This research investigates disruptive innovation through the under-explored relationship between two ecological concepts, exaptation and ecosystems. Exaptation-driven innovation involves exploiting unintended latent functions of pre-existing technologies. Digital innovation ecosystems account for industry-spanning co-operative and competitive dynamics among firms related to innovations that combine physical and digital elements, such as 3D printing. In this work the evolution of the 3D printing ecosystem is traced over four decades, from the first patents-presented as exaptation-driven innovations-to the present threat of disruption to established manufacturing. Through a longitudinal narrative study of the formation and growth of this ecosystem, a four-phase process model is developed. This addresses gaps in the exaptation and disruptive innovation literatures with respect to innovation ecosystems. The implications for theory are that disruption requires an appropriate supporting ecosystem, but ecosystems take on a life of their own, so cultivating a healthy ecosystem means sowing the seeds of disruption within that ecosystem. For practice, this research highlights the managerial challenges of predicting disruption by exaptation-driven innovations and the constant competition for niches within ecosystems. For policy, it outlines implications concerning how best to support new innovation ecosystems and cultivate exaptation opportunities.
Abstract:The issue of what indicators are most appropriate in order to measure the performance of universities in knowledge transfer (KT) activities remains relatively under-investigated. The main aim of this paper is to identify and discuss the limitations to the current measurements of university-industry KT performance, and propose some directions for improvement. We argue that university-industry KT can unfold in many ways and impact many stakeholders, and that, especially in highly differentiated university systems, choosing indicators focused on a narrow range of activities and impacts might limit the ability of universities to accurately represent their KT performance. Therefore, KT indicators should include a variety of activities and reflect a variety of impacts, so as to allow comparability between different institutions and avoid the creation of undesirable behavioural incentives. To illustrate these issues empirically, we discuss the case of the United Kingdom's Higher Education -Business and Community Interaction (HE-BCI) survey.
Innovation with a social purpose is strictly linked to entrepreneurship and economic development. However, those startups that pursue a social mission often operate in really novel markets and raise some scepticism in the eyes of investors. Startups can improve their business performance by leveraging on equity and non-equity based strategic alliances, so to pursue growth. However, sustainable growth requires to attract the right investments at the right stage of development of the startup. This study draws on international business theory and proposes a novel framework that explains the mechanisms regulating strategic alliances and firm performance in a startups context. We use a sample of 3,913 UK high-tech startups engaging in social innovation to test our hypotheses and we derive an explanation for some of the mechanisms behind strategic alliances effect on startups performance, startups scalability and the balance needed between performance and the pursuit of a social mission.
Researchers have argued that management academics' engagement with non-academic stakeholders involves knowledge co-production rather than simple knowledge transfer from the former to the latter. This study suggests that the conceptual lens of knowledge co-production not only more fittingly describes academic engagement but also enables a clearer understanding of how academic engagement produces impact beyond academia. Building upon qualitative evidence on collaborations between management academics and businesses in the United Kingdom, the study supports the characterisation of academic engagement as knowledge co-production and argues that its impact (i) strongly depends on sustained knowledge co-producing interactions, (ii) ‘ripples out’ serendipitously, indirectly benefiting many stakeholders in ways that often cannot be anticipated, and (iii) unfolds and persists over a long period. These findings have implications for impact assessment and the development of the impact research agenda
Third-mission policy goals and incentives from performancebased funding: Are they aligned? Rosli, A. and Rossi, F. This is a pre-copy edited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Research Evaluation following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version of Rosli, A. and Rossi, F. (2016) Thirdmission policy goals and incentives from performance-based funding: Are they aligned?
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