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The paper aims to present key insights for achieving a sustainable competitive advantage from implementing data analytics solutions and artificial intelligence (AI).

This conceptual paper builds on prior empirical and conceptual research, and it offers anecdotal evidence from a best-practice case study of Liverpool Football Club.

Beyond the well-known companies in profiting from AI, such as Amazon, this paper presents a surprising best-practice example for achieving a competitive advantage from combining data analytics and AI with human expertise. Liverpool Football Club is a leading soccer club from England, and it has experienced a major revival in terms of sporting success and financial performance in recent years. The club’s emphasis on data analytics and AI only contributed to this impressive evolution when it was complemented with the emotional intelligence and people skills of its present manager Juergen Klopp. Along with new conceptual arguments, this example of integrated intelligence offers important insights for managers and executives in companies from many industries – far beyond sports management.

The conceptual arguments and case example illustrate that the competitive benefits of implementing standardized AI solutions in an isolated way will often be relatively limited. Many AI solutions will be standardized in the near future, and they may easily be applied by many firms. Thus, even those companies that are considered as AI pioneers may not be able to sustain their competitive advantage unless they develop an integrated intelligence architecture, which combines human and AI. This integration of data analytics and AI with the human intelligence and expertise of a firm’s employees offers the basis for a sustainable advantage because it is difficult to match for competitors. Thus, the paper offers new theoretical insights and direct managerial implications with regard to profiting from AI and data analytics.

The purpose of this paper is to underscore the need for developing a meta-intelligence in companies based on a conceptual framework for combining artificial and human intelligence.

This is a conceptual paper, which draws on the insights from extant theoretical and empirical research.

In light of a growing trend towards artificial intelligence (AI), most companies face substantial difficulties, which often derive from an excessive emphasis on merely replacing human intelligence by means of AI. To capture the complementary benefits of artificial and human intelligence beyond mere cost savings, firms do not only need to enhance their advanced analytics while continuing to develop their human intelligence. Rather, they additionally need a meta-intelligence for transforming their intelligence architecture in line with corporate strategy. Consequently, the firms need intelligence³ – comprising AI, human intelligence and the meta-intelligence.

The new concept of a meta-intelligence for renewing and recombining artificial and human intelligence helps to reconcile diverse findings in prior research. Without this meta-intelligence, most AI initiatives will be isolated endeavors, which may have positive effects but likely will not live up to the expectations.

The purpose of this paper is to present paradoxical employee attitudes towards interacting with artificial intelligence (AI).

This is a conceptual paper, which builds on prior research, especially on the widely accepted notion of not-invented-here attitudes in technology adoption.

Many companies experience barriers in implementing AI owing to negative attitudes among their employees. This paper develops the concept of no-human-interaction attitudes, which describe employees’ preference to collaborate with real humans rather than having virtual colleagues. If they perceive a benefit from voluntarily using AI, however, many employees exhibit positive attitudes, leading to the concept of intelligent-automation attitudes. Jointly, these attitudes lead to the paradox that the same persons may have positive or negative attitudes to AI, depending on the particular situation. Firms need to address these attitudes because the interface of human and AI will be a key driver of competitive advantage in the future.

The new concepts of negative and positive employee attitudes contribute to our understanding of firms’ success and problems in implementing AI. Moreover, the paradox of negative and positive attitudes among the same employees helps to reconcile partly diverging findings in extant studies. A thorough understanding of the roots of these employee attitudes, along with several examples, further provides immediate starting points for actively influencing these attitudes in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a meta-ranking of the world’s most innovative firms, which underscores the importance of external perceptions of innovativeness and of an innovation-based view on firm performance, including product, service, process, business model, management and organizational innovation.

This is an exploratory empirical paper, which integrates the results of five rankings of the world’s most innovative companies.

The five innovation rankings include a variety of companies based on different methods and strategic focus. This variety underscores the importance of a meta-ranking, whose multiple aggregation methods lead to consistent results. Only the following 11 companies are mentioned in at least three rankings, leading to a list of the 11 most innovative companies in the world: Amazon, Apple, Tencent, Google/Alphabet, Netflix, SpaceX, Tesla, Microsoft, IBM, Intel and General Electric. Overall, the meta-ranking is dominated by US companies from various industries with firms from China gaining importance.

The paper contributes to research into innovation antecedents and consequences by illustrating the importance of innovation perceptions. The meta-ranking highlights the need for pursuing different types of innovation, following the innovation-based view on firm performance with first-order and second-order innovations. Moreover, the results deepen our understanding of digital transformation and of capturing value from innovation in the digital economy because a considerable portion of the leading innovators has a business model emphasizing artificial intelligence and digital platforms, which have led to the generation of new and to the disruption of established markets.

This paper aims to suggest a procedure for successfully transforming a firm’s innovation processes in a systematic way.

This is a conceptual paper, which draws on prior academic and practitioner papers.

Changes in a firm’s environment, such as new technological trends or customer needs, regularly call for the dynamic renewal of a firm’s innovation processes. Nonetheless, most firms proceed in a surprisingly unsystematic way if they transform their innovation processes. This approach contrasts with the systematic innovation processes that many firms have established to manage their product development from initial idea to final market launch.

To overcome this discrepancy, this paper distinguishes reconfiguration and realignment challenges in the transformation of a firm’s innovation processes. These different activities are illustrated with the example of transforming firms’ innovation processes towards open innovation. Furthermore, a five-step procedure is suggested to ease implementation. On this basis, implications for managers are discussed with respect to proficiently adapting their firms’ innovation processes over time.

This paper aims to suggest the framework of shared management, which comprises six major principles. These principles indicate that essential strategy guidelines of firms have been transformed.

This is a conceptual paper, which draws on recent management innovations and transformations of management practices. Thus, the paper builds on prior academic and practitioner contributions.

Management recently has become more SHARED, i.e. sustainable, holistic, analytical, relational, entrepreneurial and dynamic. Each of these principles covers one central dimension of management that has recently been affected by a new logic of sharing. Real-life examples of selected companies are given, and many other firms’ managerial challenges in applying and profiting from these principles are described.

The six principles indicate that the idea of sharing applies to multiple facets of management, which challenge conventional strategy wisdom. They play a particularly important role in a sharing economy, which involves the collaborative production and consumption of goods and services by multiple persons and organizations. Altogether, the principles provide the basis for the shared management framework, which may serve as a step toward an up-to-date picture and realistic guideline for today’s management in many organizations.

This paper aims to draw on a knowledge-based view to emphasize that internal technological and market knowledge is critical to developing absorptive capacity.

This is a conceptual paper, which draws on recent transformations of management practices. Thus, the paper builds on prior academic contributions.

Firms increasingly establish innovation processes that involve an active acquisition of external technologies, often through alliances and licensing. To explain differences across firms in external knowledge acquisition, marketing and product innovation researchers have recently adopted a process perspective of absorptive capacity, which refers to a firm’s ability to explore, retain and exploit external knowledge. This paper develops a conceptual framework with propositions relating technology orientation, responsive market orientation and proactive market orientation to the three process stages of absorptive capacity under different conditions of environmental dynamism.

Beyond the relevance of technology and market orientation for fostering internal innovation, this paper points to their importance for successfully acquiring external technological knowledge. In light of increasingly open innovation processes, absorptive capacity is an essential complement to internal innovation in linking technology and market orientation to firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to help firms establish successful technology planning processes in the context of open innovation.

Although some pioneering firms realise enormous benefits from outward technology transfer, many others experience major difficulties in managing external technology exploitation. To overcome these managerial challenges, firms need to establish strategic technology planning processes, which takes into account the increasing importance of external technology commercialisation. Therefore, this paper conceptually explores strategic technology planning in open innovation systems.

After detailing the characteristics of external technology exploitation, two instruments that may help firms incorporate external technology exploitation in strategic technology planning are developed. First, the concept of product‐technology roadmaps is extended to include external technology exploitation. Second, the functional market concept is transferred from the level of product markets to the level of technology markets.

In many industries, external technology commercialisation is critical to gain and sustain a competitive advantage. Opening up strategic technology planning therefore contributes to firm performance in a knowledge‐based economy. As a result, this paper has major implications for research into strategic planning, technology management and open innovation.

Besides applying knowledge in own products and services, firms increasingly exploit their knowledge assets externally, e.g. by means of licensing out technology. The aim of this paper is to help firms achieve strategic fit in the keep‐or‐sell issue, which results from potential external knowledge exploitation.

The keep‐or‐sell decision refers to the issue whether to commercialize knowledge assets externally in addition to exploiting them inside the organization. Because of the high opportunities and risks of externally leveraging knowledge, the keep‐or‐sell decision constitutes a major area of conflict between strategies at different levels, particularly knowledge vs product strategies, corporate vs business unit strategies and R&D vs marketing strategies. After detailing the keep‐or‐sell decision, the paper conceptually explores how firms may respond to potential conflicts in the keep‐or‐sell decision by achieving strategic fit.

The paper identifies, in particular, three major characteristics of a firm's strategic approach, i.e. coordination, centralization, and collaboration, which may help firms achieve strategic fit in the keep‐or‐sell issue.

The keep‐or‐sell decision is a unique arena for studying hierarchical strategies and strategic fit. As a result, this paper has major implications for research into strategic fit, hierarchical strategies, knowledge management and open innovation. Achieving fit across a firm's different strategies in the keep‐or‐sell issue is essential for firm performance in a knowledge‐based economy.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest an innovation-based perspective on company performance and develops a conceptual framework.

This is a research paper, which builds on prior theoretical and empirical management research.

The innovation-based view is grounded in interfirm differences in innovation, and it underscores the opportunities to achieve sustainable superior firm performance by innovating internally besides the increasing trend toward open innovation. The innovation-based perspective goes beyond many firms’ focus on product innovation by examining its interdependencies with other essential first-order innovations such as service, process, business model, and management innovations. The innovation-based perspective further addresses the dynamic and intertemporal transformation of innovation activities based on second-order innovations, which provide a more realistic view of organizations’ innovation over time. This transformation affects organizational boundaries and how a firm sustains superior performance.

The innovation-based view revises extant approaches to competition and firm boundaries. The new arguments help to reconcile inconsistent earlier findings, and they deepen the understanding of interfirm differences in innovation and performance.