T o develop innovations in large, mature organizations, individuals often have to resort to underground, "bootleg" research and development (R&D) activities that have no formal organizational support. In doing so, these individuals attempt to achieve greater autonomy over the direction of their R&D efforts and to escape the constraints of organizational accountability. Drawing on theories of proactive creativity and innovation, we argue that these underground R&D efforts help individuals to develop innovations based on the exploration of uncharted territory and delayed assessment of embryonic ideas. After carefully assessing the direction of causality, we find that individuals' bootleg efforts are associated with achievement of high levels of innovative performance. Furthermore, we show that the costs and benefits of bootlegging for innovation are contingent on the emphasis on the enforcement of organizational norms in the individual's work environment; we argue and demonstrate empirically that the benefits of an individual's bootlegging efforts are enhanced in work units with high levels of innovative performance and which include members who are also engaged in bootlegging. However, during periods of organizational change involving formalization of the R&D process, individuals who increase their bootlegging activities are less likely to innovate. We explore the implications of these findings for our understanding of proactive and deviant creativity.

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Open innovation often requires wholesale changes to the nature of R&D. However, academic research and managerial practice have paid little attention to the challenges that individuals face in the daily pursuit of open innovation. As a result, there is little understanding of how individuals cope with open innovation, and which organizational practices can support them in this role. Drawing on the experiences of R&D professionals, this article identifies four specific challenges and coping strategies of individuals engaged in open innovation. It proposes a range of open innovation practices that organizations can implement to better equip their staff to undertake effective external engagement.

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Building on a unique, multi-source, and multi-method study of R&D projects in a leading professional service firm, we develop the argument that organizations are more likely to fund projects with intermediate levels of novelty. That is, some project novelty increases the share of requested funds received, but too much novelty is difficult to appreciate and is selected against. While prior research has considered the characteristics of the individuals generating project ideas, we shift the focus to panel selectors and explore how they shape the evaluation of novelty. We theorize that a high panel workload reduces panel preference for novelty in selection, whereas a diversity of panel expertise and a shared location between panel and applicant increase preference for novelty. We explore the implications of these findings for theories of innovation search, organizational selection, and managerial practice.

The paper develops a more precise specification and understanding of the process of national-level knowledge accumulation and absorptive capabilities by applying the reasoning and evidence from the firm-level analysis pioneered by Levinthal (1989, 1990). In doing so, we acknowledge that significant cross-border effects due to the role of both inward and outward FDI exist and that assimilation of foreign knowledge is not only confined to catchingup economies but is also carried out by countries at the frontier-sharing phase. We postulate a non-linear relationship between national absorptive capacity and the technological gap, due to the effects of the cumulative nature of the learning process and the increase complexity of external knowledge as the country approaches the technological frontier. We argue that national absorptive capacity and the accumulation of knowledge stock are simultaneously determined. This implies that different phases of technological development require different strategies. During the catching-up phase, knowledge accumulation occurs predominately through the absorption of trade and/or inward FDI-related R&D spillovers. At the prefrontier-sharing phase onwards, increases in the knowledge base occur largely through independent knowledge creation and actively accessing foreign-located technological spillovers, inter alia through outward FDI-related R&D, joint ventures and strategic alliances.

Searching for the most rewarding sources of innovative ideas remains a key challenge in management of technological innovation. Yet, little is known about which combinations of internal and external knowledge sources are triggers for innovation. Extending theories about searching for innovation, we examine the effectiveness of different combinations of knowledge sources for achieving innovative performance. We suggest that combinations involving integrative search strategies – combining internal and external knowledge – are the most likely to generate product and process innovation. In this context, we present the idea that cognitively distant knowledge sources are helpful for innovation only when used in conjunction with knowledge sources that are closer to the focal firm. We also find important differences between product and process innovation, with the former associated with broader searches than the latter. Using a large-scale pooled sample of UK firms, we find overall support for our conjectures, particularly in terms of product innovation