Knowledge that Transforms

Despite increased focus on understanding how firms appropriate the returns from innovation, our knowledge regarding firms' behaviour in less developed economies (LDEs) is still scant. This paper provides a nuanced view as to how firms that are not at the technological frontier attempt to capture value when they encounter fragile patenting conditions. I analyse a unique dataset on innovative activities in Brazil. My findings reveal the effects (if any) of a number of factors on the use of a wide range of appropriability mechanisms. These factors include measures of knowledge intensity, novelty of products and processes, firm size, degree of competition, innovation cooperation, government support for innovation, and type of ownership. In addition, my empirical exercise provides evidence of the extent to which firms in an LDE adopt different appropriability mechanisms in pairs. Overall, this paper indicates that even in the absence of an effective patent system, firms do use patents. However, there are other patterns of appropriability in which firms use design (being registered or not registered accordingly), lead-time or trademarks in association with other means of appropriation.

Building on theoretical advances in Routine Dynamics, complemented by insights from Science and Technology Studies, we conduct an in-depth, longitudinal inquiry into how organizations are able to (re)create the ‘same’ routine not despite but within a pervasive background of difference and multiplicity. We draw on a three-year ethnographic study of the exact transfer of a high-end computer and production facility at a leading US technology organization to show how routines are enacted into being the same. In contrast with the literature, which sees replication as the one-directional implementation of an accessible and available origin template at destination, we theorize transfer as the simultaneous co-creation of routines across multiple sites. In so doing, we show how routines similarity and singularity are the (emergent, skilful, effortful and temporary) outcomes of repairing and distributing practices, and their sociomaterial assemblages, which coordinate multiple enactments of the routine within and across locations. These micro-level practices underpin routines emergence and persistence as well as acting as the basis for the emergence of dynamic capabilities.

Immigration is a hotly debated and politicized policy area, one in which governments confront fierce opposition from populist parties and negative media narratives altering citizens’ perceptions of the issue. There is also growing scholarly interest in migration; new migrant integration research advocates for a conceptual shift away from focusing on migrant populations and towards rethinking host communities. At the same time, public sector innovation research is developing new approaches for how governments and public organizations can be innovative in dealing with grand challenges such as migration. The aim of this article is to merge these two subfields in order to answer a guiding research question: how can public organizations be innovative to promote integration for migrants? We suggest a typology of different innovation strategies that governments can adopt regarding integration, and we present five illustrative cases from European nations to examine how governments can innovate in order to integrate migrants. We find that governments can use multiple tools to promote integration and respond to grand challenges; governments can use various sources of innovation to address major barriers to migrant integration (e.g. language barriers, negative media and public opinion, and the difficulties of providing concrete assistance).

Innovation researchers have begun to look beyond how users develop tangible objects or product innovations and moved to investigate the existence and impact of intangible user-developed innovations in techniques and services in the household sector . In this paper, to incorporate technique and service innovations and other varieties of intangible innovations not yet described in the literature into an efficient and encompassing typology, we propose the new concept of intangible Behavioral Innovation as an overarching category that stands in contrast to tangible product innovation. Behavioral innovation is defined as consisting of one or a connected sequence of intangible problem-solving activities that provide a functionally novel benefit to its user developer relative to previous practice. We demonstrate in a pilot study using a relatively novel big data-gathering and semantic analysis approach that behavioral innovation exists and can be identified in user-generated content posted openly online in peer-to-peer discussion forums relating to household sector activities such as parenting. The preponderance (N = 138) of the 168 user innovations captured in our samples of discussion comments were intangible behavioral innovations, most of which were developed by women. The majority of behavioral innovations identified were diffused by their user developers in response to specific requests for help or advice from peers in their online community. Thus, incorporating the new concept of intangible behavioral innovation into studies of user innovation's scope and significance in the household sector can serve to clarify which users innovate in our communities of interest, what and how they innovate, why they are triggered to diffuse their innovations peer-to-peer, and how their innovative activities might impact social welfare.

We examine how firms react to their competitors’ highly publicized technology breakthroughs measured by the renowned R&D 100 Award. These awards have been granted to top 100 technological inventions every year since 1965 and have come to be known as the “Oscar of Invention” (e.g., Verhoeven et al., 2016). We find that a firm's propensity to acquire another firm significantly increases after its competitors win these awards. A causal interpretation of our finding is supported by instrumental variable analysis, coarsened exact matched samples, and differential effects of award winners vs. finalists. Such award-driven acquisitiveness is more pronounced among firms with more confident CEOs or in industries with a shorter technology lifecycle and a higher R&D intensity. Moreover, the acquirers with rivals winning awards pursue innovative targets whose products overlap with those rivals, confirming these acquirers’ catch-up purpose.

Research on categories and markets suggests that audiences rely on categorical distinctions to make sense of market offerings. Market offerings that deviate from category norms risk devaluation. Although literature in this area has led to valuable insights, scholars have begun to question whether there has been an overemphasis on conformity, leaving existing theories ill-equipped to account for innovation. Within this context, we argue that research on authenticity in cultural sociology offers a useful platform for theorizing. We draw on the work of Peterson (1997), who underscores the importance of signals in evaluation. Objective features of market offerings (e.g., quality) matter, but particularly for innovations, these features are not readily visible. Because authentic producers are typically thought to be more committed, capable, and intrinsically motivated, when visibility of such objective features is lacking, authenticity may serve as an alternative indicator of value. Appearing authentic requires signaling believability with respect to category norms, while also being distinctive. Using data on 684 firms from five high technology sectors, we explore the relationship between authenticity and investor perceptions of value. Focusing on three different proxies for signals of authenticity—networks, governance, and narratives—we find a curvilinear association between conformity/distinctiveness and Tobin's q. Consistent with our view of authenticity as a signal, we also find that this relationship flattens as firms gain better track records and face stiffer competition.

We investigate whether Benford's Law can be used to differentiate retracted academic papers that have employed fraudulent/manipulated data from other academic papers that have not been retracted. We use the case of Professor James Hunton who had 37 of his articles retracted because there were grave concerns that they contained mis-stated or fabricated datasets. We construct several Benford conformity measures, based on first significant digits contained in the articles, to determine whether Hunton's retracted papers differ significantly from a control group of non-retracted articles by competing authors. Our results clearly indicate that Hunton's retracted papers significantly deviate from Benford Law, relative to the control group of papers. In additional analysis we also find these results are generalisable to other authors with retracted papers. Our findings suggest that potentially both co-authors and journals could consider implementing a data analytical tool which employs Benford Law to highlight potential ‘red flag’ papers, with a view to decreasing the risk of fraudulent activity and thereby enhancing the credibility of academic papers and journals.

It is increasingly emphasized that the innovative performance of regions depends on the right balance between local development and external openness. The paper contributes to this discussion by exploring how regional gatekeepers contribute to inventive performance through their intermediation role as they establish extra-local linkages in addition to their local embeddedness. More specifically, we investigate whether firms benefit from the gatekeeping position of their inventors. To do so, we identify corporate inventors with a gatekeeper position, and study whether their presence in inventor teams affects the quality of inventions and differs when gatekeepers cross organizational (intrafirm, interfirm versus science-industry) and/or regional boundaries (one or multiple regions). Our results show that gatekeepers have a higher impact on the quality of inventions when they work for firms involved in inter-firm collaborations unlike external stars who have either no effect or a negative impact on inventive quality.

Geographically dispersed reservoirs of knowledge represent significant opportunities for multinational enterprises (MNEs), both in terms of feeding the firm's innovation process, as well as adapting technology to new markets. They face serious challenges in accomplishing these tasks, due to the well-known barriers associated with the transfer of knowledge out of its local context. We argue that ethnic inventors might play a role in alleviating these challenges, by acting as a bridge between their countries of origin (CoO) and the MNE headquarters. Using USPTO data on internationally connected patents granted to US-based MNEs operating in knowledge-intensive industries over the period 1975–2009, our empirical exercise shows that patents involving ethnic inventors from a given CoO are associated with greater integration of knowledge originating from that CoO in the MNE innovation process. Further investigation indicates that this effect is probably limited to knowledge developed within the MNE's network, suggesting that ethnic ties – per se – might not be sufficiently powerful to overcome the joint barriers of national borders and organizational boundaries. Finally, our analysis reveals that ethnic inventors may also be associated with knowledge exploitation in their CoO. This mainly seems to occur in CoOs plagued by market-related institutional voids.