Given the plethora of new product introductions, managers often embrace modularity (i.e., decompose product or process design into components or sub-tasks, respectively) as part of new product development (NPD). Although modularity increases overall firm performance, a holistic view is missing for the relationship between modularity and new product advantage (i.e., a new product's superiority relative

Research and development (R&D) is a key contributor to organizations’ pursuit of innovation. In turn, CEOs can influence important decisions related to changes in R&D spending—the kind of spending with the potential to lead to innovation. We seek to understand the motivation and conditions under which CEOs may influence R&D spending changes. Drawing on regulatory focus theory, this study investigates

This article investigates how managers of firms awarded for their design excellence build organizational-level design-related dynamic capabilities by selecting designers with specific individual capabilities and managing how and the extent to which users of the firms' products are actively involved in design activities. The following two types of dynamic capabilities were studied: user-centered design

Increasingly, organizations have been employing self-managing teams to circumvent bureaucratic controls and stimulate innovation. However, this goal is not easily achieved; in many situations, informal controls replace formal controls. This study develops a multi-level perspective of control. We explicitly analyze control mechanisms at different levels of the organization and how they affect innovative

Many organizations seek to establish online innovation communities (ICs) to obtain valuable knowledge and innovative ideas, though both research and practice suggest that they also struggle to sustain continued, high-quality member participation. Designated IC moderators might be able to stimulate IC members to participate regularly and make high-quality contributions. In response to calls to integrate

Scholars have suggested that design thinking and effectuation theory may enrich each other. However, to date, we lack deeper theorizing and empirical evidence to further advance this valuable discourse for the benefit of innovation management. Our qualitative study draws on 41 in-depth interviews with Australian designer-founders, with the aim to provide a theoretical perspective on and empirical insights

Design thinking (DT) is gaining ground among academics and practitioners as a means to improve the innovativeness of organizations. However, with few exceptions, DT studies are most entrenched in practice rather than theory-driven research. This weak tie between theory and managerial practice calls for delving into the dynamics of DT for innovation to build stronger foundations for future studies.

Managing customer heterogeneity (CH), that is, differences among customers (e.g., consumers, business firms) is an important, yet challenging consideration for firms seeking innovation-based competitive advantage. To facilitate better understanding of the opportunities and challenges that CH presents, we conducted a systematic review of the literature linking CH with innovation-based competitive advantage

Pharmaceutical firms frequently engage in preclinical research collaboration with universities. Many of these collaborative preclinical research projects are conducted by firms’ subsidiaries. In this setting, the challenge of transferring knowledge from university–industry collaborations (UICs) to internal research and development (R&D) increases, since knowledge has to be transferred twice: to the

Innovation in the design of products has become an important competitive tool of success in the market for many firms (see the virtual issue on Design Innovation in the Journal of Product Innovation Management [2020]). A few firms have had success in the market by adopting innovative designs. But not all innovative designs give success to firms. This research focuses on package design as an important

To efficiently and effectively reduce the uncertainty inherent in the front-end of innovation processes, recent literature emphasizes new approaches that facilitate rapid knowledge generation and learning such as design thinking, lean innovation, and pretotyping. However, these approaches differ in their conceptualizations and, despite their popularity, the empirical evidence on the performance relevance

Creative climate research shows that an employee's perception of their work environment impacts their creative performance. However, variable-centered approaches (e.g., moderated regression) are often unable to study all climate factors interacting simultaneously, with researchers only able to focus on a few factors at a time. Further, longitudinal climate research shows these perceptions fluctuate

The important role of social networks in creativity has long been recognized in the literature. However, research to date has primarily focused on the structural, informational, and relational dimensions of social networks in creativity. Acknowledging the importance of employees themselves, past research has also called for further research to study the human side of social networks in addition to

Among logicians, pluralism is the view that under certain circumstances, such as when contending opinions over priorities and time horizons are present, there may be more than one correct logic to set what is most important (Beall & Restall, 2000). Organizational responses to complex social problems such as the COVID‐19 pandemic and climate change qualify as such circumstances. On the one hand there

Cooper's (2021) “Accelerating Innovation: Some Lessons from the Pandemic” offers a clear reminder of not only the benefits but also the reality of acceleration in new product development. Indeed, when called upon to respond to dramatic shifts in the environment due to the COVID‐19 pandemic, many firms across various industry sectors quickly pivoted to generate new products or services. Some of these

The thought‐provoking paper by Cooper (2021) provides a beacon for researchers across disciplines contributing to the domain of innovation management. Cooper (2021) identifies five developments originating from the need for accelerating product development in the COVID‐19 pandemic, but he also highlights a root cause which lies at a deeper level of change, viz. digital transformation. Digitalization

Decision makers find creating an innovation portfolio challenging, because more innovative projects are associated with a higher degree of uncertainty. In this study, we investigate the potential benefits of applying real options reasoning (ROR) in innovation portfolio management from an attention-based view. Using a sample of 137 innovation portfolios with multiple informants, we investigate ROR's

The Pandemic taught us that accelerated new‐product development is more important than ever, and provided examples of firms developing breakthrough products in record time. Five approaches to accelerated development are outlined here: The first two deal with adequately resourcing new‐product projects, namely the use of focused teams; and effective portfolio management to prioritize projects and reallocate

Management and organizational scholars have paid increasing attention to the interconnections between digital transformation and innovation management in the last decade. However, a highly fragmented understanding of this topic is what we are left with so far. In this editorial, we suggest an approach to open up the black box of the interplay between digital transformation and innovation management

With the changing way people live, communicate, and work, enterprises are striving to shift their existing business model into a “self‐tuning” one. Enterprises are becoming more agile, adaptive, and ambidextrous in order to boost innovation in the current digital transformation era. Nowadays, “digital innovation” is closely associated with Industry 4.0 enablers and smart enterprises. Prior research

Businesses increasingly incorporate the sustainability aspects into their products, services, and processes that drive innovation. While extant research on the linkage between sustainability and innovation has gained momentum over the past years, prior research has predominantly focused on sustainability's performance impacts (e.g., financially and environmentally) and product innovation outputs, neglecting

Organizations use idea screening to select which ideas will be developed into innovation projects. Extant research has revealed that, during idea screening, expert evaluators use intuition to make rapid holistic decisions about idea quality, analyze ideas in detail to determine their value and employ sensemaking to understand and elaborate on ideas. However, much of this takes place in the minds of

The importance of platform‐based businesses in the modern economy is growing continuously and becoming increasingly relevant. Specifically, the deployment of digital technologies has enhanced the applicability of two‐sided business models, enabling companies to act not just as builders and owners of assets, but also as orchestrators of external resources. Management research has, therefore, focused

Reward structures can have a significant impact on the performance of new product development (NPD) teams. However, there are several gaps in our understanding of how different types of extrinsic rewards influence the creative performance of NPD teams. Drawing on key theoretical objectives for advancing rewards‐creativity research in general, and NPD research in particular, this study incorporates

Digital innovations often follow a more fluid innovation process and, therefore, require different ways of managing the front end of innovation. Agile as alternative to established front end management practices is often suggested, potentially combined with Stage‐Gate, in what is called a hybrid Agile‐Stage‐Gate model, to reap the benefits from both. Implementing the hybrid model in the front end is

Innovation in a digital world increasingly revolves around open platforms that consist of a core technology and a large variety of complementary products developed by an ecosystem of independent complementors. The platform ecosystem literature has mainly focused on indirect network effects arising from the quantity of complements, with little attention to the quality of complements, despite the importance

Failure is an inevitable feature of innovation, and management research promulgates the importance of learning from it. Key to excelling at an innovation‐based strategy is understanding the processes that can turn failures into successes. However, post‐failure success remains elusive. Although failure signals that the innovation journey is off course, shifting trajectory is difficult, because it may

The field of external knowledge search for innovation has a long tradition and has inspired several schools of thought resulting in a rich and burgeoning body of research. However, the field suffers from two key limitations. First, the pluralism of research across multiple disciplines impedes our attention to the field as a whole, including its intellectual structure and core ideas. Second, recent

Societal pressures for greater sustainability can encourage firms to target part of their innovation activities at ecological initiatives (i.e., eco‐innovation). Yet, depending on their value function, firms can respond differently to such pressures and exhibit variance in their eco‐innovation activities. In this paper, we investigate the idea that a firm’s ownership structure may play a significant

Smart products have received increasing attention from researchers and practitioners alike. One limitation of the existing literature, however, is that the term is often used as a blanket term and that there is no consensus on what a smart product actually is. Because different studies rely on differing conceptualizations, the current body of knowledge is scattered and lacks a uniform language and