The Global Importance of Innovation Champions: Insights from China

Teaching-practice as a critical bridge for narrowing the research-practice gap

“…China has weathered a Cultural Revolution and reveres further education. Their research-education commons is currently more open with businesses often spinning out of university (Kriz, Molloy, & Denness, 2013), an interesting by-product of more relaxed IP laws and fewer university-commercialisation caveats. Australia regularly ranks highly among university systems for publications (ranking 10th in the 2017-18 Global Competitiveness Index) but has a woeful record for translating research into practice.…”

All Australian Regions Are Not Born Equal: Understanding the Regional Innovation Management Sandpit

“…This lexicon of emergent patterns with purposive support has entered the regional domain (Collinge & Gibney, 2010). Such regional innovation systems, like an organizing firm, will also arguably rely on innovation processes working both bottom-up and top-down (Kriz et al, 2013). One advantage for regions over firms is that they generally take longer to fail.…”

Innovation Agents in the Public Sector: Applying Champion and Promotor Theory to Explore Innovation in the Australian Public Service

“…), demonstrate energy (Maidique ) and optimism (Howell and Higgins ), and assume a potentially high degree of personal risk to overcome the change resistance often associated with innovation (Kriz et al. ). Champions’ abilities to communicate ‘a clear vision of what the innovation could be or do, displaying enthusiasm about innovation, demonstrating commitment to it, and involving others in supporting it’ distinguishes them from non‐champions (Howell et al.…”

“…Kriz et al.’s () two‐level framework describes ‘bottom‐up’ and ‘top‐down’ championing by distinguishing ICs from champions of innovation (CoIs). The more commonly cited ICs identified above generally operate at lower and middle management levels and ‘push’ the innovation upward.…”

“…By identifying the underlying mechanism of power and adopting Kriz et al.’s () IC‐CoI distinction and the four promotor roles (expert, power, process, and relationship), we aim to address a key gap in the literature by exploring the roles that both champions and promotors play in fostering public sector innovation and what they individually, and collectively, ‘bring to the innovation table’. The research questions guiding our study are: RQ1.…”