Catalysing Internal Innovation

Research purpose. The study examines how tacit knowledge sharing affects internal organisational innovation by exploring change adaptability as a mediator. Hence, it tries to fill this gap and further explain the role played by tacit knowledge sharing in the entire knowledge management process. Given the mediating effect of change adaptability, this study aims to provide new insight into effective management and sharing tacit knowledge among organisations to improve their innovation processes. Design / Methodology / Approach. This study adopted a quantitative cross-sectional survey design, with Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) as the main statistical technique. Such a method is best applied in this research, where one confirms hypotheses and the relationship between observed and latent variables. The samples were selected based on judgmental non-probability and purposive sampling approaches. The SEM was used in data analysis. It contributed to understanding the relationship of the variables, such as sharing tacit knowledge, change adaptability, and internal organisational innovation. Findings. The study proved that tacit knowledge sharing is highly significant in internal organisational innovation, mediated by change adaptability. Direct effect: Tacit knowledge sharing directly affects the organisational ability to adapt to change and internal innovativeness, thus underpinning its basis. Change adaptability mediates the effect of tacit knowledge sharing on internal organisational innovation, which influences innovation outcomes. Path coefficient analysis confirms the positive influence of tacit knowledge sharing on adaptability to change and innovation. Indirect Effects: Empirical examination has proved the significant mediating effect of change adaptability in leveraging tacit knowledge for innovation. These results suggest that the strategic value of tacit knowledge and adaptability, which will drive sustainable innovation within organisations and support their integration within strategic frameworks, is fully justified. Originality / Value / Practical implications. This is a new model used for the first time to suggest novel contributions and usefulness in understanding the relationship among sharing of tacit knowledge, change adaptability, and innovation at the internal level of the organisation. Tacit knowledge sharing, combined with change adaptability, is a model for internal organisational innovation. Therefore, it fills an important gap in the existing literature: the quantification of adaptability in mediating the effect of tacit knowledge on innovation. The results of this study will provide empirical validation of these relationships and further contribute to the knowledge in practice, particularly by emphasising the mediating role of change adaptability, which has been relatively underexplored. Practically, tacit knowledge sharing within adaptive organisational environments is thus an important call towards effective adaptation to change. The level of enhancement of these dimensions as core competencies through strategies could make a difference in the success of businesses. The importance of adaptability has to be emphasised by training programs and management practices that would provide the same skills. Other important avenues include those that work towards cultivating supportive organisational cultures that would facilitate tacit knowledge exchange, support employee interaction and informal knowledge exchange, and measures to reward innovation efforts. Investment in human resources practices that encourage learning and adaptability will continue to encourage knowledge sharing and innovation, including improving training programs, offering mentorship opportunities, and developing performance management systems that support and reward behaviours around innovation. This study contributes to the literature with a developed framework and empirical examination of the interrelations between tacit knowledge sharing, change adaptability, and innovation. It provides practical strategies that can be of value to the organisation in enhancing innovation capabilities through knowledge management.

Both innovating and internationalizing can hold the key to survival and growth among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Service innovation in particular is highly relevant in the increasingly digitalized and high-technology global trade. However, there have been until now few studies on service innovation in international entrepreneurship. Thus, in an effort to illuminate its role in entrepreneurial internationalization, the present study examines the profitability impact of service innovation in SME internationalization, while also outlining the differing impacts of entrepreneurial orientation and human capital as the antecedents of both. The empirical data were collected via an online survey of Finnish SMEs in the information and communications technology (ICT) industrial sector, the final sample comprising 104 companies. The data were analyzed through structural equation modeling. The results indicate, first, that entrepreneurial orientation underlies both degree of internationalization and service innovation, yet different dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation have distinct impacts on the two outcomes. Second, we find that the level human capital also determines the level of service innovation in as an antecedent and third, international expansion, but not service innovation, has a negative impact on profitability. We discuss the implications of these results, which imply that SMEs may face an internationalization-innovation paradox in that engaging in both activities may not be a feasible strategic option for them, and that prioritizing internationalizing in favor of innovating may incur costs and result in lower profitability.

PurposeStudies have indicated that international innovation collaboration has promoted technology transfer and knowledge spillover between countries. The conclusion of various international intellectual property (IP) treaties has played an essential role in optimizing the international innovation and collaboration environment. This study investigates the effect of IP treaties on international innovation collaboration and whether international IP treaties can promote collaboration between a country and other economies in the world.Design/methodology/approachAfter collecting and extracting the patent record data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a final dataset of 3,213,626 cooperative patents and 465,236 pairs of collaborations between two countries or regions is established. Based on the international patent collaboration data of 192 countries during 1976–2017, the changes in patent collaboration indicators after these countries joined 23 IP treaties are analyzed.FindingsInternational IP treaties have significantly increased the number of patent cooperation countries of a country and its importance in international cooperation networks. The role of IP treaties is more manifested by the increased opportunities for a country's international innovation cooperation than its influence on global innovation; this is of extreme significance for developing countries to introduce advanced technologies.Originality/valueGinarte and Park (1997) have confirmed that IP treaties have helped to raise the level of IP protection. In this study, the increase in the degree centrality of the international innovation network is evidence of IP treaties to promote innovation cooperation. For a developing country, joining an intellectual property treaty may strengthen intellectual property protection and optimize its own international innovation cooperation methods.

The importance of a service innovation as a result of increasing competition and customer demands in manufacturing firms has been widely recognized. Especially, a service innovation can be incorporated internally to sustain a firm' competitive advantage. In the context of manufacturing firms, this study investigates the triggering factors of an internal service innovation and its corresponding implementation strategy. This study adopts a multiple case studies method and examines the critical factors: internal user involvement and top management support. It is found the internal user involvement is neither the trigger nor significantly contributing to an internal service innovation's success. On the other hand, the top-management support is ascertained to be crucial for such a success; top-down approach is more likely to happen to implement the new internal service. Additionally, a new factor, economic freedom, is found to have a significant impact (positive) on an internal service innovation's success.

How firms utilize collaboration on managing resource-based knowledge for innovation is a crucial question for hospitality industry. The purpose of the study is to examine the impacts of knowledge transfer and technical services learning, in enhancing search and acquisition process, on innovation. A 181 stratified hotel sample in Thailand was collected. The findings strongly indicate that knowledge search and acquisition process integrating with knowledge transfer and technical learning have a positive impact on internal innovation. Having more internal capability, firms can then improve service innovation. However, knowledge transfer and technical learning do not affect service innovation. Interestingly, internal innovation does not influence performances directly, but to performances by mediating of service innovation. This study generalizes the understanding in tourism innovation.

The article is devoted to the exploration of relevant issues of the development of corporate entrepreneurship organizational design in Ukrainian organizations. The implementation of corporate entrepreneurship organizational design provides acceleration of internal innovation process, increase of its effectiveness, identification and intensification of new opportunities for growth and creation of new businesses. The implementation of structures, definition of their functions, and description of the processes and formal relationships, which may encourage potential corporate entrepreneurs to generate and commercialize internal innovative initiatives, are becoming extremely relevant for Ukrainian business environment. A research map and questionnaire were developed in order to conduct the empirical investigation of existing design practices for corporate entrepreneurship in Ukrainian organizations, and a survey was compiled through questionnaires with the use of Google forms. The results of the research revealed that Ukrainian organizations implement structures, processes, systems and norms, which stimulate corporate entrepreneurs, and initiate internal innovative projects. At the same time, design practices for corporate entrepreneurship in Ukrainian organizations are characterized by a lack of integrity. This blocks quick development of innovations by internal venturing teams and their transformation into a value for business. Potential corporate entrepreneurs often leave the organization to start their own businesses because of the absence of internal organizational conditions for realizing their innovative ideas. The consequence of this situation is the emergence of a powerful ambitious competitor, thus, the strategic competitive position of the organization may suffer. The practical value of the research is to obtain empirical data about the state of implementation of the corporate entrepreneurship system in Ukrainian organizations and explore the parameters of its organizational design, such as: quality of internal organizational climate and human resources for the implementation of the corporate entrepreneurship process, development and implementation of corporate entrepreneurship programs, mechanisms for financing internal entrepreneurial initiatives of employees, legal support of corporate entrepreneurship, incentives and rewards for internal entrepreneurial behavior, and information distribution models and organizational forms of corporate entrepreneurship. The research results can serve as an information base for the formulation of recommendations for implementation of integral and effective organizational design aimed at retention and development of corporate entrepreneurs, and realization of their internal entrepreneurial initiatives in organizational context.

Relationships between external knowledge, internal innovation, firms’ open innovation performance, service innovation and business performance in the Pakistani hotel industry

With the development of the digital economy and the application of new technologies such as big data, AI, and the Internet of Things, a brand-new platform has been created for college students' international innovation and entrepreneurship. How college students can seize the development opportunities under the background of the digital economy and improve their international innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities is a hot issue that has drawn social attention at present. This paper, by referring to relevant references, sums up multiple factors that may affect college students' international innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities and puts forward the following hypotheses: students' own qualities, the degree of family support, the strength of educational support from schools, and the comprehensive social environment have an impact on college students' international innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities. Based on the above hypotheses, a questionnaire was designed. Through online collection, sample collection was carried out among college students in 3 representative universities across the country, and finally 783 valid questionnaires were received. Subsequently, an empirical analysis was conducted using the multiple linear regression model, and conclusions were finally drawn with the help of data analysis software: students' own qualities and the strength of educational support from schools will have an impact on international innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities. Finally, conclusions and discussions were put forward. It is hoped that the research results of this paper can provide some useful references for the country's education system and top-level design on how to improve college students' international innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities and qualities under the background of the digital economy.

The article forms the structure of the management system of international innovation activities of enterprises, in which the controlling of international innovation activities of enterprises is implemented by means of economic accounting, analysis, control and audit. The elements of the control system of international innovation activity of enterprises are determined, namely: organizational and legal, functional, technical-technological and financial elements, elements of international cooperation and personnel policy. The essence and significance of economic, technical-economic, managerial, economic-static, factorial, marginal, stochastic analysis in the conditions of formation of the system of control of international innovative activity of enterprises are highlighted. According to the results of the study it was found that the formation of a system of controlling the international innovation of enterprises should be carried out by combining organizational, structural and functional components of the enterprise involved in the international process of creating and applying scientific knowledge and technologies that determine legal, economic, organizational and social conditions of the international innovation process in the conditions of the enterprise. It is substantiated that the functioning of the system of international innovation of enterprises is impossible without prompt, reliable and relevant information, its adequate analytical processing, as controlling the innovation of the enterprise plays an important role in the functioning of enterprises, ensures effective interaction of their structural units and responds to changes in the internal and external environment, based on data from accounting, control, audit and analysis. It is proved that the construction of the system of controlling the international innovation activity of enterprises allows to solve the problems of management of the international innovation activity of enterprises.

PurposeCompetitively multipolar international system demands bilateral and multilateral partnerships. Joint innovation signals close partnerships. Regional proximity of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to the European Union (EU) defines its research and development objectives. These objectives are additionally subjected to the USA’s geopolitical strategy in this geographical area. Hence, CEE’s limited resources require limited resources make international innovation cooperation. This paper aims to analyse whether and how CEE countries make international innovation cooperation decisions.Design/methodology/approachThis paper used Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) database of total patent applications filed to the patent cooperation treaty (PCT) with co-applicants from abroad, where co-patents with at least one foreign inventor present a measure of international innovation partnership. A vector autoregression analysis and impulse response function were used to analyse international innovation partnership choices of eight CEE OECD countries for the period 1990–2018.FindingsInnovation with the EU is of collaborative nature, commonly displaying complementary properties with the rest of the examined innovation partners, while co-patenting with the Russia and China act as substitutes or complements. Co-patenting with Russia is the most versatile, displaying both properties of collaboration and competition. Some countries exhibit complementarity in co-patenting activities with multiple partners. The significance levels of these relationships vary, indicating varying degrees of impact. Overall, these findings highlight the complex dynamics of co-patenting activities and the influence of different partners on countries’ collaborative innovation strategies.Research limitations/implicationsIn addition to significant relationships, insignificant relationships as well as those that could bring about greater synergy are flagged in the paper. Those relationships portray possible direction into which national funds could be channelled to incite cooperation between different sectors and countries, especially as innovation partnerships are not always successful and require a long time period to materialise.Originality/valueBy examining bilateral innovation partnerships, this study provides an insight into the strategic political and economic spheres of influence in the CEE region.

This research investigates the impact of the internal social network on new venture’s innovation by building a comprehensive structural equation modeling (SEM) that integrates three streams of research: internal social network, innovation, and absorptive capacity. Based on a sample of 279 new ventures from China, the current study’s results show that absorptive capacity plays a full mediating effect in the relationship of the internal social network and innovation. Particularly, among the skill set of absorptive capacity, a mere skill of knowledge acquisition does not guarantee an enhancement of new venture’s innovation. For new ventures to better utilize the social capital generated by the internal network in the process of innovation, they must focus more on the skills of knowledge digestion and knowledge application. The authors further separate the new ventures into two different sub-samples: the new venture supported by mature enterprises (M-type) and the independent new venture (I-type). This study’s findings indicate that the effect of the social network on innovation through knowledge digestion is greater in the M-type sample than in the I-type sample; internal social network heterogeneity in general plays a less important role in improving a new venture’s innovation than internal social network density, for both M-type and I-type new ventures.

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the link between internal capabilities, innovation strategies and export performance (EP), considering the corporate social responsibility (CSR) principle as a moderator.Design/methodology/approachThe statistical population of the current study is the food and agricultural products exporting small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) which participated in the 27th International Agrofood Exhibition (2021) in Tehran, Iran. A sample of 296 managers was selected, using systematic random sampling, to answer the questionnaire. To analyze the data, we used structural equation modeling (SEM) and Hayes PROCESS in SPSS.FindingsResults show that just manufacturing capabilities affect both exploratory and exploitative innovation, in contrast to marketing capabilities that does not have any significant impact on these two innovation strategies. Moreover, the impact of both explorative and exploratory innovation on EP is supported in the context of food and agricultural SMEs. However, CSR positively moderates the impact of exploratory innovation on EP, showing it has a negative effect on the impact of exploitative innovation on EP.Originality/valueBy addressing the research gap on the link between internal capabilities, innovation strategies, EP and CSR among SMEs, the current research provides valuable body of research that later studies in the literature can leverage or build upon.

Organizational innovation is increasingly mandatory for firms to overcome their competitors. Organizational innovation is especially relevant in today’s dynamic and turbulent environments, where other internal variables—such as technological assets, employee training, coordination of new management capabilities, and new flexible human resources and more adaptable organizational designs—must be encouraged to create value and competitive advantage. The purpose of our research is to analyse whether technological assets influence absorptive capacity (potential and realized absorptive capacity) and how absorptive capacity influences internal labour flexibility, organizational innovation and performance. We achieve these goals by analysing the interrelations among internal labour flexibility, organizational innovation and performance, using the theory of resources and capabilities. A quantitative study was carried out with data gathered by personal interview using a structured questionnaire. Relationships proposed in the theoretical model were estimated through a structural equation model, using a sample of 160 European technology companies. The results show that support for technology and improvement of technological skills and technological distinctive competencies promote improvement in organizational performance through their positive influence on the processes of potential and realized absorption capacity. Potential absorptive capacity influences realized absorptive capacity, which impacts not only internal labour flexibility but also organizational innovation and organizational performance. Further, internal labour flexibility influences organizational performance through organizational innovation. This issue is of particular interest when considering the dynamic nature of turbulent technological environments in which the organization operates. Technological assets thus identify new sources of flexibility and organizational innovation based on deeper contextual knowledge and tools that aid knowledge capacity in the company.

With the ongoing advancements in the modern industrial economy, the global ecological environment is encountering a multitude of challenges, prompting the increasing dissemination and global acknowledgment of the concept of sustainable development. Governments have formulated green development strategies aimed at incentivizing enterprises to enhance their environmental performance and mitigate environmental risks. This study utilizes a research sample comprising 3313 firm-level environmental performance scores and primary business data for 276 Chinese enterprises from 2007 to 2017. Based on the empirical evidence from the fixed-effects model, it is evident that technological innovation overall enhances the environmental performance and reduces the environmental risks of Chinese enterprises. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that internal innovation within Chinese enterprises exhibits heterogeneous impacts on environmental performance. The study shows that, compared to enterprises in the primary and tertiary industries, technological innovation in the enterprises of China’s secondary industry has a greater impact on enhancing environmental performance. Furthermore, within the secondary industry, the positive impact of technological innovation on environmental performance is more pronounced for the traditional sectors. Based on these findings, government authorities should actively encourage technological innovation among enterprises and formulate differentiated environmental policies tailored to different enterprises and industries. This research holds significant implications for the implementation of green strategies, enhancement of enterprise competitiveness, achievement of long-term sustainability, and improvement of global ecological environmental quality.

<p class="MainText">Based on survey data of firms in four ASEAN economies, this paper examines the role of internal innovation capacity which includes technological level, organizational learning, and human resources on innovation. To make this concept more tractable for statistical analysis, an index of internal capacity using AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) was constructed. By using this index, this paper attempts to examine how the internal capacity of firms is enhanced by external linkages such as MNCs (Multinational Corporations), universities, and public organizations. In particular, this study analyzes the endogeneity problem, which clarifies the causality between innovation and factors to promote it. In so doing, the instrumental variable method was employed, and as a result, external linkages enhanced internal innovation capacity, and internal innovation capability promotes innovation, while external linkages indirectly enhance innovation. </p><p class="MainText"><strong> </strong></p><p class="MainText"><em>Key Words</em>- Internal capacity, absorptive capacity, AHP, causality, endogeneity, probit analysis</p>