Dear Colleagues,
we are pleased to share with you the third issue of Industry & Innovation for 2025.The four articles in this issue examine how firms and industries respond to diverse challenges in innovation, from the role of public financial support in overcoming R&D barriers to the dynamics of technology diffusion, inventor collaboration, and customer participation in new product development.
We hope you will enjoy the reading:
Research Articles
Two birds with one stone: can public financial support help firms to address financial and non-financial obstacles to research and innovation?
Mauricio Perez-Alaniz, Helena Lenihan, Justin Doran & Stephen Roper
Abstract
Financial, knowledge and market obstacles can restrict firm-level research and innovation (R&I). Public financial support for R&I can clearly help firms that face financial obstacles to invest in R&I. Building on the literature concerning the learning effects of public financial support for R&I, and using a novel combination of administrative and innovation-survey data, we demonstrate for the first time, that such public financial support also results in more R&I in firms that face knowledge and market obstacles. Despite this, however, public financial support for R&I does not reduce the importance that firms attach to their financial and knowledge obstacles. Moreover, it increases the importance that firms attach to their market obstacles. This suggests that while effective at helping firms to increase their R&I activities, addressing firms' financial and non-financial obstacles may require additional policy interventions, alongside public financial support for R&I. Our study offers novel insights for theory and policy.
Diffusion with generational cohorts
Anil R. Doshi
Abstract
This paper examines technology adoption where sets of new members – generational cohorts – enter the population over time. I look at the diffusion of a social media platform, Twitter, through eight annual generational cohorts of newly premiering television shows, debuting between 2006 and 2013. I first show that a new generational cohort's rate of adoption is affected by the behaviour of prior cohorts that are present in the existing population. I then show how the macro-diffusion patterns change over the generational cohorts. These results have implications for organisations developing and managing new technologies. Incumbents must account for a distinct diffusion process that occurs with each new generational cohort to defend against the constant threat of a rival technology diffusing more widely in a new generational cohort. Organisations developing newer technologies can enter and successfully compete in a market with a widely diffused incumbent technology if they are able to attract a newer generational cohort.
Draw to a close: inventor triad dynamics and invention quality
Ding Nan, Arjan Markus & Leon Oerlemans
Abstract
Instead of comparing open and closed triads as static phenomena, this study examines how closure dynamics among inventors impact the extent to which inventors generate high-quality inventions at the triad level. Combining literature on small group synergy, social networks, and recombinant innovation, we propose that initial open triads of collaborating inventors that turn into a closed triad generate higher quality inventions than triads that maintain open. We also examine how the connectedness of the triad moderates the relationship between triad closure and the generation of triadic high-quality inventions. Using a matched sample of open and closed triads from 1987 to 2008, we find that over time, open triads that turn into closed ones generate higher-quality inventions than triads that remain open. Moreover, the triad's degree of connectedness weakens the triadic closure's positive impact on inventive performance. We discuss the implications for the study of innovation, network triads, and collective synergy.
The double-edged sword of customer participation on new product development performance: the contingent roles of relational and environmental factors
Jiaxin Lin, Jason Lu Jin, Liwen Wang & Xueqing Wang
Abstract
Although customer participation plays an increasingly important role in firm innovation, both its effects on new product development (NPD) performance in the B2B context and the underlying mechanisms remain unclear in the extant literature. Building on the boundary spanning theory, we investigate the double-edged effects of customer participation on NPD performance by explicating the mediating roles of knowledge sharing and customer – developer conflict. Based on a sample of 167 high-tech firms in China, our findings indicate that customer participation can improve NPD performance through knowledge sharing but decrease NPD performance by exacerbating the conflict between the developer firm and its customer. Furthermore, previous cooperation experience attenuates the effects of customer participation on knowledge sharing and customer – developer conflict, whereas technological turbulence strengthens the effect of customer participation on knowledge sharing. Our findings offer important implications for both innovation research and practice.
Best regards
Alessandra Perri and Vera Rocha
Co-Editors-in-Chief, Industry and Innovation
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Vera Rocha
Copenhagen Business School
Kilevej
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