Showing papers by "Shaker A. Zahra published in 2015"
TL;DR: In this article, the influence of family ownership on R&D investment varies depending on growth opportunities and business group membership, and it is shown that family ownership is negatively related to R&DI investment, but the relationship becomes positive when growth opportunities are present.
99 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors highlight key findings from a 25-year-long stream of research, conducted in several countries, that shows how CE creates knowledge and the variety of knowledge that emerges from different CE activities.
Abstract: Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is an important means for inducing innovation, revitalizing organizations, and enhancing productivity. It is also the source of new knowledge that allows companies to create capabilities to enter new markets and achieve growth. This article highlights key findings from a 25-year-long stream of research, conducted in several countries, that shows how CE creates knowledge and the variety of knowledge that emerges from different CE activities. It also explains the role of entrepreneurial hubs in capturing, accumulating, converting and translating, and integrating this knowledge, enabling companies to build new revenue streams. The role of these hubs is pervasive, calling for engaged management and creativity in building linkages within and across the different units of an organization. Knowledge, the foundation of competitive superiority, is clearly one of the most important products of CE in today’s dynamic global markets.
88 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the same organizational designs support the realization as well as the discovery of opportunities, and they find that decentralization and formalization have direct, positive, and significant associations with opportunity realization.
Abstract: Extant research offers relatively little insight into the organizational design correlates of entrepreneurship in established firms. We argue on theoretical grounds that the same organizational designs support the realization as well as the discovery of opportunities. Specifically, decentralized structures are associated with opportunity realization as well discovery, and this effect is reinforced by formalization. Decentralization gives managers the discretion and autonomy needed to recognize and realize opportunities, while formalization enables the standardization and codification of actions and processes. To test these ideas, we use a data-set based on paired responses from 474 Danish firms operating in several industries for our analyses. We find that decentralization and formalization have direct, positive, and significant associations with opportunity realization. We also address how these organizational design variables are related to opportunity discovery. We find similar effects. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our reasoning and results, such as implications for the idea in the innovation and organizational learning literatures that optimal performance over time requires that firms either vacillate between organizational designs or adopt ambidextrous designs.
82 citations
TL;DR: It is proposed that firms need to establish a fit between the thoroughness of opportunity appraisal and their reward as well as performance evaluation practices.
Abstract: Firms need to invest their scarce resources into the most promising new business opportunities (e.g., new engineering technologies). Yet, the literature on strategic entrepreneurship pays little attention to how, and how thoroughly, firms appraise potential opportunities based on technical as well as managerial criteria. Given that such evaluation takes considerable time, energy, attention, and skill on the part of employees, we propose that firms need to establish a fit between the thoroughness of opportunity appraisal and their reward as well as performance evaluation practices. Evidence from a double-respondent sample of 565 Danish firms supports our theoretical expectations.
12 citations
21 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In order to gain advantage from investments in alliances, acquisitions, R&D and other activities aimed at bringing new knowledge into a firm's operations, companies must possess the requisite absorptive capacity, defined as the ability to identify potentially useful knowledge and then import, understand, assimilate, and exploit it into their operations.
Abstract: In order to gain advantage from investments in alliances, acquisitions, R&D, and other activities aimed at bringing new knowledge into a firm's operations, companies must possess the requisite absorptive capacity, defined as the ability to identify potentially useful knowledge and then import, understand, assimilate, and exploit it into their operations. This entry covers the various dimensions of absorptive capacity.
Keywords:
absorptive capacity;
assimilation;
exploitation
6 citations
22 Jan 2015
TL;DR: Technological innovation is the foundation of competitive distinctiveness that leads to superior performance as discussed by the authors, and it is the basis for competitive differentiation that can lead to superior results. But, it is not suitable for all applications.
Abstract: Technological innovation is the foundation of competitive distinctiveness that leads to superior performance.
Keywords:
the concept and its dimensions;
absorptive capacity and technological innovation;
absorptive capacity, learning, and building innovative capability
6 citations
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this article, the authors suggest that new ventures can overcome threats to their survival by gaining access to technological knowledge from other firms in their industry, even without directly transacting with them.
Abstract: Recent research suggests that new ventures can overcome threats to their survival by gaining access to technological knowledge from other firms in their industry, even without directly transacting ...
3 citations
01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: The successful execution of a company's strategy requires transforming plans into concrete action by selecting different activities and allocating resources for them (Bower and Gilbert, 2005) as discussed by the authors. But, as discussed in the introduction, there are two levels of portfolio planning: strategic and tactical, the strategic level involves deciding the relative emphasis between investments across short-, medium-and long-term time horizons.
Abstract: The successful execution of a company's strategy requires transforming plans into concrete action by selecting different activities and allocating resources for them (Bower and Gilbert, 2005). Portfolio planning is the decision process that translates strategies into investment decisions in the form of projects that will deliver the short-, medium- and long-term performance of a company's strategic goals (Cooper, Edgett and Kleinschmidt, 2001; Patterson, 2005). Typically, there are two levels of portfolio planning: strategic and tactical. The strategic level involves deciding the relative emphasis between investments across short-, medium- and long-term time horizons.
2 citations
22 Jan 2015
TL;DR: Cohen and Levinthal define absorptive capacity (ACAP) as the ability of a firm to recognize the value of new external information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Cohen and Levinthal define absorptive capacity (ACAP) as: “the ability of a firm to recognize the value of new external information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends”.
1 citations