The Effects of Knowledge Depth and Scope on the Relationship between R &amp; D Alliances and New Product Development

126

Social media technologies that enable interactive feedback during idea generation can complement existing modes of knowledge exchange in innovation management. Especially large, multinational companies use internal online idea competitions to promote intraorganizational knowledge exchange. Although current studies mainly focus on idea generation through crowdsourcing, little attention has been paid to the effect of online interaction between contributors on idea quality. Building on the organizational knowledge networks theory, this study examines online feedback activities, their contribution to knowledge exchange, and hence, how they increase idea quality. The authors identify three feedback characteristics of online idea generation presumed to affect idea quality: (1) the diversity of commentators (feedback diversity), (2) the extent to which feedback is elaborate and constructive (feedback constructiveness), and (3) the degree of facilitator interaction during idea discussion (feedback integration). This study also investigates how the idea authors' own feedback behavior moderates the relationships between feedback characteristics and idea quality. The results show that all three feedback characteristics relate independently and positively to idea quality. Author feedback shows a positive interaction effect with feedback diversity and a negative interaction effect with feedback constructiveness. The findings suggest that online feedback in idea competitions constitutes an important knowledge exchange process for idea generation. Companies that want to profit from firm-internal idea competitions should actively support online collaboration-e.g., through facilitators. Practitioner PointsThis study empirically investigated how feedback characteristics affect idea quality in firm-internal online idea competitions.Online idea competitions need to be arranged as an iterative feedback process between idea authors and commentators to increase idea quality.Heterogeneity in commentators' skills and competencies and the constructiveness of feedback are related to higher idea quality.Facilitator comments are important for idea quality, because they interconnect ideas and competencies within the firm and avoid homogeneous knowledge creation.

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

How Does Online Interaction Affect Idea Quality? The Effect of Feedback in Firm‐Internal Idea Competitions

Zhu¹,

Kock²,

Wentker³

et al. 2018

126

“…First, the pharmaceutical industry is knowledge‐intensive, and is known to have a high propensity to patent (Hall and Ziedonis, 2001; Lanjouw and Schankerman, ), which means that the industry's innovation outputs can be accurately described by the available patent data. Second, pharmaceutical firms are known to extensively make use of external knowledge, through strategic alliances (Caner and Tyler, ; Dong and Yang, ; Hoang and Rothaermel, ; Rothaermel and Deeds, ; Xu, ). This implies that the industry is likely to exhibit the sorts of alliance‐making behavior that is particularly suitable for testing our hypotheses.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Central Is Too Central? Organizing Interorganizational Collaboration Networks for Breakthrough Innovation

Dong¹,

McCarthy²,

Schoenmakers³

2017

101

Firms increasingly look to collaboration with alliance partners in their quest for breakthrough innovation. But how does the position of a firm in its alliance network weighted by the centrality of its partners—a concept which we term “partner‐weighted alliance centrality”—and the heterogeneities in the types of partners that it cooperates with—in terms of its private‐public collaboration—influence this quest? Using longitudinal data from the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, we build alliance networks in the period 1985–2001 to investigate these questions. We show that, for breakthrough innovation, collaborating with more partners that are more central in alliance networks the better, but only to a point. Beyond that point, we find that the likelihood of achieving breakthrough innovation drops. Furthermore, and looking at the kinds of knowledge provided by the partners in each firm's alliances, we report that firms with a greater share of private partners, relative to public partners, suffer less from the diminishing benefits of collaboration with central partners when developing breakthrough innovation. Taken together, we make novel contributions about how to organize for breakthrough innovation, and provide actionable managerial advice in terms of selecting collaborative partners in alliance networks.

“…Preadapted firms have experience and knowledge accumulated in the past that is relevant to the new technological domain. Accumulated relevant knowledge permits these firms to engage in narrow but deep knowledge recombination, which is required for internal development of the radical innovation (Caner and Tyler, ; Kaplan and Vakili, ). Application of deep knowledge is crucial to move from one technological domain to another because individuals must understand a knowledge domain to push its boundaries with some likelihood of success (Sternberg and O'Hara, ).…”

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Retracted: Firm Adaptation, Preadaptation, and Sequential Ambidexterity in Firm Boundaries During an Era of Ferment and an Era of Incremental Change

Patel¹,

Husairi²

2017

The above article, published online on 31 July 2017, in Wiley Online Library (http://wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by the journal’s Editor‐in‐Chief, Gloria Barczak, the Product Development and Management Association, and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The retraction has been agreed due to the unattributed overlap with a previously published article, authored by the corresponding author (Patel, C. and Haon, C. (2014), The Complementary Role of Branding. European Management Review, 11: 173‐186. https://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12029), and inconsistencies in construct names within the article.