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This paper aims to explore the true sources of innovation that revolutionized two sports industries – skiing and tennis, tracking the flow of ideas and power of technology brokering through the eyes of the innovator, Howard Head.

Using a focal innovation action-set framework, the authors unite heretofore-disparate pieces of information to paint a more complete picture of the innovation and technology brokering process. Primary source material from Head’s patents, personal memoirs and journals and documented correspondence between him, his brother and his colleagues are augmented with secondary source material from periodicals, media excerpts and the academic literature.

Head stands as an exemplar example of a technology broker, both through his serial practice of recombinant innovation and his savvy exploitation of resources. Results discredit the Great Man Theory of Innovation, while emphasizing the importance of exploiting social capital to realize opportunities.

This paper is the first to offer detailed insight into the technology brokering and innovation processes that revolutionized the tennis and skiing industries. It is novel in that it is one of very few papers to challenge the Great Man Theory of Innovation propagated by many textbooks and mass media, explores the process of technology brokering from the broker’s perspective rather than organizationally and uses focal innovation action-set methodology to complement a historical biographical sketch of innovativeness relative to sports equipment and machines.

Sustainable development involves companies on an individual, organizational and social level requiring the adoption of business models or innovations capable of privileging the co-creation of mutual value with a view to sustainability. From an organizational perspective, this paper aims to show that knowledge brokers, by making explicit their roles as mediators of interactions and acting on dynamic capabilities (DCs), can generate a proactive approach to the three dimensions of sustainability and specifically allows capabilities to positively impact the propensity toward sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices.

This study offers an empirical analysis of 200 companies in the agro-food sector participating in a knowledge brokerage system activated by protection consortia. It uses a multiple regression technique that allows for observing relationships between DCs and SSCM.

Absorptive, adaptive and innovative capabilities, when understood and brokered, have a positive and direct impact on the SSCM.

As there have rarely been frameworks developed that correlate knowledge brokerage, DCs and sustainability, this paper suggests that DCs, when adequately valued by the knowledge broker, allow for identifying the requirements of the various stakeholders regarding sustainability and changes in market scenarios to generate sustainability practices along the supply chain.

This study aims to investigate the collaboration processes of immigrant families as they search for online information together. Immigrant English-language learning adults of lower socioeconomic status often work collaboratively with their children to search the internet. Family members rely on each other’s language and digital literacy skills in this collaborative process known as online search and brokering (OSB). While previous work has identified ecological factors that impact OSB, research has not yet distilled the specific learning processes behind such collaborations.

For this study, the authors adhere to practices of a case study examination. This study’s participants included parents, grandparents and children aged 10–17 years. Most adults were born in Mexico, did not have a college-degree, worked in service industries and represented a lower-SES population. This study conducted two to three separate in-home family visits per family with interviews and online search tasks.

From a case study analysis of three families, this paper explores the funds of knowledge, resilience, ecological support and challenges that children and parents face, as they engage in collaborative OSB experiences. This study demonstrates how in-home computer-supported collaborative processes are often informal, social, emotional and highly relevant to solving information challenges.

An intergenerational OSB process is different from collaborative online information problem-solving that happens between classroom peers or coworkers. This study’s research shows how both parents and children draw on their funds of knowledge, resilience and ecological support systems when they search collaboratively, with and for their family members, to problem solve. This is a case study of three families working in collaboration with each other. This case study informs analytical generalizations and theory-building rather than statistical generalizations about families.

Designers need to recognize that children and youth are using the same tools as adults to seek high-level critical information. This study’s model suggests that if parents and children are negotiating information seeking with the same technology tools but different funds of knowledge, experience levels and skills, the presentation of information (e.g. online search results, information visualizations) needs to accommodate different levels of understanding. This study recommends designers work closely with marginalized communities through participatory design methods to better understand how interfaces and visuals can help accommodate youth invisible work.

The authors have demonstrated in this study that learning and engaging in family online searching is not only vital to the development of individual and digital literacy skills, it is a part of family learning. While community services, libraries and schools have a responsibility to support individual digital and information literacy development, this study’s model highlights the need to recognize funds of knowledge, family resiliency and asset-based learning. Schools and teachers should identify and harness youth invisible work as a form of learning at home. The authors believe educators can do this by highlighting the importance of information problem solving in homes and youth in their families. Libraries and community centers also play a critical role in supporting parents and adults for technical assistance (e.g. WiFi access) and information resources.

This study’s work indicates new conditions fostering productive joint media engagement (JME) around OSB. This study contributes a generative understanding that promotes studying and designing for JME, where family responsibility is the focus.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of the reconfiguration capability from a multilevel organizational perspective including interfirm collaboration, intrafirm collaboration, individual‐, group‐ and organization‐level learning.

Using a questionnaire survey, the paper is based on data collected from 83 British software firms. Reliability and item total correlation analyses have been undertaken to ensure the internal consistency of the applied measures. A principal component analysis and multiple regression analysis have been applied to examine determinants of the reconfiguration capability.

The findings indicate that interfirm collaboration positively relates to the implementation of effective reconfiguration. In addition, the findings have revealed that group‐level learning is a successful technique for improving a firm's ability to recombine knowledge streams. Finally, the paper emphasizes the role of organization‐level learning in creating the strategic and structural context from which reconfiguration capability operates.

The paper provides some empirical evidences, which have identified the factors that affect the implementation of the reconfiguration capability.

Innovation intermediaries have become key actors in open innovation (OI) contexts. Research has improved the understanding of the managerial challenges inherent to intermediation in situations in which problems are rather well defined. Yet, in some OI situations, the relevant actor networks may not be known, there may be no clear common interest, or severe problems may exist with no legitimate common place where they can be discussed. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the research on innovation intermediaries by showing how intermediaries address managerial challenges related to a high degree of unknown.

The authors draw upon the extant literature to highlight the common core functions of different types of intermediaries. The authors then introduce the “degree of unknown” as a new contingency variable for the analysis of the role of intermediaries for each of these core functions. The authors illustrate the importance of this new variable with four empirical case studies in different industries and countries in which intermediaries are experiencing situations of high level of unknown.

The authors highlight the specific managerial principles that the four intermediaries applied in creating an environment for collective innovation.

Thereby, the authors clarify what intermediation in the unknown may entail.

This article aims to explore how organizational architecture (OA) for an information technology organization can balance between exploring new information technologies (IT) that promise significant but uncertain growth opportunities, and exploiting already existing IT that guarantee immediate survival.

The literature on organizational architecture (OA) and the balance between the exploitation and exploration of knowledge is reviewed. Data collected from in-depth case study of a global IT consulting firm highlights the importance of OA in balancing exploitation and exploration.

Four elements of OA emerged as critical in balancing exploitation and exploration: embedding autonomous exploratory units within large exploitative sectors; creating organizational roles to integrate between exploration and exploitation; developing technology solutions that support the interplay between exploitation and exploration; and establishing a reward structure that fosters the cooperation between exploring and exploitative agents.

Results of the study suggest that the switch between exploration and exploitation is key to emerging dynamic capabilities in IT firms. It is important for organizations to define: strategic goals that highlight the importance of both exploration and exploitation for the organization; roles that specifically focus on exploration, exploitation and the coordination between the two capabilities, technologies that support both exploration and exploitation; and reward both capabilities. These four elements of the architecture interact together to support a structure of large exploitative units with embedded small explorative units to support recombination and innovation at the project, the department, and the organization levels.

There is limited research on the effect of organizational design on IT development capabilities. Organizational architecture that balances between exploiting stable domain knowledge and emerging new technologies is crucial in today's global and competitive environment. In this study, a new framework emerges that provides a starting point for future quantitative research on how OA can balance conflicting organizational capabilities for firms engaging in IT development. The paper provides a foundation for future studies to test five propositions on the effect of strategy, structure, roles, technology, and reward on the dynamic capabilities of exploitation and exploration.

This paper explores the origin of entrepreneurial orientations (EO) from an organizational embeddedness perspective. It examines the impacts of firms’ network embeddedness such as structural, positional and relational on three dimensions of EO, namely, risk-taking, proactiveness and innovativeness. After a brief review of the EO construct and social network theory, we derive a set of testable propositions that relate embeddedness properties such as centrality, structural holes, direct/indirect ties, and network density, to the magnitude of three key EO dimensions. We argue that each dimension may vary independently with each other and has its own formation mechanism, which entails rich implications for entrepreneurial network research.

This paper aims to combine Mäkipää et al., Füller et al., and Ahonen et al. with regard to CBI ideas, and applies them to the new product development process of the firm. The main research links user innovation and commercialization, and the discussion between the members creates centripetal and condensation strengthening factors. A complete model is developed for empirical testing.

The sample is 143 participants from five online communities of firms operating in Taiwan, namely Microsoft, Working House, Inventec Corporation, Hometec Technology Inc., and Asustek Computer Inc., that were contacted and asked to participate in the study. Data were collected from March 19 to May 31, 2008 via the web for internet users using a standardized questionnaire. Excluding those surveys that were undeliverable and those who believed that it was inappropriate to respond, the overall effective response rate was 87 percent (125 of 143).

This research proposes four other factors to promote the member participation CBI degree effectively, and further affects them to participate in the company's desire for three stages of new product development. But studies regarding the participation product concepts and design stage also find the members comparatively are not interested. Finally, a complete model is developed for empirical testing. It seems to be a promising source of innovation capabilities for new product development.

The focus in this study is on how the integration of community members into new product development using the community based innovation method leads to encouraging results. Nevertheless, it is difficult to claim its general usability. So far, there is no study indicating the effectiveness and efficiency of CBI for ongoing, continued consumer integration. Then studies concerning the impact of CBI on innovation success are just beginning, and are restricted to the initial findings of a few case studies. Therefore, the actual market impacts of co‐developed products has not been tested on a large scale, as most of the CBI projects have not been carried to the point of testing the innovations in an actual marketplace.

The main contribution of the CBI method lies in the systematic utilization of the existing, but so far merely exploited, innovative potential of online communities. However, none of the previous studies have integrated these variables into a more comprehensive framework. A complete model is developed for empirical testing. And the discussion between the members creates centripetal and condensation strengthening factors. The main research links user innovation and commercialization.

Today’s measurement systems fail to adequately account for intellectual capital (IC) in a transparent yet comprehensive manner. In spite of many recent attempts to qualify and sometimes quantify intangibles, there exists as yet not one standardized system that is sufficiently developed and globally accepted. The aim of the present paper is to contribute towards the creation of such a system. The financial method of intangible assets measurement (FiMIAM) presented in this paper aims to overcome some of the weaknesses of recent methods of IC valuation, and contribute to the creation of complete balance‐sheets, reflecting both the tangible and intangible assets of a company.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a simulation approach to the management of information and library services. The technique is being developed to aid in organizing and planning Siraid and other industrial communications activity at Sira (British Scientific Instruments Research Association). To put this work in context it will be helpful to indicate the nature of this activity and its relevance to the current functions of Sira.