Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology

Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge

Research on sustainability transitions has expanded rapidly in the last ten years, diversified in terms of topics and geographical applications, and deepened with respect to theories and methods. This article provides an extensive review and an updated research agenda for the field, classified into nine main themes: understanding transitions; power, agency and politics; governing transitions; civil society, culture and social movements; businesses and industries; transitions in practice and everyday life; geography of transitions; ethical aspects; and methodologies. The review shows that the scope of sustainability transitions research has broadened and connections to established disciplines have grown stronger. At the same time, we see that the grand challenges related to sustainability remain unsolved, calling for continued efforts and an acceleration of ongoing transitions. Transition studies can play a key role in this regard by creating new perspectives, approaches and understanding and helping to move society in the direction of sustainability.

An agenda for sustainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions

Much effort goes into building markets as a tool for economic and social development, often overlooking that in too many places social exclusion and poverty prevent many, especially women, from participating in and accessing markets. Building on data from rural Bangladesh and analyzing the work of a prominent intermediary organization, we uncover institutional voids as the source of market exclusion and identify two sets of activities – redefining market architecture and legitimating new actors – as critical for building ‘inclusive' markets. We expose voids as ‘analytical spaces' and illustrate how they result from conflict and contradiction among institutional ‘bits and pieces' from local political, community, and religious spheres. Our findings put forward a perspective on market building that highlights the ‘on the ground' dynamics and attends to the ‘institutions at play', to their consequences, and to a more diverse set of ‘inhabitants' of institutions.

Building Inclusive Markets in Rural Bangladesh : How Intermediaries Work Institutional Voids

Increased digitalization has influenced various business activities including companies’ business models (BMs) by enabling various new forms of cooperation between companies and leading to new product and service offerings as well as new forms of company relationships with customers and employees. At the same time, this digitalization has put pressure on companies to reflect on their current strategy and explore new business opportunities systematically and at early stages. While research on digitalization in the context of BMs is now gaining increased attention, a research gap still exists in this field since the number of empirical insights is limited. The paper aims to discuss these issues.,Qualitative empirical data collected from 12 key informants working in two distinctive industries, the media and automotive industries, were collected. An investigation was carried out to examine the differences and similarities among how digitalization influences a company’s value creation, proposition and capture, as well as how firms cope with challenges presented by increased digitalization.,The findings of the study show that, whilst digitalization is generally considered to be important, the value proposition itself as also the position in the value network determine the perceived available options for business model innovation (BMI) by digitalization. Moreover, the organizational capacities and employee competences were identified as future challenges that will be faced by both industries.,The findings of this study have revealed that representatives of the media and automotive industries perceive both the pressures and opportunities of digitalization regarding BMI; its application and exploitation, however, remain challenging. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing empirical insights in the context of digitalization and BMI.

Digitalization and its influence on business model innovation

Effectuation theory has gained much attention recently in entrepreneurship studies. Nonetheless, also critique has been presented, pinpointing limitations in effectuation theory concerning global a...

Entrepreneurial innovation processes: Adding a spatial dimension to effectuation theory

Frugal innovation (FI) describes a phenomenon whereby solutions are developed to serve low-income customers, mainly in developing countries, with affordable products and services that help address pressing social and environmental problems. Despite a decade of academic interest in FI, we still lack an overarching understanding of the various facets of this phenomenon. Based on 48 in-depth interviews for 23 cases, we integrated and validated 10 years of FI scholarship. This study therefore set out to develop a comprehensive framework for FI, one that would identify its antecedents, mediators, and consequences. Such a framework promises a holistic perspective for FI by linking these identified factors to the concept of sustainability. The findings also reinforce the dual contribution that FI makes in terms of both business growth and inclusive growth. Finally, this study discusses the theoretical and practical implications and provides some suggestions for future research on FI. 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/caim.12511

Frugal innovation: Antecedents, mediators, and consequences

In this paper we argue that companies need to change their corporate strategies towards more open and at the same time they should be cautious about how to deal with their technology related activities. We further argue that technology transfer is risky but not involving with technology transferring is risker, at least, in long run, particularly for technological firms. Due to openness of innovation, firms are under a new dilemma for which they need different strategies than traditional ones. Firms are increasingly considering technology and knowledge as their crucial resources. They started to abandon the idea that the generation of new knowledge comes from internal research and development. Additionally, to remain competitive, managing intellectual resources is a necessity for them. Many large firms are earning a significant portion of their revenues from technology transfer but larger proportion of the firms still struggling to deal with their technologies. Open innovation concept has exposed this technology transfer issue more vividly, hence, made crucial for managers and academicians to ponder upon it.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2170967_code1923540.pdf?abstractid=2170967&mirid=1

Balancing between Inward and Outward Technology Transfer in Open Innovation Paradigm

A new approach for creating breakthrough innovation is emerging. This is competition-based innovation with a novel model. In parallel with the increasing use of competition-based innovation in for-profit organizations, this model of innovation is successfully being used by non-profit organizations for advancing the development of science and technology. One such non-profit organization is the X Prize Foundation, which designs and manages innovation competitions to encourage scientific and technological development. The objective of this study is to provide insight about how competition-based innovation can be used in creating breakthrough innovation. With the X Prize Foundation and three innovation competitions organized by this organization, we illustrate that, as surprising as it may seem, even breakthrough innovations can be brought about through innovation competitions. This study debunks some common beliefs concerning breakthrough innovation and innovation competitions.

Mokter Hossain

Papers

Entrepreneurial innovation processes: Adding a spatial dimension to effectuation theory

Frugal innovation: Antecedents, mediators, and consequences

Balancing between Inward and Outward Technology Transfer in Open Innovation Paradigm

Breakthroughs with Competition-Based Innovation: The X Prize Foundation

Frugal innovation as a source of sustainable entrepreneurship to tackle social and environmental challenges