Crisis highlights conflicts but also helps disparate organisations rally around common objectives through forming ecosystemic relationships. To improve future crisis response, we study the influence of crisis-driven transitions on innovation in ecosystems. We illustrate the study with the dynamics of hydrogen innovation at Enel. Here, innovation caters to multiple value propositions; therefore, we define interecosystemic innovation as an innovation that addresses the value propositions of more than one ecosystem. The unexpected disruption caused by the energy crisis focuses attention on a single value proposition, thus fomenting the dynamic, temporal sequencing of interecosystemic innovation. This increases activity in the ecosystem core as well as interaction with the ecosystem periphery, allowing more rapid innovation iterations throughout the ecosystem. When operating in the intercept of ecosystems, firms need to consider the multiple value propositions of ecosystem participants to identify and mitigate tensions that may impede innovation.

Due to the significance of imitation in business success and economic growth, there is an increasing interest of scholars in exploring different dimensions of imitation, illuminating the ‘black box’ of imitation. Given the increasingly turbulent nature of business environments, this study aims to investigate creative and pure imitation-based competitive strategies and their performance under different levels of environmental turbulence. A theoretical framework was tested using a sample of manufacturing firms in Vietnam. The results revealed that creative imitation is positively associated with sustained competitive advantage, while the impact of pure imitation on sustained competitive advantage is negligible. Furthermore, environmental turbulence affects both creative and pure imitation, with only creative imitation mediating the effects of environmental turbulence on sustained competitive advantage. Lastly, environmental turbulence amplifies the effect of pure imitation on sustained competitive advantage, while it has minimal moderating effects on the relationship between creative imitation and sustained competitive advantage. This study contributes to the literature by being the first to examine the effect of environmental turbulence on the performance of both creative and pure imitation strategies.

The orchestrator plays a vital role during the design, mapping, and analysis of the ecosystems’ pre-initiation stages, which will be important in shaping the ecosystem guidelines later. However, there is a lack of knowledge on how these firms plan entry strategies before innovation ecosystem (IE) building. So, this study aims to investigate which orchestration practices support orchestrators in the design of ecosystems. This work transposes innovation network practices to a more complex ecosystem context. We summarised these practices into four orchestration mechanisms. We draw on orchestrating innovation networks’ theoretical perspective and depict the orchestration mechanism into practices associated with understanding how orchestrators design IE in its very early stages of formation. This study contributes to the literature on uncertainty management at the IE level by showing practices for uncertainty management as one important driver for unlocking ecosystem emergence. Second, this study advances the configurational view of IE by depicting an underlying set of practices performed by IE orchestrators and members to foresee and design the IE before its emergence, addressing the dynamics of nascent ecosystem operations. Third, this study contributes to the shaping literature by showing ways to imagine future possibilities and acting proactively to realise those possibilities inside this actionable new structure of economic relationships that requires specific management to increase the probability of success for value proposition’s (VP’s) creation and delivery to the market.

To enhance competitiveness, organisations should excel in adopting new business processes and ensuring the successful implementation of innovative projects. This study examined the impact of transformational, transactional, and entrepreneurial leadership styles on the innovation process, with a focus on employee innovative behaviour and the climate for innovation as mediating factors. A total of 303 participants from three organisations in the financial services sector (banking and insurance) in Namibia took part in the study. The findings suggest that employing transactional and entrepreneurial leadership styles proves beneficial for fostering innovation within organisations. Specifically, entrepreneurial leadership demonstrates positive effects on both employees’ innovative behaviour and the establishment of an innovation-friendly climate. The study reveals that a conducive climate for innovation significantly contributes to overall innovation. Moreover, the results indicate that only the climate for innovation serves as a significant mediator in the relationship between transactional leadership and the innovation process, as well as between entrepreneurial leadership and the innovation process.

The literature on corporate entrepreneurship has discussed the role of entrepreneurship orientation (EO) and self-efficacy in enhancing venture creation and a firm’s growth. In contrast, the effect of EO and self-efficacy on project performance outcomes has been relatively overlooked. In this study, we examine how an individual’s entrepreneurship orientation (IEO), entrepreneurship self-efficacy (ESE), and entrepreneurship management skills (EMS) affect both entrepreneurship projects and non-entrepreneurship projects. Using a sample of 308 observations, our analyses reveal that while various dimensions of IEO, ESE, and EMS can significantly influence project performance, the effect is more pronounced for non-entrepreneurship projects. Furthermore, in all three ESE dimensions, we find that the effect on individual project performance is almost double the effect on team project performance. This implies that individuals consider their efforts and contributions to be more significant than the collective team efforts when completing a group project. This study contributes to the literature by providing a new perspective to assess the effect of each dimension of IEO, ESE, and EMS at both the individual level and the project level. For students, entrepreneurs, and policymakers, this study presents important insights into two areas: the influence of entrepreneurship education on an individual’s performance on individual projects and team projects; and how entrepreneurial characteristics can be nurtured to produce good entrepreneurs and project managers. This is especially significant for emerging countries, where entrepreneurship education plays a key role in supporting economic transition, promoting the private sector, and encouraging the establishment of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

To support market success, it is important to identify customer needs, and the relation between customer needs and customer purchasing behaviour. This paper provides an overview over existing, already established approaches to determine the relevance of customer benefits. Then, an approach utilising artificial neural networks to correlate the attributes of battery electric vehicles and their sales performance is presented. This approach is discussed in relation to needs expressed by customers in surveys as well as typical user behaviour of passenger cars. It seems that, for example, charging speed of electric vehicles is more important than operational range despite customers regularly expressing operational range as their greatest concern. The presented approach can be integrated into the reference process for developing product profiles and can be coupled with drive system optimisation methods, to consider sales performance alongside vehicle performance, efficiency and costs in the early stage of product generation engineering.

In product engineering, the development of new innovations is a big challenge due to the high complexity of nowadays systems. Research results are a high-potential input for companies to still advance their technologies and solutions. However, using research as a source of new knowledge and technologies is a non-trivial process that can often be neglected by many companies. The goal of this investigation is to gain and provide an understanding of the specific triggers and reasons for corporate product engineers to use research results as input in their development process. Based on nine semi-structured interviews with experts from different engineering companies, we present a model that explains these reasons, triggers, and situations to use research results. We believe that our model will help to raise the awareness of corporate product engineers to the potential of using research results within their design activities. Furthermore, the outcome of this investigation provides a basis for further research to improve the usability and actual usage of research results in corporate product engineering. Therefore, in our further research, we will use these results for developing decision support for corporate engineers to decide when to look into research.

This work aims to study the impact of meso-level variables of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) on digital transformation. Statistical analysis was used to evaluate the research hypotheses, based on multiple linear regression, with a sample of 172 organisations. The results show that actors from the meso dimension of EEs positively impact digital transformation through knowledge, discoveries, guidance, co-opetition, co-creation and stimulation of technological search. The contributions of this study are in bringing a more refined perspective of the incentives of society actors to digital transformation, besides awakening to their importance in organisational processes and showing that associations for the satisfaction of own interests can culminate in common benefits.

Purpose — The goal of this research is to create a model of influencing factors of open innovation (OI) in startups. This research has also looked into how OI affects gaining a competitive advantage by taking into account the moderator role of environment dynamics.Design/methodology/approach — Possible factors influencing OI in startups, determined through research background studies and interviews with experts in the startup fields, then along with the factors of competitive advantage and environmental dynamics, were evaluated in a sample of 120 managers of Iranian start-up companies. Using structural equation modelling, we analysed data collected from startup managers pertaining to variables of OI, competitive advantage, and environmental dynamics. Structural equation modelling is a multivariate analysis method that enables the examination of relationships among multiple variables within a model. A two-stage partial least squares structural equation modelling method was employed in this study. In the first stage, the construct validity and reliability of the measurement models were evaluated, and in the second stage, the conceptual model and research hypotheses were put to the test.Findings — Results showed that organisational entrepreneurship, open business model, knowledge management capabilities, absorption capacity, organisational readiness, and participatory capability are important influences on OI in startups. Furthermore, the study found that applying OI techniques can help startups succeed more often in gaining a competitive edge. Additionally, the study found that environmental dynamics have a positive moderating effect on this relationship.Practical implications — Considering the vital role of startups in economic development programs, the results of this research can lead the managers of start-up companies and growth centers to use the OI approach to overcome the limitations of being new and small. Also to survive startups and increase productivity and competitive advantage, startup managers by focusing on these factors can take steps to create the necessary internal foundations in the organisation and negotiate with large companies in line with better policies.Originality/value — The study’s significant contribution is believed to be the development of a model that identifies the factors that influence OI in startups. Moreover, the study verified the influence of OI on achieving competitive advantage, as per the established model, while also considering the moderating effect of environmental dynamics on this association.