified in the set of articles studied.

The present paper omitted articles published in languages other than English. Also, it limited the papers studied to those published between January 2000 and August 2014 in journals listed on the Journal Citation Report. The paper contributes to the research by highlighting the most important research gaps and implications for further research.

The present paper constitutes an up-to-date summary on the studied relationship, which is important for practitioners in the management process.

According to the authors’ knowledge, no systematic reviews dedicated to the relationship between a company’s CSR and its innovation performance were made before. Thus, it fulfils an important research gap.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for analysing the configuration of knowledge networks used by innovative rural small- and medium-sized enterprises, and the nature of the relationships between knowledge transferring actors.

The research is based on semi-structured interviews with rural innovative entrepreneurs and regional key informants. Social network analysis (SNA) was used to identify configuration of relationships, and content analysis to understand the nature of the knowledge relationships.

Higher innovation levels are related to proactive and strong relationships with extra-local actors, usually from the international level, mainly from the Baltic Sea region. The actors, who have a greater role in innovation, are special customers, scientific organisations and non-human actors (e.g. trade fairs). Greater variety in proactive relationships helps achieve higher-level innovations. Reactive and weaker relationships tend to be related to lower innovation levels.

This study contributes to the development of rural innovation research practice through the development of a framework for analysing the configuration of knowledge networks and the nature (activity and strength) of relations between actors. Thus, two different dimensions not used together previously are combined and advanced. In addition, in this paper, the relations that go beyond a region’s borders are also included, compared to earlier studies, where SNA was commonly used only with reference to relations inside a territory. An example from Central and Eastern Europe supplied to the literature on rural innovation networks is of additional value.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the non-linear aspects of the asymmetry-performance relationship under varying conditions of trust and innovation. Its novel approach is useful for addressing the strategic elements of supply chain management (SCM) relationships based on trust and innovation decisions.

Results are based on a study of 90 managers from small- and medium-sized firms in Spain. Instead of a classical linear relationship analysis, the authors performed a non-linear analysis, using polynomial modeling and Warp 3 partial least squares method, which provides a more nuanced view of the data and constitutes an original approach to empirical research in SCM.

This study adds a new viewpoint on SC relationships by suggesting that not all trust and innovation development leads directly to performance improvement. The principal finding is, in varying trust and innovation contexts, that the influences of asymmetry on performance have uneven characteristics and follow non-linear paths.

This study focuses on only one particular institutional environment in one country. The data are also cross-sectional, which makes it difficult to empirically test causality.

The findings provide rational insights to managers on when it is appropriate to reduce (or not) asymmetric relationships with partners.

Trust and innovation are important and ones of the key requirements of supply chain relationships in any environment, this study argues that the interactions of key SCM elements that drive members to better performance are more complex and non-linear.