The role of business networks for innovation
Öberg, C. (2019). The role of business networks for innovation. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 4(2), 124-128. 10.1016/j.jik.2017.10.001
Öberg, C. (2019). The role of business networks for innovation. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 4(2), 124-128. 10.1016/j.jik.2017.10.001
A business network consists of directly and indirectly connected companies, where social and economic ties help to understand these connection. Innovations could be seen to relate to business networks in two ways: they may result from interaction between business partners, or they would need to fit into, or through changes to interaction patterns among various business partners, be fitted into new or current business networks. In the literature on innovation, the incremental, radical, or disruptive characteristics of the innovations are frequently described as degrees of newness. This paper categorizes characteristics of business networks based on their role to create various types of innovations, and based on the various types’ consequences for the business network. The empirical part of this paper is based on six case-study examples from interviews performed by the author. The findings suggest links between the type of innovation, and the role of the network and network consequences. The paper contributes to previous research through discussing the role of business networks for various types of innovation. Furthermore, the paper contributes to previous research through indicating the various types of innovations’ consequences for the business network. Most previous research on business networks and innovation only concerns itself with how various parties participate in idea generation and co-development of innovations, while the consequences for the business network is not described extensively.
2023
Journal of Product Innovation. Management.
Grand challenges vary across industries and call for firms to craft a responsible innovation response to effectively address them. However, key questions concerning why firms embrace responsible innovation and the process by which they respond to grand challenges have yet to be fully answered. We integrate an issue-selling theoretical lens and the customer role from an innovation perspective to theorize about the different influencing motives that customers exert on their corresponding supplying firm to craft a more responsible innovation response to grand challenges. Based on qualitative data collected in almost a 10-year period from multiple respondents across eight customer firms and two supplying firms, we identify three core motives—regulatory, business opportunity, and socio-environmental motives—that propel customers to influence supplying firms to craft different forms of responsible innovation responses. Our research also reveals three vital socio-human capital pathways—human capital, socio-behavioral, and relationship—which, in turn, foster a co-active engagement in addressing grand challenges innovatively and responsibly. In so doing, this research advances novel theorizing on co-active engagement in responsible innovation where the customer acts as the primary champion and the supplier as the implementer. We discuss the important implications for customers and other stakeholders.
2023
Technovation, 123, 102722.
The development of the sharing economy has resulted in a plethora of sharing economy business models. This paper takes its motivation from the increased variety of sharing economy business models to develop a typology of sharing economy business model transformations. It does so through creating a timeline of the sharing economy development, capturing business model configurations as activity systems along that development, and tracing mechanisms affecting sharing economy business model transformations. The paper thereby interlinks the sharing economy development on the phenomenon level with transformations of its business models. The paper contributes to past research by presenting a systematic account of the development of the sharing economy and its resulting business model configurations and by developing a typology focusing on the types of changes that have transformed the sharing economy business models and resulted in the plethora of business models.
The article can be accessed here.
2023
Technovation, 123, 102712.
New trends in innovation management may require new research methods. Social media analytics (SMA)—a method for capturing and analyzing data from user-generated content published on online platforms—has emerged as a complement or even alternative to more traditional research methods. This article systematically reviews and assesses the use of SMA and its potential for innovation management research. Our results show that use of SMA is still in an emergent phase, although it has become increasingly popular over the past decade. Our literature review illustrates that SMA provides new opportunities for innovation management scholars to enhance customer-, market-, technology-, and society-focused innovation research in several ways. In this paper we develop a research agenda and suggest areas for future research using SMA in innovation management.
The article can be accessed here.