الصفحة 1
الصفحة 1
Open and Closed Innovation : Different Cultures for Different Strategies
Open Innovation is a phenomenon in both research and management practice. Since radical innovation or new business development often require external technologies or ways of commercialization, many firms have shifted from a Closed to an Open Innovation model. However, firms often face difficulties during the implementation. While the implementation effort usually focuses on external ideas and technologies as well as the processes to identify them, cultural challenges are neglected. Philipp Herzog develops a theoretical framework arguing that Open Innovation and Closed Innovation cultures need to be different (e.g. regarding the not-invented-here (NIH) syndrome). Based on a multi-respondent survey among 120 R&D employees from three business units of a leading chemical firm, he provides empirical evidence for many of the hypothesized differences in innovation culture.
Examining Innovation Management from a Fair Process Perspective
Companies nowadays still differ considerably in that they interact with employees. This interaction depends on different organisational cultures, leadership styles, and the ways in which information and communication take place. A recent trend, even in economic theory, is that interactions are valued in themselves and not solely to achieve rational economic maximisation. People care about outcomes, but they also care about the interactional processes that produce those outcomes. Thomas Limberg investigates a new approach to the management of human relationships in a knowledge-based work environment and analyses the relationship between fair process and innovation performance. Key findings are that social interactions have a significant influence on execution performance in organisations, and fairness can have positive effects on innovative behaviour and therefore on innovation performance. In the transition from a production-based to a knowledge-based economy, fair process is becoming a powerful tool for managing human interactions and for influencing attitudes and behaviours that are so critical in reaching high innovation performance.
Balancing Exploration and Exploitation by Creating Organizational Think Tanks
Key for successful knowledge management is a balance between exploration and exploitation. Danger arises when exploration is neglected in favour of exploitation since that may result in an organization which lacks innovation capability. In order to prevent this, an idea has been put forward in recent knowledge management research called ambidexterity, which means the simultaneous and balanced pursuing of both exploration and exploitations activities. Tatjana-Xenia Puhan follows up on this idea by concluding that ambidexterity need not necessarily be implemented in one single organization but can also be realised in a network of associated organizations. The interorganizational ambidexterity is based on co-specialisation: one organisation is devoted solely to exploration while associated organizations focus on their competences in exploitation. Furthermore, the author develops the concept of think tanks as organizations that concentrate on radical innovations while their network associates exploit this newly generated knowledge commercially.
