Absorptive Capacity and Integration with Partners in Ecosystems: Influence on Innovativeness and Business Model Innovativeness

This paper consider a non-tourtnament duopoly model of process innovation. Firms engage in cost reducing R&D before competing in outputs. We depart from the approach adopted in the existing literature in two ways: firstly we have introduced the absorptive capacity which allow us to consider firms capacity to exploit rivals R&D activity as a function of their own R&D strategies rather than by the spillovers degree and secondly we consider a dynamic model. In this setting we discuss the condition for the existence and the uniqueness of an optimal R&D strategies. Finally numerical simulations show as the existence of the absorptive capacity and of time can change some evidence obtained in the literature of the strategic investments.

Recognizing that business model innovation (BMI) is a constant source of value creation in the digital economy, we examine the nexus between absorptive capacity and strategic flexibility, and their effects on BMI. We argue that to increase strategic flexibility and innovate their business model, firms need to develop their potential absorptive capacity (acquisition and assimilation of knowledge) as well as their realized absorptive capacity (transformation and exploitation of knowledge). While potential absorptive capacity drives both BMI and strategic flexibility, realized absorptive capacity increases a firm’s strategic flexibility. Our analysis of 282 Italian small- and medium-sized firms also shows a relationship between realized absorptive capacity and BMI, but only under conditions of environmental uncertainty.

Around the globe, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly becoming connected, internally as well as externally. Data and information is significantly important to deliver better quality healthcare. A large number of pharmaceutical business running legacy systems will not survive without investing in technology, data systems and innovative models. Hence, innovative business models warrants better product mix with complex generics and specialty products. We identify how supply chain management systems help in coordinating the planning and operations of emerging business models in pharmaceutical sector though network optimization. Since pharmaceutical products are for human consumption, complete control over distribution chain is mandatory. Hence, we focus on modern supply chain having traceable, secure, globalized and compliant logistics for the pharmaceutical sector. We simulate the pharmaceutical supply chain using digital twins. We utilize discrete event simulation methodology using anylogistix simulation and optimization toolkit. The case study in this work is the Jan Aarogya (peoples’ health) scheme in India, which is built on the modern supply chain paradigm of hub and spoke architecture. We find that digital twins can significantly improve the decision-making during large-scale healthcare disruptions. We simulate pharmaceutical supply chains during disruptions by focusing on system resilience. A system resilience is composed of component resilience, buffer inventory and time. We derive the impact of disruptions and build a simulation model for the located pharmaceutical hubs. Based on our simulation model for pharmaceutical supply chains, we show the impact of network utilization and proactive planning. Suitable recommendations for policy makers is also highlighted based on the analysis results.KeywordsPharmaceutical supply chainDigital twinInnovationDisruptionSimulation

The increasing popularity of Software as a Service has strongly affected the established business model of on‐premise enterprise software. Software as a Service has distinctive characteristics of disruptive innovations that typically create several difficulties for incumbent firms, in particular with regard to adapting business models. To date, however, little empirical understanding exists regarding the dynamics of business model change – a topic of special importance to the highly dynamic software industry, which is characterised by rapid and regular emergence of disruptive innovations. As disruptive innovations require gathering distant knowledge and experimenting with new ideas, this study addresses theoretical gaps regarding the role of absorptive capacity and organisational ambidexterity in the process of business model change owing to the emergence of a disruptive innovation. Drawing on evidence from multiple case studies of six incumbent vendors of enterprise resource‐planning software and informed by a thorough review of related secondary data, we investigate the pace and path of incumbents' business model adaptations. We propose a theoretical model that refines prior literature on absorptive capacity and organisational ambidexterity, particularly with regard to the process of business model change. This study identifies further technological factors that determine how and why incumbents change business models. In addition, our study provides in‐depth insights on the technological trajectory of enterprise resource‐planning software switching from on‐premise to on‐demand software services. © 2016 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

This study explores how digital technologies (DTs) drive business model innovation (BMI) in the traditional manufacturing sector of an emerging economy, focusing on the mediating roles of firm agility (FA), absorptive capacity (AC), and the moderating role of market turbulence (MT). Drawing on organizational adaptation theory and the dynamic capability view, the study develops a conceptual model tested through a survey of 479 senior managers from small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) in three major industrial cities in Turkey. The results confirm that DTs have a significant positive effect on BMI, with both FA and AC partially mediating this relationship. Additionally, MT strengthens the impact of DTs on FA but does not significantly moderate its effect on AC or BMI. These findings reveal that the effectiveness of digital transformation depends not only on technological investments but also on internal organizational capabilities and external environmental conditions. The study contributes to the digital transformation literature by offering empirical evidence from an underexplored emerging market context and by demonstrating the conditional pathways through which DTs influence innovation. Practical implications highlight the importance of enhancing agility and knowledge integration to translate digital investments into strategic value under turbulent market conditions.

The level of influence of the digital economy in our time has become very noticeable in all areas of work and lifestyle, from e-commerce in retail, to online education, social networks, automatic vehicles, and even the personalization of medicine. Advances in the digital world and the digitization of various business processes have contributed to the improvement of business models that will transform all sectors of the economy in the future and ensure their high competitiveness. Therefore, it is important to know the nature and conditions of application of innovative business models, as well as competitive advantages. Innovation is the basis of high competitiveness of any enterprise. This concept is not always equal to the material product, any management project can become an innovation. The second definition of innovation is a set of processes that affect the entire functioning of the company, which lead to the implementation of new and modified products, technologies, proposals and a number of management decisions. Innovative business models are used in many modern organizations. Many well-known companies have implemented innovative business models. For example, McDonald's, Amazon, IKEA, eBay, Starbucks, Wal-Mart. And we used these models to form an innovative approach to the supply of products already available on the market. In today's digital world, innovative business models are becoming one of the most relevant methods of doing business and are attracting more and more attention. Because the business model of any company is the main tool on the way to creating value for consumers. In a world of fierce competition, companies must form business models that are not just a way of doing business. Innovation is a major success factor for competing organizations.

PurposeThis paper aims to discuss hybrid organizations whose business models blur the boundary between for-profit and nonprofit worlds. With the aim of understanding how hybrid organizations have developed commercially viable business models to create positive social and environmental change, the authors contend that hybrids are altering long-held business norms and conceptions of the role of the corporation in society. Building on an analysis of the most updated literature on hybrid organizations and with the use of case study approach, the purpose of this paper is to derive managerial lessons that traditional businesses may apply to innovate their business models.Design/methodology/approachThis paper has a practical focus to help organizations to develop successful business strategies and design innovative business models. It applies emerging thinking on hybrid business models to provide new insights and ideas on the use of business models as tools for innovating and delivering value. To comply with this, first, the authors discuss the distinctive characteristics of hybrids and the hybrid business model through a concise but comprehensive review of all the literature on hybrid organization, which is still very recent. Second, we relied on a short case study that introduces information technology and digital innovation as the premises of the emergence of a new hybrid business model that adds additional elements to traditional business managers on how to learn from hybrid organizations’ avenues to innovate their business models.FindingsIn this paper, the authors aimed to shed light on the management of any organization or initiative that aims to embrace multiple and competing yet potentially synergistic goals, as is increasingly the case in modern corporations. Spotting hidden complementarities of antagonistic assets can be arduous, time-consuming, costly and risky, but businesses driven by innovation may want to keep a close eye on the expanding hybrid sector as a source of future entrepreneurial opportunities. To this regard, hybrid social ventures have the potential to shed light on ways to innovate traditional business models. The essence of studying hybrids is that firms may learn how to innovate their business models in ways that go beyond current conceptualizations, making their mission profitable, rather than making profit their only mission! The research design (literature analysis and case study) allowed the authors to disentangle different innovative business models that hybrids suggest highlight strengths and weaknesses of such business models, understand strategies and capabilities associated with hybrids and transpose all these lessons learned to traditional business managers who constantly struggle for innovation.Research limitations/implicationsThe main implication is that hybrid organizations may serve as incubators for new practices that can gain scale and impact by infusion into existing corporations. The authors can assist to a process of “hybridization” of incumbent firms, pushing the boundaries of corporate sustainability efforts toward strategies in which profit and social purpose share more equal footing.Practical implicationsFirms interested in benefiting from antagonistic assets that can have a dramatic impact on their business model innovation may want to consider some lessons: firms can attempt to build antagonistic assets into their mission, asking themselves what activities they can undertake with the potential to create (or erode) social, environmental and economic value and how these activities might be mediated by the context/environment in which they operate; they can partner with hybrids to benefit from them and absorb competencies from them, so to increase their likelihood to generate value-creating activities and to impact on wider range of stakeholders, including funders, partners, beneficiaries and communities; they can mimic hybrids on how to innovate their business model through the use of the “deliberate resource misfit” dynamic capability, mitigating negative impacts and trade-offs and maximizing positive value spillovers, both for the firms themselves and for the community.Social implicationsSharing know-how with hybrids opens up to ways to innovate business models, and hybrids are much more open to sharing lessons and encouraging others to copy their approaches in a genuine open innovation approach.Originality/valueThe main lesson businesses can take away from studying hybrids is that antagonistic assets – and not only profitable complementary ones, as the resource-based view would suggest – do not have to be a burden on profits. Hybrids ground their strategy first and foremost on their beneficiaries, thus dealing with a bundle of antagonistic assets. The primary objective of hybrids is thus to find imaginative ways of generating profits from their given resources rather than acquiring the resources that generate the highest profit. Profit is the ultimate goal of traditional businesses’ mission, but by making profit their only mission, firms risk missing out on the hidden opportunities latent in antagonistic assets. Learning from hybrids about how to align profits and societal impact may be a driver of long-term competitive advantage.

Despite growing interest in smart manufacturing, there is little information on how organizations can approach the alignment of strategic processes with Industry 4.0. This study seeks to fill this knowledge gap by developing a framework for the integration of Industry 4.0 techniques and artificial intelligence systems. This framework will serve as a conceptual guide in the digital transformation processes toward Industry 4.0. This study involved a systematic literature review of the important methodological proposals and identification of thematic axes, research topics, strategic objectives, challenges, drivers, technological trends, models, and design architectures. In total, 160 articles were selected (120 were published between 2017 and 2022). The results provide insights into the prospects for strategic alignment in the adoption of Industry 4.0. The conceptualization of the framework shows that Industry 4.0 needs strategic adjustments mainly in seven objectives (business model, change mindset, skills, human resources, service level, ecosystem, interconnection, and absorption capacity) derived from 10 thematic axes and 28 research topics. Understanding the strategic adoption of Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence is vital for industrial organizations to stay competitive and relevant in a constantly evolving business landscape.

Background: In the era of knowledge-based economy and business model 4.0, the performance of human resources (HR) is one of the components for Find out how your business is growing. To improve business sustainability it is important to pay attention to the knowledge creation process to improve human resource performance. In the knowledge creation process, members of the organization not only receive knowledge but also must have good knowledge absorption capacity. This needs to be encouraged by the existence of a leadership role.Purpose: The purpose of this research is to develop the main concepts that are believed to improve the HR Performance. This concept is the SECI process and is supported by two other concepts, namely altruistic leadership and absorptive capacity.Methods: The research method used is a literature survey to define concepts and develop measurements.Results: The results of the study found a construct in an effort to improve HR performance, namely through the new concept of the SECI process which is supported by the intervening variables altruistic leadership and absorptive capacity.Conclusion: HR performance will increase if the company applies it SECI processes in knowledge creation activities. The SECI process will be more effective and efficient with the application of altruistic leadership and absorptive capacity. Thus the efforts made are for the progress of the company in the long term.Suggestion: For the future agenda we plan to validate the measurement of the concepts and test the proposed model with quantitative methods.

Current research highlights the internationalization of firms in downstream value chains, such as marketing and sales; however, studies have overlooked supplier internationalization into up-stream value chains. Drawing on internationalization and GVC perspectives, we examine the critical case of DBL Apparel Company from Bangladesh, which supplies many global brands, including Sweden’s H & M, and has internationalized into Ethiopia. As the company appears to be the first Bangladeshi garment firm to have internationalized, we conduct an in-depth examination over a three-year period of the process and the antecedents affecting the firm’s overseas expansion. We explore how the buyer’s business model, institutional features, and the supplier’s entrepreneurial capability influence DBL’s internationalization. In particular, our study demonstrates how the buyer’s market-driving approach, value creation, delivery, and proposition shape how the buyer shows commitment to the supplier’s internationalization. At the same time, the supplier’s entrepreneurial capability, consisting of visionary leadership, commitment, learning intent, absorptive capacity, and dynamic management skills contribute to its decision to internationalize. Our analysis reveals that a supplier firm does not move toward internationalization based on one-sided commitment only; instead, it is the ‘shared commitment’ of both buyer and supplier in the GVC that contributes to the supplier’s decision to internationalize. We also demonstrate the influence of institutional characteristics in both home and host countries, particularly the role of government and the logics of doing business that facilitate the internationalization decision and process. Our study contributes to internationalization business and GVC literatures.

Latecomer economies are firms which may be able to leapfrog older vintages of technology, and make pre-emptive investments in emerging technologies to catch up with advanced countries in new markets. Leapfrogging can be defined as latecomers trying something different ahead of the forerunners, thereby leaping over them. The answer to the question whether the fourth industrial revolution represents a new window of opportunity for leapfrogging or whether it constitutes a source of further risks for latecomers is that this depends entirely on the country’s response and readiness, that is, its industrial policy, digital literacy, the skill and education level, as well as domestic market size and position in the GVC. Policy recommendations for leapfrogging can also be made for different types of firms, such as incumbents and start-ups. The former comprises three types of firms, namely leaders, followers, and laggards. Path-creating type leapfrogging is more likely to take place in start-ups because they have invested the least in existing technologies or business models. Leader or follower type firms in emerging economies tend to have some experience with technology and absorptive capacity and are thus likely to be in a position to skip one or several stages, while managing the risks associated with leapfrogging. Lastly, laggard firms should not attempt pre-mature leapfrogging but should first build some absorptive capacity in their niche area and upgrade by moving up the higher end of the GVC.

Up to now, the review of international innovation research is based on the micro knowledge-based research of multi-disciplinary, focusing on a research branch in the field of innovation management（such as business model）, or the evolution of the field of international innovation management in a certain period of time. In view of this, based on the bibliometric perspective, this paper selects 43 828 pieces of literature data during 1962-2019 from a general view, and uses the CiteSpace bibliometric analysis software qualitative method of literature reviews to analyze core journals, core authors, core regions, keyword co-occurrence, research hotspots in the past 180 days and cited knowledge map of literature from a broader longitudinal perspective. It is found that core journals in the field of innovation management have different emphases on theories, methods, policies, applications, etc.; China and Chinese institutions have the highest amount of paper publications, while Chinese scholars have a high amount of paper publications, but the international academic influence needs to be improved; Absorption capacity is still the international research hotspot in the field. In the past decade, research hotspots have shifted from organizational ambidexterity and business model innovation to platform, ecological innovation, digital innovation, etc.; International innovation management can be divided into eight major mainstream research fields, namely, open innovation, knowledge management, capability, project management, ambidexterity, business model innovation, ecosystem, dominant design and coopetition. In this way, this paper expounds the knowledge evolution and development frontier in the field of international innovation management in a unified way, which provides reference for the research of innovation management in China. To sum up, the direction of domestic financial support and journal topic selection will incline to the research of innovation management under the background of digital economy. Platform, ecological innovation and digital innovation will become the research hotspot in the future, and the research method and the dynamic perspective of business model innovation, ecosystem and competition need to be further expanded.

Open innovation and open business models have received a lot of attention during the last decade both from practitioners and academia since Henry Chesbrough launched the two concepts respectively in 2003 and 2006 (Chesbrough, 2003a and 2006a). Careful observation of publications about these two concepts reveals that most researchers as well as practitioners do not make a proper distinction between them. In this chapter, we intend to clarify the distinction between the two concepts and, more importantly, to extend the range of potential innovation strategies by combining open innovation and open business models in different ways. This should lead to a comprehensive classification of possible innovation strategies in which open/closed innovations are combined with open/closed business models. The classification starts with simple combinations of open or closed innovations and traditional vs. open business models in their new product development. Combinations of open innovation and open business models generate interesting models to create and capture value, which to our knowledge are not specified before in the open innovation literature. The classification will also illustrate that (open) innovation targeting new product or new business development is just one possible strategy how firms can create a competitive advantage. Product innovation may not be an option for companies producing commodities (e.g. crude oil) but the competitive drivers in these industries (e.g. finding the best oil wells) may be affected by the product innovations of their (technology) partners (e.g. new technologies to explore oil wells more effectively). Reframing open innovation in this way allows us to shed light on innovation networks in which the instigators of the network are not the innovators themselves, but they nevertheless form the hubs in a broader innovation ecosystem in which they benefit from the innovations of their technology partners. OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Fri May 3

Aim: In the era of mobile internet, live marketing has become a new business model for network marketing, and is a product of the interactive integration of new technology and marketing activities in the new era.Method: Based on the business model theory, combining the value creation process, using live streaming platforms such as Taobao, Tiktok, Jingdong and Amazon as examples, and adopting a qualitative analysis method, the business model elements and innovation paths of live marketing are analyzed.Findings: The research found that: (1) The live marketing model has new integrated features and new values. The combination of technical system integration and marketing activities is a hotbed for live marketing;(2) Based on the anchors influence and audiences attractiveness as the classification criteria, live broadcast sellers can be divided into super sellers, famous sellers, ordinary sellers and low-level sellers. It is a new classification proposed for the first time, which provides important evaluation contributions for understanding and distinguishing the different categories of live broadcast sellers; (3) Based on the business model canvas, this article finds that the business model innovation of live marketing illustrates the nine elements logical relationship of the business model, value proposition is the key-hub linking other elements. The business model innovation of live marketing also follows the basic laws of value creation, that is, from value proposition to value creation to value transmission, and finally to value acquisition;(4) The business model innovation path of live marketing is also the path of value rebuilding, which increasing value is the essence of the sustainable development of business model innovation.Implications/Novel Contribution: Therefore, these new findings can help non-live broadcast marketers transform their marketing concepts and methods, and improve their sales capabilities. The analysis of the business model innovation and value creation of live marketing reveals the essence of live marketing, and the mechanism of value co-creation between sellers and customers, which this research also creatively proposes its innovation model and value creation process from the perspective of the relationship between business model and value creation. Finally, the article is not in-depth study of its relationship business model innovation and value creation from the perspective of explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge.

Innovative business models and financing mechanisms for distributed solar PV (DSPV) deployment in China