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Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions.

Knowing the factors influencing the success of collaborative innovation is particularly relevant for both academics and practitioners. Nonetheless, many studies have regarded the megatrends influencing innovation imperatives, the development of co-innovation strategies, the selection of partners and the involvement of user communities, but not so much the understanding of how the co-innovation process is concretely designed and managed. Adding to extant research, the purpose of this paper is to explore how companies collaborate in co-innovation processes.

A longitudinal, single case study has been conducted on the co-innovation process between Loccioni, an Italian medium-sized, high tech family firm, and Pfizer, one of the largest companies operating in the pharmaceutical sector.

From the case study analysis, three main results have emerged. First, the role of medium-sized companies in leading the co-innovation process as both the initiator and orchestrator. Second, the interplay between the local and the global dimension of co-innovation and the importance of (un)formal roles in innovation. Third, the “double funnel” of co-innovation, linking both the technological and the relational dimensions. Specifically, the case highlights the relevance of the relational – beyond the technological – aspects of co-innovation, providing a relational model that links the geographical dimensions (local/distant) and the role of specific individuals.

The paper presents an example of how a medium-sized firm has implemented its co-innovation process, shedding new light on possible barriers and success factors that other smaller or similar companies may follow when dealing with large multinationals.

The main purpose of this study is to contribute to the theory of intellectual capital (IC) with the new IC valuation method based on the economic value added (EVA^®) concept as well as to present the Innovation Funnel, which is a useful management method and tool from which companies would benefit.

The paper first explains the links and differences between IC and intellectual assets (IAs) and aims at improving the reader's understanding of the share of the two classes of shareholders, monetary capital investors and intellectual capital investors, of the innovative start‐ups. The paper provides practical guidance for use in IC valuation and financial management of innovation rather than a theoretical framework, and is based on the literature on innovation, IC, corporate finance as well as the practical experience of a few early stage venture capitals with whom the author cooperates.

The findings show a way of calculating fair share of an innovative company's shareholdings. The method reflects the risk adjusted future value of cash invested by monetary capital investors and a real market value of IC contributed by the founders. The paper also presents a method of financial management of innovation projects.

The presented methods focus on creating shareholder value and on financial aspects of IC rather than on IC indicators and their graphical representation, hence, members of the IC community who seek more practical concepts may be more interested in the paper.

The paper proposes a practical perspective on the method for IC valuation, innovation projects' financial management, as well as fair division of a start‐up shares between intellectual and monetary capital investors that would be useful for venture capital officers, innovative companies founders and R&D centers' managers.

This paper describes and discusses company spin-ins and spin-outs as a means to understand company growth in a dynamic context. The following question is asked: How can growth be understood in spin-ins and spin-outs of innovative firms? The paper suggests return on capabilities as a measure to understand growth in an open innovation context.

The empirical part of the paper consists of a single case study. Data was captured through interviews and secondary data sources.

The paper points to that resources alone do not explain strategic decisions by a company and how spin-ins and spin-outs result from the need for capabilities, changes in business foci and temporary solutions to deal with overcapacities or lack of alternatives.

The paper contributes to research by discussing contemporary issues in strategy and innovation and relating them to the resource-based view and the growth of the firm. Spin-outs, and acquisitions and divestitures as interlinked events have rarely been focused on in the literature, while they remain frequent phenomena in practice.

To guarantee alignment between ongoing activities and organizational goals, innovation management theory emphasizes management control and explicit innovation strategies as prerequisites for innovation performance. However, the theory on open services innovation emphasizes individual autonomy and incentives to foster open innovations. The aim of this paper is to explore this inconsistency.

An explorative research design involving 25 semi-structured interviews in five large scale-intensive service firms is explored. Scale-intensive service firms are strategically sampled for this study since these firms experience tension between open service innovation characteristics and efforts to standardize.

The authors show how individual autonomy facilitates the internal and external networking required in open innovations. However, individualized incentives do not suffice to motivate, mobilize and direct the collaboration and collective effort needed to ensure successful implementation of open innovation processes. Innovation performance is a collective effort, and the findings suggest that firms' business strategy works as a collective incentive system.

The findings imply that firms should not rely on individualized incentives alone to implement open innovation processes successfully. The implementation of more collectively oriented incentives is also necessary to motivate the collective effort required to succeed with open innovation.

The study extends previous work and shows how innovation practices are collective efforts that also involve the mobilization of external resources. The incentives observed have an effect on individual behaviour, while performance measures, to a larger degree, cater to the collective level. The authors present three propositions for further empirical investigation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the intermingling of new product development and strategy making which are interpreted as co-evolutionary processes where self-organisation and emergence are significant phenomena.

The paper is based on an empirical study of 50 major Austrian innovations in various manufacturing industries developed by small and large firms in the 1980s and 1990s. The theoretical arguments for studying the innovation and strategy process are based on the findings of the complexity science.

The paper shows that emerging opportunities, self-organisation and strategic intentions are equally important for the development of new major product innovations as deliberate search processes and rational decision making. The author identifies three strategy paths concerning the innovation and strategy process which are described as “strategically managed innovations”, “strategically enabled self-organized innovations” and “purely self-organised innovations”.

While empirical studies investigating the emergent nature of strategy and innovation have so far mostly been analysed for very specific industries and firm types, this paper aims to deliver a broader empirical base for the question as to how strategy enables and guides the emergence of product innovations and how the development of new products contributes to the formation of innovation strategies.

Business process management (BPM) supports the creation and capture of firm value. In a dynamic context, the current approach to BPM appears to be limited and static in the face of the challenges posed by the firm's open innovation (OI) ecosystem. The main purpose of this paper is to shed light on the value co-creation through the integration of OI principles and mechanisms of value system.

To this aim, the paper suggested a conceptual integration of strategy and operations literature on OI and the firm's value creation system. This analysis adopted BPM lenses with specific attention to the alignment between value creation and value capture. Applying BPM lenses to the process of creating shared value sought the attainment of a comprehensive system of decisions articulated between strategy and operations.

The paper pinpoints key links between strategy models and operational planning, thus proposing a new framework that integrates the characteristics of value system and OI. The paper elaborates a new theoretical framework rooted in the extant literature conducted in BPM, business strategy and business model innovation (BMI) fields.

This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature in which strategy models are separately treated from the operational ones. This conceptual effort contributes to the extant literature by drawing upon a comprehensive frameworkand mapping the complex set of interactions between the firm's value chain and its innovation ecosystem.

Notes the heightening pressure towards innovation and the current patchy understanding of ideal practices in this area. Considers factors affecting innovation and reports on a study aimed at identifying best practice including firms from a range of sectors. Points to some key characteristics of best practice such as corporate philosophy, clarity of goals and cross‐functional interaction. Identifies the need to excel both in terms of hard and soft innovation, the former relating to structures and the latter relating to the management of such structures.

The purpose of this paper is to explore knowledge creation processes in small innovative hi‐tech firms operating in the software industry.

The research framework examines specific action and interaction processes aiming at creating knowledge. This exploratory research is constituted by five case studies, each of them being represented by a small Canadian software firm. Analysis draws upon four sources of data. A total of 15 interviews (three per case) had been conducted and subsequently transcribed and coded using qualitative software – Nvivo 07.

The results of the study reveal that interaction processes permitting the creation of knowledge in small hi‐tech firms can take place via: formal meetings; informal communities; project teams; external interaction; and information technology‐tools. Rapid prototyping represents the kernel activity of knowledge creation through action. Details of the results, implications of the findings, and conclusions are presented and discussed.

This paper is based on a limited number of case studies, therefore empirical results cannot be generalized. Future research on larger samples of small Canadian software firms is needed, using the same eligibility criteria and comparing the same knowledge creation processes as those explored in this study. Other promising avenues of inquiry include such questions as the way small knowledge‐based firms operating in turbulent environments organize internally to create knowledge, the conditions enabling the generation of knowledge, and the particular “spaces” in which knowledge creation occurs in these firms.

The systematic description and comparison of knowledge creation processes in each explored company contribute to the better understanding of specific “interaction” and “action” processes through which knowledge is generated, enabling practitioners in small innovative hi‐tech firms to design appropriate policies and procedures for enhancing knowledge creation behaviors of their employees.

This research is among the first and most exhaustive exploratory and comparative studies carried out in the Canadian context of small firms operating in the software industry.