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This study aims to investigate the effects of open innovation (OI) and big data analytics (BDA) on reflective knowledge exchange (RKE) within the context of complex collaborative networks. Specifically, it considers the relationships between sourcing knowledge from an external environment, transferring knowledge to an external environment and adopting solutions that are useful to appropriate returns from innovation.

This study analyzes the connection between the number of patent applications and the amount of OI, as well as the association between the number of patent applications and the use of BDA. Data from firms in the 27 European Union countries were retrieved from the Eurostat database for the period 2014–2019 and were investigated using an ordinary least squares regression analysis.

Because of its twofold lens based on both knowledge management and OI, this study sheds light on OI collaboration modes and highlights the crucial role they could play in innovation. In particular, the results suggest that OI collaboration modes have a strong effect on innovation performance, stimulating the search for RKE.

This study furthers a deeper understanding of RKE, which is shown to be an important mechanism that incentivizes firms to increase their efforts in the innovation process. Further, RKE supports firms in taking full advantage of the innovative knowledge they generate within their inter-organizational network.

The paper investigates the effects of global value chains (GVCs) and technological innovation on exports. The paper builds a new dataset from two database, the EORA and the OECD stan database. Using a pooled OLS and a two-stage quantile regression technique on a sample of 8 OECD countries, the results suggest that the effects of GVCs participation are heterogeneous across countries. We find that at the aggregate level, GVCs and forward participation are negatively associated with exports growth. However, we only find evidence of a positive effect of backward participation on exports in the case of France and Germany. At the disaggregated level, we find that: (a) an increase in GVCs participation in low technology intensive sectors is positively associated with exports’growth; (b) an increase in GVCs participation in high technology intensive sector is negatively correlated with exports’growth. The findings stress the importance of GVCs as a driving channel for subdue economic growth in low technological sectors.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the changing pattern and characteristics of international financial flows in the emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), provide a novel taxonomy to classify and analyze them, and discuss how such investments contribute to competence building and sustainable development.

In an exploratory study, the authors analyze the characteristics of international venture capital investors and the start-ups receiving funding in Kenya and map their interaction. The authors proceed by developing a novel taxonomy, classifying investors according to their main rationales (for-profit-for-impact), and start-ups according to the locus of needs and markets addressed by the start-up (local-global) and the locus of the start-ups capacity and knowledge (local-global).

The authors observe a new type of mainly western investors who support innovative ideas in SSA by identifying and investing in domestically developed technical innovations with the potential to address global market needs. The authors find such innovations to be mainly developed at the intersect of global and local knowledge.

The authors shed light on the – up to now – under-researched emerging phenomenon of international high-tech investments in SSA, and develop a novel taxonomy of technology investments in low-income countries, guiding further research on the conditions, impact, practical, and policy implications of this new form of finance flows.

This paper aims to explore the impact of salespeople’s goal orientation and self-regulatory mode on their performance through sales ambidexterity and sales technology infusion (STI) using a sales technology ecosystem approach.

This paper adopts a qualitative methodology, through in-depth interviews with salespeople from a diverse range of industries, age profiles and contexts, to explore the narratives and original meanings related to their goal orientation, self-regulatory mode, ambidexterity, STI and performance.

Sceptics are salespeople who may fear or hesitate to fully use the sales technology, whereas enthusiasts are ambidextrous salespeople with high STI, who are more open to change and able to face uncertainty, regardless of the differences in their background in terms of industry, age and experience.

STI may be influenced by individual factors, such as the salesperson’s goal orientation and self-regulatory mode. Hence, sales organizations should try to foster and facilitate further STI and sales ambidexterity, which are key to achieving positive outcomes in today’s technology-intensive sales settings.

This paper extends the current literature on sales technology and sales ambidexterity within a sales technology ecosystem perspective and provides new insight on the combined impact of these variables on the salesperson’s performance.

Over time, technological intensity has been used as a proxy for innovation capability of firms in an industrial sector. However, not only firms belonging to the stratum of high technological intensity are able to innovate. Therefore, this study aims to explore a potential association between technological intensity and innovation capability in firms from different industrial sectors, using the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s classification and the components of innovation capability proposed by Zawislak et al. (2012, 2013).

The authors conducted an exploratory research with four case studies focusing on the innovation capability of Brazilian firms.

The results show that the four firms, each belonging to one stratum of technological intensity, have innovation capability, and the differences regarding this feature can be explained by the balance and development of all firms’ capabilities (technological, operational, managerial and transactional).

In the literature, studies that relate technological intensity and innovation capability are scarce. Therefore, the originality of this research is to relate these two concepts. The most important is that firms can be innovative regardless of their stratum of technological intensity, which shows the importance of other capabilities to ensure the innovation’s success.

This thesis deeply studies the impact mechanism of digital service trade on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry from the aspects of technological innovation and industrial structure.

In this thesis, 40 countries from 2010 to 2020 were selected as samples, and the panel fixed-effect model and intermediary effect model were used to empirically analyze the impact path of digital service trade on the high-quality development of global manufacturing.

Overall, digital service trade has a positive impact on the high-quality development of the global manufacturing industry. Through the analysis of the intermediary effect mechanism, it is found that digital service trade can further positively affect the high-quality development of the global manufacturing industry by promoting technological innovation and industrial structure upgrading.

Based on the empirical results, targeted countermeasures and suggestions are given in this paper.

Through the test of national heterogeneity, it is found that in developing countries, digital service trade mainly acts on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry by promoting industrial structure upgrading.

In developed countries, digital service trade mainly promotes the high-quality development of manufacturing through technological innovation; from the perspective of industry heterogeneity, the three service industries of information and communication technology (ICT), other business services and property have the intermediary effect of technological innovation and industrial structure.

This manuscript suggests that trade in digital services should be promoted as a national trade priority.

Due to the convergence of rapid business developments and digitization challenges, service orientation is back on the research agenda as a concept to improve firms’ business services. Yet, little is known about the type of determinants that are relevant and to what degree they affect a firm’s service-oriented strategy.

Building on structural equation modeling (SEM) and a unique data set of 131 international firms from different continents, the authors identify and analyze the key determinants in the context of a firm’s service-oriented strategy.

The findings show that in order to cater for changes, organizations have to manage and adapt the coherence of the determinants’ business services, business processes and knowledge sharing continuously. Moreover, the results show that a service-oriented strategy is not only influenced by business services as such, but business services mediate the relationships between business processes, governance and process-aware information systems to a service-oriented strategy.

A limitation is imposed by the limited sample size and the unbalanced response of participants (executive management). In future research, a more extensive survey among a broader group of participants will help the authors to develop their model further in order to generalize the results, as well as more finely grained research related to geography and size might be pursued. Future empirical research is necessary to identify and test the relationships between other constructs and study their effect on a firm’s service-oriented strategy.

On a practical level, the authors postulate that an organization’s executive management should pay attention to invest in an organizational entity (department) that manages business services continuously. This organizational entity has to ensure that related processes and knowledge sharing are in place to establish and maintain a service-oriented strategy.

This research contributes to service-oriented literature by operationalizing the implementation of an organization’s service-oriented strategy. The authors’ insights go beyond the findings of Aier et al. (2011). The authors found that a service-oriented strategy influences service-oriented project success positively. The authors extended these findings, based on a unique data set, by studying business services and influencing determinants (i.e. business processes, governance, PAIS and knowledge sharing) within the context of service orientation. The renewed attention to the concept of service orientation provides insights into critical determinants that influence the implementation of a service-oriented strategy.

The complexity of contemporary societal challenges in emerging countries reanimates the necessity of collective action to resolve them. What is required is system change, namely, transformations in policy, practice, power relationships, market dynamics and social customs that underlie social and environmental issues. Technological innovations, paired with intentional social changes, might play a transformative role in this effort. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the adoption of technologies in social enterprises (SEs) and their contribution to achieving system change. It also addresses the effects of their hybrid nature on this relationship.

The analysis relied on data collected through a survey of the global population of Ashoka fellows, which is largely based in emerging economies. Three models were developed concerning different pathways to achieve system change identified in the theoretical framework. These were tested using Probit regressions.

The investigation confirms that technology can support SEs in navigating complex pathways to achieve system change rather than merely enabling linear scaling operational strategies. The pursuit of economic value creation, in conjunction with a social mission, decreases the ability of SEs to achieve system change. This is because the scaling paths which hardly create revenues are neglected.

The study conceptualises a multifaceted model of system change. It tests the framework empirically to show that SEs can adopt technologies to unleash complex system change processes to generate societal impact, on top of merely demonstrating linear approaches to scaling or replication. The paper questions the capacity of SEs to facilitate system change without appropriate financial support and the inherent tensions between hybridity and the depth of system change dynamics.

This study aims to identify context-specific antecedents to schools’ absorptive capacity (AC) and to show how those can enact “a virtuous learning circle.”

The study uses a mixed method: an exploration based on semi-structured interviews with educational experts; the development of a measurement scale and a partial least squares structural equation modelling to test the impact of the antecedents.

The results yielded four empirically-grounded antecedents and their measurement scales, namely, prior knowledge, employees’ skills, educational projects and interactions with the environment (Studies one and two). All antecedents are significantly and positively related to AC processes (study three). Using the organizational learning theory perspective, the results have been interpreted as an AC “virtuous learning circle.”

With increasing pressures to adapt, a case of which was the COVID-19 pandemic, schools can greatly benefit from absorbing knowledge flows. This suggests the construction a favourable environment for AC. To this end, the individual (employees’ prior knowledge and skills), organizational (educational projects) and institutional level of managerial action (interactions with the environment) can be effective when create a recursive organizational learning circle. In addition, this study offers an expert-validated measurement scale for self-assessment of a school’s specific contingencies, and thus, for planning of punctual interventions to develop AC.

This study advances the existing body of knowledge management in the educational context by rigorously identifying and validating a scale for measuring the antecedents of AC and developing an interpretive approach to the AC “virtuous circle.”

Services trade has registered a dynamic evolution in almost all developing countries. Despite the rising share in world services trade by developing countries, the gap between developed and developing countries in service exports have been widening. Developed economies have become service exporters, while developing economies are found to be more receptive towards service imports. This paper attempts to gain some insight into the actual nature and extent of exports of services from developing countries, and examines their emergence as significant players of services trade as well as the underlying factors and broader implications. One of the conclusions of this paper is that developing countries successfully export a variety of services to both developed and developing countries, whereas a relatively limited number of developing countries seem to be heavily involved in services exports trade across a range of sectors. This, alternatively, indicates that services exports, on a large international level, are associated with higher levels of development and that not all developing countries are yet in a position to be large-scale exporters.