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Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a viewpoint on the importance of liberalization for the development of service economy. This study of the authors results from the conducted research and experience obtained so far in the field of liberalization of the services market and its effects on Polish service enterprises. In addition, it contains practical insights on the liberalization, taking into consideration the benefits and barriers perceived by Polish service enterprises entering the markets of Central and Eastern Europe countries (CEEC) and for the economy. This chapter provides insight for the researchers and practitioners who are interested in the problematic of the liberalization of the services market in the context of managing a company operating in the CEEC area.

The world we are living today is faced with social challenges that call for radical innovation. The rapid pace of technological developments played a key role in delivering social developments in a cautious manner that will ensure a promising future for social capital. Social innovation is a phenomenon that is put forward to urge countries to find solution to address the recurring problems of social inequalities that were not able to be eliminated by the existing rules and policies. It involves understanding the complexity of the society ecosystem and task calls for a partnership and networks between the nonprofit, public, and private sectors. This chapter explains how Malaysia utilizes public–private partnership to promote social innovations in the country. Through the 11th Malaysia Plan, Malaysia envisages to put forward the well-being and development of the people through social innovation to balance between the social and economic development. In order to fulfill this aim, Malaysia has implemented various programs and policies through the social innovation ecosystem that has been formed. The ecosystem is comprised of four initiatives, which includes microfinancing; social entrepreneurship; public service delivery; and grassroots innovation of science and technology. These initiatives will be collaboratively developed using the concept of 4P, which is the public, private, people, and professionals. Each of this initiative is discussed thoroughly in this chapter alongside with the programs and policies that have been carried out since then. Additionally, the chapter also includes the discussion on the issues and challenges that could be seen and presumed to be the hindrance to the success of the social innovation development.

The current research investigates the regional differences in benefiting from innovation toward growth ambitions in a sample of female entrepreneurs in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Nordic region. A sample of 4,048 early-stage female entrepreneurs from these two regions who were participated in annual surveys of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor was selected for further analysis. The results of data analysis using hierarchical linear modeling (mixed models) revealed that innovation benefits growth ambitions of early-stage female entrepreneurs. Further, the regional differences affect the benefit of innovation in shaping growth ambitions, so that, in Nordic region, the early-stage female entrepreneurs expect more growth out of their innovation as compared with their counterparts in MENA region. These results have been discussed regarding to existing literature, and future research directions have been suggested based on the results.

Research on consumer innovativeness has been studied in the field of marketing during the past decade, in that it has become critical to firms and businesses introducing new products. Yet as the literature concerning innovativeness in the hospitality sector is extremely limited, the purpose of this study is to better conceptualize and understand innovativeness in the hospitality sector (e.g., hotel, restaurant & bar, food & beverage, and occupational training). Using a qualitative method, personal interviews have been collected in this study from local hospitality managers and data are analyzed by constant comparative analysis. Eight themes emerge from the interview data: (1) novelty seeking, (2) eagerness, (3) vigilance, (4) openness, (5) venturesome, (6) hedonism, (7) value seeking, and (8) social distinctiveness. These intrinsic characteristics capture the concept of innovativeness in a broader range within different perspectives. The resultant data could therefore be utilized in future research to evaluate the level of awareness and use of perceived innovativeness in consumer behavior research and business marketing.

Though KIBS constitute only a small proportion of all services, researchers frequently accord them a significance beyond that indicated by their share in employment or value added (Tether & Hipp, 2002; Gallouj, 2002). For example, KIBS are held to play ‘an increasingly dynamic and pivotal role in ‘new’ knowledge-based economies’ (Howells, 2000, p. 4), as sources of important new technologies, high-quality, high-wage employment and wealth creation (Tether, 2004). Unfortunately, while much of the rhetoric seems intuitively reasonable, one inevitably encounters definitional difficulties in delimiting the specifics of innovation in KIBS, with a variety of, more or less operational, working definitions employed by the academic literature (Wong & He, 2005).

The aim of this study is to examine how knowledge-intensive born global firms operating in international markets develop and maintain long-term relationships with their customers that insure their continued growth beyond the initial stage of internationalization. The study adopts a case study approach, focusing on two Indian born global firms operating with the knowledge-based services sector. The study shows that getting to know the customer intimately helps firms to retain customers over long periods of time. Customer-relationship management strategy is in line with the entrepreneurial orientation of the firms under consideration.

Owing to the inconclusive results of prior studies on the strategic change–firm performance relationship, this paper extends the marketing strategy literature by postulating an “inverted U-shaped” relationship and the moderating roles of “organizational learning” (OGL) and “strategic flexibility” (STF).

A self-administered survey was employed to collect data from different strategic business units of 550 firms operating in Thailand. The data collection yielded a response rate of 17.27%. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate the scales, and path analysis was employed to test the hypotheses in this study.

Although no significant curvilinear relationship was found, the directions of the path coefficients are consistent with the hypothesis. Both OGL and STF serve as significant moderators in the marketing strategic change (MSC)–business performance relationships. While STF strengthens the relationship, the generative OGL tends to weaken it.

Managers need to understand the type of learning that fits different types of strategic changes in order to enhance business performance. Generative OGL may seem harmful for changes that are less proactive. Furthermore, firms should incorporate flexibility in managing political, economic, and financial risks in their strategies by emphasizing investments and cost sharing, flexible human capital allocation, and spontaneous and impromptu actions.

This study extends international marketing strategy literature by empirically testing the hypotheses in an emerging Asian economy. The research proposes a nonlinear relationship between MSC and business performance as well as introduces the moderating roles of OGL and STF.