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The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual stage model of education and innovation type. The model depicts the influence of education on innovation and the paper aims to discuss the implications of it for the national competitiveness of China.

The paper presents a newly created conceptual stage model of education and innovation supported by observations and a literature review based on past and present innovation efforts in China.

The paper demonstrates the importance of linking creative education with radical innovation that is associated with higher value‐added economic activities. The findings of the empirical studies to date in China suggest that such a change will not be easy. There is a need to increase the propensity towards creative thought processes even if this is considered “undesirable behavior” both in the Chinese classroom and for the Chinese Communist party. Evidence suggests that without such creativity, self‐initiated radical innovation is not possible across a broader spectrum of the educational system, and that break‐through inventions in value‐added technology and design industries will be limited in China.

The model in the paper is designed to stimulate further research, initiate discussion and encourage action on driving creativity in Chinese educational policy and practices. The paper's analysis and findings will be of interest to managers and government policy makers in China that are charged with developing new programs to spur value‐added innovation. Researchers will find the ideas for further empirical research potentially valuable in helping them to design studies surrounding the phenomena of creativity, education and innovation practices.

Leadership is an important element of total quality management (TQM). Organizations spend considerable time and money looking outside for the latest in leadership technique. Value‐added leadership suggests organizations also identify and reinforce existing observable leadership behaviours which are already contributing to innovation and high quality performance. Quality is enhanced by at least four categories of those commonly practised but transparent value‐added leadership behaviours: self and others; awareness and choice; focus and integration; and innovation and action taking. Identifying and institutionalizing these “already paid for” value‐added behaviours can be an important contribution to overall TQM efforts. Make leadership choice not chance a factor in your organization’s quality quest.

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are evolving toward sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how innovation can develop these mission-based service industries to value-added manufacturing enterprises. Here, innovation is embedded in altering the understanding of stakeholders toward the objectives and managerial systems of these infrastructures.

This study uses multidisciplinary principles in management, economics and engineering to assess the integration of innovation and quality management with different perspectives. It initially compares the conventional and innovative approach for operating WWTPs. Subsequently, it emphasizes the contribution of the tailor-made managerial system of wastewater treatment enterprises through prospective markets, customers’ preferences, probable competitions and shared values.

The tailor-made managerial system for wastewater treatment can add economic values by manufacturing multiple demand products for local markets. Water, green energy, organic fertilizers and raw materials are the main products that can be simultaneously recovered according to the customers’ demand. The Kano model also verifies that the new managerial system has this potential to turn the conventional must-be treatment systems into delightful enterprises. It can provide different stakeholders with shared social and environmental values. Accordingly, locals and customers can be engaged in monitoring the quality of products to consider their feedback for decision making and upgrading. This indirectly defines shared values among operators and society to reinforce localization and ecosystem protection. Additionally, this research reveals that the market of the aforementioned strategic products is promising as a blue ocean for set sail due to the lack of competitors.

This study introduces wastewater treatment as a promising enterprise for integrating innovation and quality management.

The complex interactions between firm‐ and industry‐specific factors within a national context and their impacts on innovation often hinder construction enterprises' efforts in optimising their innovation performance. The purpose of this paper is to employ the Cobb‐Douglas empirical production model to develop an innovation production function that illustrates the input and output factors relating to the innovation performance of construction firms.

Applying these factors to a dataset comprising economic and innovation statistics over 20 years for Germany and Singapore, regression analyses were conducted to investigate the critical resources that contribute to the innovation performance of German and Singaporean construction firms.

The findings indicated that the maturity of the innovation landscape in Germany cultivates the strength of German construction firms in developing unique firm‐specific resources that pushes their competitiveness edge. In Singapore, construction firms' dependence on the nation's basic science and technology research leads to weak firm dynamics and innovation capabilities.

It is recommended that in Singapore, the government should focus on the strength of their relationships with construction enterprises to aid the development of construction firms' R&D capabilities. The primary recommendation for both German and Singapore construction firms is to develop a system of knowledge documentation and distribution that facilitates systematically reapplications of know‐how, enabling construction firms to develop sustainable competitiveness through unique knowledge assets.

The ecological footprint of the food industry and the requirements of the bio-based economy result in the need for deepening the concept of corporate sustainability. CSR provokes the implementation of eco-innovation with high value added. A main source of value added and sustainability is the integrated implementation of ecodesign practices . The purpose of this paper is to systemize an integrated model for the product ecodesign implementation, which combines not only the industrial and process ecodesign but also the overall organizational and socio-economic context of SMEs in food industry, reflected in CSR and value added for stakeholders.

The methodology for implementation of business model for sustainability of the SMEs in the food industry through ecodesign is based on vertical and horizontal integration of well-known self-relevant environmental, social and economic tools such as corporate social responsibility, life-cycle assessment, MET matrix, ecolabelling and stakeholder approach for production and marketing of high-value-added eco-products.

This study proposes an algorithm for implementation of an integrated business model for SMEs sustainability in the food industry, focusing on high-value-added delivery for stakeholders, based on corporate social responsibility, functional innovation and eco-efficiency. The ecodesign based on CSR business practice in food industry allows simultaneous optimization of environmental aspects and cost structure of products in conditions of improved quality and functionality. Thus, ecodesign contributes to the diversification not only of the company’s product portfolio, but also to opening of new marketplaces and the implementation of new market strategies by increasing the value added.

The research identifies actions, which SMEs in food industry can follow to achieve ecological redesign of their business and production processes that simultaneously enhance product functionality and resource efficiency.

The academic and the social value of the research is the focus on ecodesign and its implementation in SMEs in the food industry as a tool for creation of multidimensional high value added for stakeholders in bio-based economy.

The purpose of this paper is to build a System Dynamics model to reveal the structure and dynamics of knowledge coupling affecting firms' innovation results in the digital context.

Drawing on the recombined view of innovation, this paper divides knowledge coupling into two dimensions: component knowledge coupling and architectural knowledge coupling. Then, the authors build a system dynamics model to identify the interaction of knowledge coupling factors and use the professional Vensim PLE to conduct simulation analysis to capture the dynamic interaction of motivation factors in knowledge coupling system.

The results show that both technology resources and digital dynamic capability play positive effects in the mechanism of knowledge coupling influencing firms' innovation results, while organizational inertia negatively affects the process of knowledge coupling to achieve innovation outcomes.

This study develops a holistic system dynamics model to reveal and elaborate on the complex dynamic mechanism of knowledge coupling impacting firms' innovation results in the context of digitization and provides a theoretical reference for companies to effectively adopt digital technology to carry out knowledge coupling strategy.

The intangible assets are important today as knowledge and innovation are the key drivers to long‐term business competitiveness. In other words, this competitiveness requires the productive use of the intangible assets. Thus, measuring productivity should underline their importance within an organization. Therefore, the study aims to examine whether the intellectual capital or IC can be used to support productivity measurement.

The research methodology consists of two stages, derived from the management process which deals with measurement and analysis. The first stage tests the interrelationships between productivity (namely value‐added labor productivity) and the IC. This test is based on a company's financial reports and the IC survey. The second stage focuses on better understanding on how IC can be analyzed. Altogether ten leading manufacturers, with 270 executives and managers, have participated in the survey. Important statistical techniques such as Pearson Correlation are integrated. Moreover, the consideration into the validity of the survey items (e.g. the non‐respondent bias analysis) is illustrated.

Because of the significant relationships between the IC and value‐added productivity, measuring the IC can strengthen ongoing productivity measurement efforts on a firm's intangible assets. In other words, the IC can become a surrogate for productivity measurement. To assist the IC analysis further, the IC is positively influenced by innovation, learning organization, knowledge management, and self‐directed learning, respectively. In other words, the innovation appears to have the highest impact on the IC level while the ability of an organization to learn and to apply knowledge also has considerable influences.

The emerging use of the term value‐added highlights the importance of IC within the context of productivity measurement. Past studies have focused on relating some the IC components such as innovation and quality of work life to the productivity level. This study attempts to look at the IC in a more comprehensive manner.

Research on entrepreneurial orientation (EO) seeks to understand the EO–performance relationship. However, at a strategic level, performance relates to a competitive advantage and comprises both value-added and efficiency measures. Following arguments that performance is context and strategy dependent, the paper argues that EO research needs to clarify and specify the type of performance relationship measured.

To explore the EO–performance relationship, the research considers the agricultural sector where policy has traditionally encouraged the maximisation of efficiency in production and has only recently promoted entrepreneurship, providing fertile ground to explore different approaches to measuring performance. A survey collected detailed accounting records and context specific EO for 282 commercial farms. The authors estimate two models (Heckman selection regression and stochastic production frontier) that examine the relationships between EO and value-added/efficiency performance outcomes.

The analysis confirms the EO–value-added performance relationship, with significant positive relationships for the EO components proactiveness and innovativeness and a negative relationship for risk. No EO–efficiency performance relationship was found, despite a robust analysis of technical efficiency using detailed accounting data.

The paper contributes to EO theory by problematizing performance and highlighting the importance of the type of performance measured. This paper contributes empirically with findings relating to a mature industry contributes to entrepreneurship methodology by outlining how EO–performance relationships can be measured in terms of productivity and technical efficiency.

The objective of this study is to determine whether value added variables possess incremental information beyond accrual earnings in the context of explaining security return. The evidence points to the superior explanatory power of value added variables in explaining security returns of US firms that disclose data needed for the computation of net value added. A case can be made for the disclosure of value added reports in the US.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a common strategy implemented by companies due to social, ethical and policy pressures to reduce its impact on society, economy and environment. However, whether CSR adds or decreases firms’ value remains little explored. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the impact of CSR adoption on companies’ economic value added (EVA). The authors also tested a mechanism of environmental innovation and the moderation role of a firm’s size.

The authors performed a regression analysis and a mediation process analysis using dataset from 4,287 largest companies worldwide to investigate this issue. The a dataset was collected from Eikon, a Thomson Reuters platform.

The results revealed four main findings. Companies with high CSR indexes decreased EVA; environmental innovation mediated the effect of CSR on EVA; the firm size positively moderated the effect of CSR on EVA and firm size positively moderated the effect of CSR on environmental innovation.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this research is the first endeavor to analyze CSR’s effect on EVA and the mediation role of environmental innovation using the most prominent firms worldwide. Furthermore, the results highlight exciting implications for literature, managers and policymakers.