Open innovation has so far been studied mainly in high-tech, multinational enterprises. This exploratory paper investigates if open innovation practices are also applied by small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on a database collected from 605 innovative SMEs in the Netherlands, we explore the incidence of and apparent trend towards open innovation. The survey furthermore focuses on the motives and perceived challenges when SMEs adopt open innovation practices. Within the survey, open innovation is measured with eight innovation practices reflecting technology exploration and exploitation in SMEs. We find that the responding SMEs engage in many open innovation practices and have increasingly adopted such practices during the past 7 years. In addition, we find no major differences between manufacturing and services industries, but medium-sized firms are on average more heavily involved in open innovation than their smaller counterparts. We furthermore find that SMEs pursue open innovation primarily for market-related motives such as meeting customer demands, or keeping up with competitors. Their most important challenges relate to organizational and cultural issues as a consequence of dealing with increased external contacts. r

Both scientists and practitioners emphasize the importance of innovative work behaviour (IWB) of individual employees for organizational success, but the measurement of IWB is still at an evolutionary stage. This article is concerned with developed a measure of IWB with four potential dimensions: the exploration, generation, championing and implementation of ideas. From a pilot survey among 81 research professionals and their supervisors, we derived an initial version of ten items. Next, analysis of validity drew on survey data from 703 matched dyads of knowledge workers and their supervisors in 94 knowledge intensive services firms. It included confirmatory factor analyses and hierarchical multilevel regressions to test hypothesized relationships of IWB with related constructs, including participative leadership, external work contacts and innovative output. These analyses demonstrated sufficient reliability and criterion validity. Evidence for the distinctiveness of the four dimensions was, however, weak, suggesting that IWB is one-dimensional. We conclude that further research on this issue is merited.

PurposeTo provide an inventory of leader behaviours likely to enhance employees' innovative behaviour, including idea generation and application behaviour.Design/methodology/approachBased on a combination of literature research and in‐depth interviews, the paper explores leadership behaviours that stimulate employees' idea generation and application behaviour. The study was carried out in knowledge‐intensive service firms (e.g. consultants, researchers, engineers).FindingsIt was found that there were 13 relevant leadership behaviours. Although innovative behaviour is crucial in such firms, it has received very little attention from researchers. Leaders influence employees' innovative behaviour both through their deliberate actions aiming to stimulate idea generation and application as well as by their more general, daily behaviour.Research limitations/implicationsFuture quantitative research could condense our overview of leader practices, explore which practices are most relevant to employees' idea generation and/or application behaviour, which contingency factors influence the leadership‐innovative behaviour connection and provide information as to whether different practices are relevant in other types of firms.Originality/valueNeither the innovation nor the leadership field provides a detailed overview of specific behaviours that leaders might use to stimulate innovation by individual employees. This paper fills that void.

Organizing new service development is an important topic for decision-makers in service firms, since continuous innovation is expected to pay off. Although the literature on organizing new service development has grown rapidly over the last decade, the numerous publications are highly fragmented, each concentrating on a small piece of the complex innovation puzzle. This paper classifies current literature on organizing new service development (NSD) into two evolutionary stages: managing key activities in the NSD process, and creating a climate for continuous innovation. For both stages its consequences for the initiation and implementation of new services are discussed. The paper ends with limitations and suggestions for future research.

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The authors propose that need for cognition, an individual’s tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking, is associated with individual innovation behavior. Moreover, drawing on an interactionist perspective, the authors suggest that need for cognition becomes more important when individuals face lower job autonomy and time pressure in their work. This is because, when these job characteristics are low, there is no contextual driving force for individual innovation, so personality has a stronger influence. In a multisource study of 179 employees working in a Dutch research and consultancy organization, the authors’ expectations were largely supported. They found that need for cognition was positively associated with peer-rated innovation behavior, as were job autonomy and time pressure, even when controlling for openness to experience and proactive personality. Furthermore, the relationship between need for cognition and innovation behavior was strongest for individuals with low job autonomy and low time pressure and indeed was nonexistent at high levels of these contextual variables. This study, therefore, suggests that context can substitute for an individual’s need for cognition when it comes to individual innovation.

We take a first step to explore how organizational factors influence individual entrepreneurial behavior at work, by investigating the role of job design variables. Drawing on multiple-source survey data of 179 workers in a Dutch research and consultancy organization we find that entrepreneurial behavior, indicated by innovation, proactivity and risk-taking items, is a higher-order construct. Job autonomy is positively related with entrepreneurial behavior, as well as its innovation and proactivity subdimensions, while job variety is not. This suggests that interventions related to the vertical scope of jobs will promote entrepreneurial behaviors more than horizontal job expansion.

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