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Business model innovation (BMI) often involves the acquisition of external resources, their integration with and adaptation to internal capabilities and the exploitation of these novel combinations to create and capture value in new ways. However, studies focusing on the relationships among capabilities, BMI and firm performance are rare. In this paper, we adopt broader measures of internal and external knowledge, which include codified intangibles such as patents and copyrights, and examine the effects the combinations and interactions have on sales growth based on a dataset of 310 firms from four European countries. Using the broader measure of knowledge, we find support for the curvilinear relationship reported in studies using research and development‐intensity as a proxy. However, we also find that firms with low levels of internal knowledge benefit most from an ‘optimal’ investment in externally generated knowledge, but the influence on sales growth is very sensitive to the degree of external knowledge acquired. By contrast, knowledge‐intensive firms are relatively freer in defining their knowledge sourcing strategy. We discuss the implications for exploiting knowledge and complementary assets in BMI.

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Current transformations in technologies and industrial structure of UK telecommunications have important implications for skills and work organisation. This is examined in differentdivisions of a large UK telecommunications firm: call centres, customer service centres, engineering sectors and the R&D department. The effect of these transformations on the development of firm competences is discussed.

The impending climate emergency, the Paris agreement and Sustainable Development Goals demand significant transformations in economies and societies. Science funders, innovation agencies, and scholars have explored new rationales and processes for policymaking, such as transformative innovation policy (TIP). Here, we address the question of how to orient the efforts of science, technology, and innovation policy actors to enable transformations. We build on sustainability transitions research and a 4-year co-creation journey of the TIP Consortium to present twelve transformative outcomes that can guide public policy agencies in evaluating and reformulating their projects, programmes, and policies. We illustrate the transformative outcomes in two empirical cases: transitions towards mobility-as-a-service in the Finnish transport system and the emergence of speciality coffee in Colombia. We argue that the twelve transformative outcomes can guide public policy agents to fundamentally transform their ways of thinking and operation in advancing transformative change.

Increasing attention has begun to focus on the important role organisations undertaking intermediary functions can play in supporting emerging clusters of small producers. In contrast to most studies of intermediaries that focus on governance and filling information gaps, in this paper we examine how the organisational skills of intermediaries evolve as firms in the cluster assume a broader range of practices. Through a purpose-built typology and a detailed case study, the argument is made that intermediaries act not only to facilitate the diffusion of knowledge, but that their scope of activities, extending into coordinating joint actions and new investment initiatives, places them at the centre of the network of organisations. This growing influence of intermediaries has implications for producer firms, especially in aspects such as inclusion of smaller producers and nework formation.Key words: Intermediary, Cluster, Agriculture, Natural Resource IntroductionPolicy makers in developing countries have been increasingly attracted to the new opportunities that have opened up for the upgrading of producer capabilities in some hitherto underdeveloped clusters (Gomes 2006;McCormick 1999). This has arisen principally as a consequence of the growing demand in industrial economies for natural resource-based commodities. Significantly, the labour intensive nature of production in some of these areas means that cluster growth is seen not only as means to improve the national balance of payments, but also a way to generate employment and improve the livelihoods of poorer farmers (Schmitz and Nadvi, 1999). Yet, it is also clear that the consolidation of these emerging clusters in export markets has been highly uneven across regions and sectors. Fragmented land ownership, poor communication infrastructure, unstable prices and above all the absence of lead producers with the resources to invest in new practices and technology create a low platform from which to develop producer capabilities.With this in mind, attention has begun to focus on the important role organisations undertaking intermediary functions can play in supporting clusters of small producers.Intermediary organisations appear to have been particularly prominent in undertaking a range of activities associated to building what a section of the literature has called "collective efficiency", whereby joint actions by small firms facilitate upgrading of productive activities (Schmitz 1995;Gomes 2006;Schmitz and Nadvi 1999). This burgeoning area of literature raises some new questions for cluster dynamics, one of which is how do intermediary organisations develop the skills and competencies to support upgrading of producer capabilities? This is a particularly relevant area of research because in much of the cluster and regional dynamics literature, although intermediary organisations have been prominent in filling information gaps (Howells 2006) or assisting artisans and entrepreneurs respond to market opportunities (Piore and Sabel 1984), they have generally...

This paper discusses how network theory and social capital can help explain different patterns of inclusion of small and medium sized producers in agri-food clusters. We make the argument that despite the centralized nature of practices, the manner in which inclusion takes place can vary significantly depending on structural features of local networks and governance factors, especially social capital and the role of lead organisations. Social network analysis allows us to investigate how different patterns of bonding, bridging and centrality of key actors in agricultural clusters can influence diffusion of knowledge. We frame this discussion through a typology that allows us to identify diverse scenarios of inclusion of small producers. This is then used to guide an empirical analysis of two agri-food clusters of small producers in Peru (mango) and Colombia (palm oil). Judicious use of mixed methods and the typology can prove useful to explain diverse patterns of inclusion which have important implications for small-scale agricultural producers.

This paper analyses intermediary organisations in developing economy agricultural clusters. The paper critically engages with a growing narrative in studies of intermediaries that have stressed the ownership structure of intermediaries as a key driver for enabling knowledge transfer, inter-firm learning and upgrading of small producers in clusters. Two case studies of Latin American clusters are presented and discussed. The study suggests that in addition to ownership structure, cluster governance and the embeddedness of intermediaries in clusters are critical factors that need to be taken into account in understanding the influence of intermediaries in the upgrading of small producers in clusters.