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The construction industry has shown an inherent inability to adopt advanced technological innovations. The construction innovation literature is highly fragmented and outlines an overwhelming number of factors that arguably influence the transfer of technological innovations in construction. Factor-based research in the construction innovation literature tends to set out technological innovations and their adoption as socially neutral events, overlooking the role of context in the adoption process. Hence, the authors’ understanding of how technological innovations are transferred and implemented in the construction industry remains limited by the constraints of reductionist approaches adopted by factor-based research. This paper aims to advance the authors’ understanding of the actual experiences of technological innovations transfer in construction. Instead of introducing another set of factors, the research, through empirical investigation, develops a comprehensive and holistic framework to re-interpret the existing factor-based literature taking into consideration the role of the construction context and the socially constructed nature of technological innovations.

This research uses a participatory exploratory multiple case study design strategy, which has much in common with action research. The factors that could influence the transfer of technological innovations were investigated in three selected case studies over an extended period of time. During the research, a prototype system application of construction integration was used as a basis to discuss the adoption of technological innovations.

The findings suggest moving from the commonly held beliefs in the rational school of technological innovation and the functionalist paradigm towards constructivist approaches to capture the role of context and the stoically constructed nature of technological innovations. It is suggested that construction companies need to develop management capabilities to manage the changing political environments of the adoption process. The research supports the emerging view of technological innovations in construction as a collaborative-based innovation, which is a function of relationships and context.

The research is limited by the settings of the action research design and the use of an interpretive approach. Because the focus was on investigating the “why” question, little attention was given to the “how” question. Accordingly, the findings provide little insights into the way organizations can manage the changing political and social environment of the adoption process. The authors also acknowledge that in spite of their best efforts to build a theoretically grounded framework of factors, they may have overlooked some relevant studies. However, the objective of this research was not to conduct a systematic literature review or to come up with a framework that quantitatively captures all previous research studies; instead, the objective was to build a holistic framework that can be used as a base to analyze the role of construction context and the socially constructed nature of technological innovations in the adoption process.

The research offers several practical insights. First, it suggests that construction companies need to develop management capabilities to be able to lead the changing political environment of the adoption process successfully. Second, the research supports the emerging view of technological innovations in construction as a collaborative-based innovation that is a function of relationship. From a policy perspective, the research provides the basis to reconsider the effectiveness of federal and provincial policies that promote advanced technological Initiatives. The majority of these policies focus on the technical aspects in assessing the adoption of technological innovation, providing little incentives to companies to manage the changing political and social environment of the adoption process.

This research offers several theoretical and methodological contributions. First, it advances the authors’ understanding of the actual experiences of the transfer of technological innovations in construction organizations. Second, instead of introducing another set of factors, the research develops a framework to re-interpret the existing factor-based literature, considering the role of construction context and the socially constructed nature of technological innovations. The research uses the theoretical lens of the social construction of technology framework to analyze the adoption process. The existing literature suggests that such research is scarce and highly needed. Third, unlike the mainstream reductionist approaches, this research adopts an exploratory action research inquiry design that uses both inductive and deductive inquiry approaches to understand the socially constructed nature of innovation transfer in construction. The adopted research design offers a valuable methodological contribution to the existing body of knowledge.

This paper deals with the characteristics of two basic elements for the study of innovation in the firm: the concept of technological innovation, which is defined as a flow magnitude; and the concept of technology, which is defined as a stock magnitude. The technological innovation process is characterized by: being of a continuous nature; being path dependent; being irreversible and being affected by uncertainty. Technology, as the main product of this innovation, has the properties of knowledge and is characterized by: having a large tacit component; being difficult to transfer; being assimilated by accumulation; and being partially appropriable. These characteristics are articulated in a series of propositions that could contribute to the establishment of a consistent ground for the study of the technological innovation management.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the innovation process of organizations representing the main sectors of Brazilian economic activity.

The literature review focuses on analyzing the innovation process characteristics regarding the innovation types. The authors carried out interviews with executives and managers in charge of innovation at the leading large companies in the respective sectors analyzed. The data analysis of this qualitative research was structured in three steps. The first step is the analysis of data collected for encoding, the second step, the summarization of the common points presented by the companies in each sector and, finally, the interpretation of these data, aided by triangulation from secondary data that support the analysis of the collected primary data.

The main contribution of this study is to characterize the innovation process of organizations representing the main sectors of the Brazilian economy, with a classification regarding the sectoral innovation standard.

The authors’ intent is that the paper can contribute with a comparative analysis among companies of the same sector and, subsequently, among companies of the different surveyed sectors. Thus, the characterization aims to present the companies’ innovation process and the comparative analysis aims to verify the innovation sectoral patterns. In addition, as implications for management practice, some strategies for better knowledge management in the organization are suggested for each type of innovation.

The main theoretical contribution focuses on the development of a conceptual model that structures the analyzed variables of the constructs “innovation process” and “innovation sectoral patterns”, allowing not only the characterization but also the comparative analysis of the representative organizations present in the sample.

This paper describes a comprehensive approach to examine how technological innovation contributes to the renewal of a firm’s competences through its dynamic and reciprocal relationship with R&D and product commercialization. Three theories of technology and innovation (the R&D and technological knowledge concept, product‐process concept, technological interdependence concept) are used to relate technology and innovation to strategic management. Based on these theories, this paper attempts to identify the dynamic relationship between product innovation and process innovation using system dynamics by investigating that aspect of the dynamic changes in the closed feedback circulation structure in which R&D investments drive the accumulation of technological knowledge.

Existing innovation frameworks suggest that manufacturing firms have traditionally developed a complementary model of technological innovations comprising process and product innovations (e.g. Oslo Manual). This article presents digital service innovation as a novel form of technological innovation that is capable of enhancing the performance of firms in certain manufacturing industries.

Drawing on technological innovation and digital servitization fields of research, this study argues that digital service innovation, in manufacturing contexts, complements traditional sources of technological innovation, so increasing the profit margins of firms. This effect is significant in industries characterized by business-to-business contexts, high presence of link channels and long product life spans (e.g. manufacturing and computer-based industries). Predictions are tested on a unique sample of 423 Spanish manufacturing firms using parametric (t-test) and nonparametric (fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, fsQCA) approaches.

The results of this analysis show that a necessary condition so that manufacturing firms can increase profits is the deployment of simultaneous process and product innovations. It also reveals that optimal configuration requires that digital service innovation be undertaken, particularly in machinery and computer-based manufacturing industries. Hence, all three sources of technological innovation are brought together in order to reach the highest levels of company performance. The evidence suggests that technological innovation and digital servitization are closely interrelated in highly innovative manufacturing contexts.

This study's originality and value reside in the fact that it reveals the existence of firms incorporating digital service innovation – a new, technological innovation dimension that challenges existing innovation frameworks – to complement traditional technological innovation sources, namely process and product innovation. Moreover, the study conceptualizes and empirically tests the value-adding role of digital services in firms' technological innovation portfolio.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Technological process innovation (TPI) is a distinctive organizational phenomenon characterized by a firm-internal locus and underlying components such as mutual adaptation of new technology and existing organization, technological change, organizational change, and systemic impact. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the management of these components at different stages of the innovation lifecycle (ILC) in large manufacturing companies.

The authors adopt an exploratory case-based research design and conduct a multiple case study of five large successful manufacturing companies operating in different industries in Germany. The authors build the study on 55 semi-structured interviews, which yielded 91.5 hours of recorded interview data. The authors apply cross-case synthesis and replication logic to identify patterns of how companies address process innovation components at different ILC stages.

The study uncovers the content of four central TPI components across the ILC and identifies differences between the development of core and non-core processes. Based on the findings the authors describe asymmetric adaptation as a theoretical construct and propose that companies seek different levels of process standardization depending on the type of process they develop, which in turn affects whether there is a greater extent of technological or organizational change.

Awareness of existing structures, processes, and technologies, as well as their value in relation to the company’s core and non-core operations is imperative to determining the adequate structure of mutual adaptation.

The authors provide detailed insight on the management of mutual adaptation, technological, and organizational change, as well as systemic impact at the different stages of the ILC. The authors extend prior research by adopting an ILC perspective for the investigation of these four TPI components and by proposing a construct of asymmetric adaptation to capture key mechanisms of process development and implementation.

Drawing on complementarity theory, the purpose of this study is to posit that social media use enhances the effect of supplier involvement on new product development (NPD) performance, while two key firm capabilities further enhance the moderating effect of social media use: market and technological knowledge-processing capabilities.

To test the hypotheses, the authors used a longitudinal survey of 367 firms, from seven major manufacturing industries: information technology (22.1 per cent), automotive industry (19.6 per cent), chemicals (18.2 per cent), textiles (13.3 per cent), machinery (12.5 per cent), energy (10.1 per cent) and others (4.1 per cent).

The results support the expectation that social media use and two firm capabilities (market and technological knowledge-processing capabilities) enhance the effect of supplier involvement on NPD performance in terms of product innovativeness, market performance and financial performance. Interestingly, post-hoc analyses indicate that supplier involvement has an inverted U-shaped relationship with product innovativeness. In addition, social media use not only strengthens the positive effect of, but also alleviates the negative effect of, supplier involvement in product innovativeness.

The findings of this study provide new evidence that supply chain members’ use of social media better enables them to enhance their innovation performance with supplier involvement.

This study provides practical direction to help manufacturing managers enhance innovation performance outcomes of supplier involvement.

This study makes an original contribution to the supply chain literature by empirically demonstrating the key enablers that increase the efficacy of supplier involvement.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of the enlargement process of the European Union as a factor fostering international competitiveness of EU Member States. The paper argues that the economic integration process has reduced the technological gap between old and new EU Member States, and this pattern of technological innovation can partially explain the strong impulse on the export dynamics of European countries.

The paper builds an augmented gravity model by including the role of technological innovation, proxied by the stock of knowledge at the sector level. The authors gather together information on patents applied to international offices and bilateral export flows available from COMTRADE dataset.

By using a dynamic panel data estimator the authors find three main empirical evidences. First, the enlargement process has produced an overall larger positive impact on export flows for new Members than for old ones, and more importantly that sectors with the higher technological content have received the strongest impulse. Second, the augmented gravity model allows shaping the crucial role of technological innovation in fostering export competitiveness. Third, this impact seems to be stronger for old EU Member States than for new ones.

The major limitation concerns time span adopted in this work. By expanding the dataset to further years it could be possible to better disentangle the effects also related to the new wave of the EU enlargement.

The policy implication derived is that the more the new EU Members catch up technologically as a result of the integration process, the more they will benefit in terms of economic development.

The major originality of this paper is the construction of an augmented gravity model by including the role of technological innovation, applied to distinguished manufacturing sectors in a dynamic panel setting.

This paper addresses the problems inherent in identifying technological innovations that can improve company competitiveness with the ultimate aim of increasing the value of a specific enterprise. A model is proposed that, starting with the competitive weight of a technological innovation to processes or products, yields a strategic weight that enables decision makers to evaluate the increase in business value consequent on application of such innovation. The proposed model is composed of four sub‐models: the first is an analysis of process/product competitiveness aimed at identifying competitive priorities and therefore appropriate technologies; the second sub‐model identifies the priorities of technological intervention from amongst the competitive technologies selected; the third sub‐model correlates the two previous sub‐models and thereby expresses a “strategic weight” of the technological projects with respect to the competitive priorities of the processes or products; the fourth and last sub‐model applies scenario simulation and sustainable growth verification to estimate the impact of strategic project innovations in terms of increased business value.