De Gruyter Studies in Innovation and Entrepreneurship

User inclusion in innovation is increasingly the target of policy rhetoric at both organizational and societal levels. And extensive research has demonstrated the potential contribution that users can make, both at the ‘front end’ of innovation with their ideas and insights and downstream, facilitating adoption and diffusion. However, translating this potential into practice remains problematic, not least because we need to understand more about how to hear user voices, amplify their insights, and provide practical channels for inclusion to ensure full co-creation of innovation. Our earlier book from 2019 (‘Responsible Innovation in Digital Health’, Edward Elgar) added to the growing body of knowledge around whether users can be involved, and this book opens up the ‘how?’ theme. Our work suggested a spectrum of user involvement ranging from those who can participate fully to those who are passive players in the innovation process, and we explore in this book different tools, techniques, and mechanisms for enabling such users to become more involved in the innovation process. We look at the concept of ‘boundary innovation spaces’ as environments in which co-creation can be enabled, drawing on experience across a wide international research network. We also explore the broader innovation environment – the specific networks of actors and their interactions which define the innovation ecosystem where user inclusion may be embedded.

This book moves the discussion beyond the question of whether users can be more effectively included throughout the innovation process to explore the ways in which this might be enabled.

The book comprises a series of contributions and case studies fused together around the concept and dynamics of innovation – product, process, systems, marketing, organisation, roles, relations, norms, values and policy. The underlying theme is innovation as necessarily transformative, where the transformation is in the economic system for a better world. That better world is one that is inclusive, efficient and meets the global challenges. To that end the tools of innovation, measurement (effects vis-à-vis outcomes) and the enabling financial mechanisms are examined, evaluated and change is explored.

This edited volume explores the learning and innovation of Chinese firms. In particular, it examines the difficulties and obstacles affecting the technological collaboration between Chinese firms and foreign partners as well as some of the key organizational and institutional challenges of innovation facing Chinese firms.
Despite enjoying rapid economic growth in previous decades, learning and innovation of Chinese firms has received relatively limited attention among management and international business scholars in the past. However, some significant changes in the Chinese institutional environment have occurred in recent years. On one hand, the Chinese central government has devised a number of policy initiatives to promote and support innovative activities in China, ranging from the ‘Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation by All’ to the latest ‘Made in China 2025’. On the other hand, we have witnessed an increasing number of indigenous Chinese firms (e.g. Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, Huawei and DJI) adopting business model innovation with global inputs and impacts in different business sectors, namely electronic commerce, telecommunication network equipment, social media, mobile payment and drones.
In view of these recent developments, we aim to further our understanding about the learning and innovation processes of Chinese firms in this edited volume.

Cross-industry innovation introduces a dilemma for the innovation process. On one hand, there is a broad consensus in research that diversity in knowledge leads to increased levels of novelty in innovation. On the other hand, the crossing of industries boundaries is known to cause knowledge boundaries between actors. This book contributes to this end, by the development of new understanding of important aspects in cross-industry innovation.

The empirical bases for this research are case data from the Pumps & Pipes association in US and Norway (conferences and 7 Norwegian cross-industry collaborations), and cross-industry cases from the Norway Health Tech cluster.

Drawing on over a hundred years of research into innovation and an in depth research study, the book brings to life the reality of managing established firms to secure advantage through vigilant innovation approaches in disrupting digital era markets.

Exploring how organizations manage new offering development focused innovation across a portfolio of core, adjacent and breakthrough environments, the focus is on the search and select phases of the innovation process, and how established firms identify and validate a range of opportunities.

Companies face the paradox of how to establish search and select processes for focal markets, while also setting up routines to sense and respond to disruptive innovation signals from adjacent and more peripheral markets. The book builds on research into peripheral vision, and considers how organizations manage the crucial early stages of a vigilant innovation process.

The research project at the heart of the book focused on 10 case companies in the publishing sector. The new frameworks developed by the author were informed by over 60 interviews, the innovation literature and the author’s experience as a researcher, consultant and practitioner.

This research monograph answers the question how sustainability driven entrepreneurs (ecopreneurs) deliver their sustainability goals through their business practices. The research draws on data from 12 case studies set within the food industry. The analysis takes a firm level and a supply chain level perspective and provides insights to the interconnected nature of sustainability goals within and across firms.

It provides theoretical propositions that show one approach of how to conduct business in a way that works for the planet and people in addition to shareholders. This presents an alternative understanding of organisational performance that builds the foundation for many avenues of future research into sustainable management.

The research combines the remote areas of supply chain management and entrepreneurship at the intersection of sustainability. This novel approach and the insights from the business practice exploration, offer many avenues for further research beyond entrepreneurship and supply chain management. This book will be of interest to academics in management research and also to people with an academic background that work together with sustainability driven and/ or social entrepreneurs, who could benefit from the insights into how sustainability goals are delivered through business practices and the relevant trade-offs faced by ecopreneurs.

Even though the number of working women has steadily increased over the last few years, women are still significantly under-represented in STEM activities (i.e. mathematics, informatics, science and technology).

In order to eliminate this under-representation, numerous education policies and corporate initiatives, particularly in the recent past, have been aimed at increasing women's enthusiasm for STEM activities and professions. According to the latest surveys, however, it is clear that these efforts have not yet led to the desired success. Compared to their male counterparts, women continue to do fewer STEM activities.

One possible reason for this is that relatively little is yet known about the concrete impact of the above education policies on working with innovation and technology: What are the gender differences between women and men? Is it enough to recognize these differences, or should these differences ideally not only be recognized, but also treated appropriately or even encouraged?

This anthology deals with current topics in technology and innovation management against the background of these and other gender-relevant aspects. Empirical analyses and experiments in collaboration with companies from various sectors provide a sound scientific basis on which new results and findings are presented: How do women and men deal with creativity and competition? How are technologies applied and how can differences in access to technology be deduced?

Answers to these and other questions help decision-makers in politics and business to proactively use the differences between women and men to motivate women to work in the STEM field and to strengthen them by acknowledging existing differences.

Open labs provide spaces for interaction across organizational boundaries. They create a huge potential to advance innovation processes. Making use of this potential, however, is not an easy task. It requires diligence, sophistication and perseverance from everyone involved in the implementation and the management of the lab.

This book brings together contributions from leading experts in engineering, design, strategy, foresight and marketing research as well as policy makers and practitioners from an open lab. It explores from different perspectives how open labs can be used to facilitate innovation and what needs to be done to make the operation of an open lab successful. The topics addressed in the book include: interaction patterns and mediation in open labs, innovation technology, resource management, ecosystem and platform design, cultural translation, productivity, multi-channel communication, and more.

The first part of the book is dedicated to the study of JOSEPHS^®, an open lab in Germany. It gives insight in the practical challenges of running an open lab and its role in the local business ecosystem. The other parts of the book discuss the phenomenon of open labs in general and its significance in different contexts all around the world.