How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

It has become cliche to argue that a chasm of significant proportions has developed between mainstream economic analysis1 of technological advance and business practice. This chasm is often attributed to the insistence of many economists to cling to old-fashioned ideas concerning the creation and diffusion of innovations and to disregard the pragmatic study of technological progress. The resulting underestimation of the complexities of the process of technological advance and the institutions which affect it has had serious consequences on the predictive ability of theory.2

The Process of Technological Innovation

Factors Influencing SMEs Adoption of Social Media Marketing

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider why entrepreneurship theorising has become fragmented and how the research problem might be resolved.Design/methodology/approach – The authors first examine how entrepreneurial constructs reflect only part of what we “mean” by the construct to argue that we use different social constructions. This explains why theories are fragmented. But the authors then ask how we might use and reconcile this diversity, pointing to the utility of the constructs as part of a complex whole. The authors discuss entrepreneurship as a complex adaptive system showing how connections and relatedness help explain the power of entrepreneurship to use and adapt to change.Research implications – The authors' proposition of entrepreneurial endeavours as a complex adaptive system provides a fresh theoretical platform to examine aspects of entrepreneurship and improve theorising.Practical implications – The authors argue that this idea of connecting can also be used at the level of p...

/pdf/entrepreneurship-as-connecting-some-implications-for-34gsurrib4.pdf

Entrepreneurship as connecting: some implications for theorising and practice

Trust in organizations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the practices and processes of trust building and use in collaborative networking for product innovation and to compare face to face with virtual networkingDesign/methodology/approach – Guided by a literature review and preliminary participant observation, 16 open ended interviews collected data about the processes in 11 small biotech firms These data were inductively analysed by the constant comparative method to develop explanatory themesFindings – Trust was seen as a requirement for successful collaborative innovation, but the paper identified how different dimensions of trust are located in the trust building processes Trust works by creating a platform of confidence that fosters flows of information and the exchange of tacit knowledge Two types of trust relationships, the technical and the social, work in different ways to produce different, but complementary, types of trust Virtual environments suit technical trust building but are less suited 

/pdf/trust-formation-processes-in-innovative-collaborations-1zionpt8l0.pdf

Trust formation processes in innovative collaborations: networking as knowledge building practices

https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/preview/294822/OH%202009%20The%20adoption%20of%20e-trade.pdf

The adoption of e-trade innovations by Korean small and medium-sized firms.

Purpose – The paper aims to better understand the process of networking by small business with their customers to achieve innovations. In particular the relative roles of face‐to‐face and virtual interaction are to be investigated.Design/methodology/approach – Initially a week of participant observation was undertaken then 17 in‐depth interviews were conducted and analyzed. The biotechnology sector was used for the sample.Findings – Networking interaction could be categorized into stages. A deepening of the relationship developed on two fronts: increasing exchanges of technical information but necessarily supplemented by increased sharing of social information to facilitate tacit knowledge exchanges. As the relationship continued to develop, virtual modes could be used in an increasing capacity. The paper developed a stage model and identified the role of face‐to‐face and virtual exchanges at each stage.Research limitations/implications – Generalizability is unproven. However the issues appeared typical o...

/pdf/innovation-in-small-business-comparing-face-to-face-with-4x2u4exjua.pdf

Innovation in small business: comparing face‐to‐face with virtual networking

Purpose – E‐trade (or electronic trading) appears to offer increased efficiency in business processes, but only a limited number of small firms in Korea have adopted the new processes. The purpose of this paper is to try to establish the obstacles and the perceived barriers to the continuing use of e‐trade technologies by small Korean firms.Design/methodology/approach – The literature was employed to develop a theoretical model that includes perceived risk and the environment. The model was operationalised in a questionnaire completed by 164 respondents. LISREL validated the instrument and the model. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling.Findings – The authors found that information risk and business risk negatively affect adoption and use. The authors also tested the relationship between the environment of the organisation and adoption of e‐trade. The results show that the maturity of information technology and the innovation characteristics of the firm have positive influences on th...

/pdf/perceived-barriers-towards-the-use-of-e-trade-processes-by-bk8c63r4px.pdf

Perceived barriers towards the use of e‐trade processes by Korean SMEs

This paper reflects the increasing interest in entrepreneurial networking. Indeed Monsted (1995) suggests that networking is now a vogue concept in the entrepreneurship field. The popularity of the network theme has resulted in an increasing number of publications. Our study is an attempt to first quantify the growth in network research, as indicated by published papers. It then attempts to provide a guide to developments in network publications.

/pdf/patterns-and-trends-in-entrepreneurial-network-literature-44ofatcv6d.pdf

Douglas Cruickshank

Papers

Trust formation processes in innovative collaborations: networking as knowledge building practices

The adoption of e-trade innovations by Korean small and medium-sized firms.

Innovation in small business: comparing face‐to‐face with virtual networking

Perceived barriers towards the use of e‐trade processes by Korean SMEs

Patterns and trends in entrepreneurial network literature 1993-2003