Radical Innovation

Eco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability. However the adoption of such business strategies is still very limited because it often involves significant corporate, cultural and regulatory barriers. An important challenge is not only to conceive eco-efficient PSS concepts, but also to understand the contextual conditions that facilitate their societal embedding, and which strategies and development pathways are the most appropriate.
The combination of theoretical insights from innovation studies (in particular Strategic Niche Management and Transition Management) and a case studies research (exploring the innovation journeys made by six companies in introducing their eco-efficient PSS innovations in the market) is used to investigate the factors that influence the implementation and diffusion of this kind of innovations. The article provides a structured overview of these factors, grouping them in four clusters: implementation of socio-technical experiments; establishment of a broad network of actors; building up of a shared project vision; creation of room for broad and reflexive learning processes.
Based on these results it is argued that a broader and more strategic system approach should be adopted by companies. Companies should focus not only on the PSS solution and its value chain, but also on the contextual conditions that may favour or hinder the societal embedding of the PSS itself. The article concludes by outlining a key area for future research.

Disruptive innovation is a term used to describe innovation that is of highly discontinuous or revolutionary nature, which is the opposite of evolutionary or incremental innovation. The term is becoming more widely recognised, but a consistent view of what disruptive innovation is or how it is defined is missing. This paper explores the different dimensions of disruptive innovation put forward by different authors and
proposes a working definition as a key building block for an European Commission (EC) co-sponsored research project (“DisruptIT”). The working definition will be used to guide the development of the tools and methods that will help organisations enable and manage disruptive innovation as a key competitive strategy.

Business organizations face constant pressure to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage.  Using a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis enable the creation and defining of objectives tailored to the firm’s environment, after assessing current capabilities.  Subsequently, an enterprise’s technology strategy converges on managing the envisioned destiny and achieving the articulated objectives.  Almost every organizational formation aspires to use technology for integrating information, achieving process efficiencies, and transforming service delivery into a paragon of effectiveness.  Based on a limited meta-analysis, this paper integrates business and IT platform strategies as a means to generate a competitive advantage.

Developing radical innovations is highly demanding because of high uncertainties which give rise to unanticipated problems and discoveries. Managing individual motivation is therefore an important component of the radical innovation capability. This study presents a theoretical model of managing individual motivation in radical innovation development. The model is tested and elaborated by investigating four incumbent companies. The findings indicate that managers may influence the initial level of individual motivation and its effect on the success in development tasks by assigning external goals and providing organizational support. These methods can be found at multiple levels: individuals, project teams, and the organization.

We develop a valid definition of technological radicalness which states that a successful radical invention is: (1) novel; (2) unique; and (3) has an impact on future technology. The first two criteria allow us to identify potentially radical inventions ex ante market introduction; adding the third condition, we can ex post determine if an invention served as an important change agent. Empirically testable condition selected 6 of 581 tennis racket patents granted between 1971 and 2001. Two of the identified patents – the oversized and the wide-body rackets – are considered radical inventions by industry experts. Applying our definition and operationalization would allow researchers to achieve greater generalizability across studies, avoid endogenous definitions of radicalness, and study predictors of market success for radical inventions.

The preferences of customers are rapidly changing with the changes in trends. Similar situation is also faced by restaurant sector which forces them to stay in the process of adaptation in relation with the changes in customers’ demands and needs. Some of the challenges which the restaurant sector is facing are; customers’ preferences over healthier food, advancement in technology over delivery of food and dining experience, new entrants, environmental sustainability, marketing strategies, heightened expectations of customers and food processing methods. The businesses can cope up with these challenges through innovation, which is a tool that can provide competitive advantage in order to survive in the rapidly changing and cutthroat environment. This report will elaborate the notions "Innovation" and "Commercialization" in depth which can be beneficial for entrepreneurs to boost their businesses.

The Indomitable Technological Vision [Неукротимое технологическое предвидение]

[черновик рукописи] [rough copy book]

Данная книга основана на диссертационной работе Тамары Карлтон «Значение предвидения в радикальных технологических новшествах» о секретах успеха американского Агентстве передовых оборонных исследовательских проектов (DARPA). Так, одним из таких «секретов» является уникальная компетенция сотрудников агентства. Это способность полностью, в мельчайших деталях представлять себе научно-технический облик исследовательской программы, «технологическое предвидение».
Работа будет полезна людям, которые хотели бы вникнуть в проблематику создания национальных организаций передовых исследований. Особенную актуальность она приобретает в связи с ростом попыток создания организаций, претендующих на создание радикальных технологических новшеств.
Книга предназначена для исследователей, практиков, студентов и аспирантов как естественно-научных вузов (МФТИ, МИФИ, МГУ), так и академий государственного управления (РАГСиНХ, ГУ-ВШЭ).

The capability to innovate is increasingly at the core of the success and survival of companies. The development of new products, services, and ways of doing business is needed to respond to changes in the companies' operating environments. Often it is not sufficient to improve existing products and services. Instead, companies aim to develop radical innovations which encompass novel technologies or require new markets, and have the potential to create paradigm shifts at the market, industry, or world level. The development of radical innovations is, however, difficult due to high uncertainties, and managers must implement changes to processes, organizational structures, firm culture, and external linkages to overcome these difficulties. Recently, researchers have paid particular attention on studying how open innovation, i.e. interactions with external sources of ideas and innovations, may help companies introduce radical innovations.

In this dissertation, the challenge of developing radical innovations in an open environment is investigated through four studies, each of which will provide complementary viewpoints to this problem. The first study investigates how knowledge from customers and users may help B2B manufacturing companies develop digital innovations. The findings indicate that in a situation where new digital technologies have created vast opportunities for innovation, customers have limited abilities to predict their future needs and companies need to turn to their users and aim to understand their latent needs to be able to set goals for radical innovation.

The second study investigates whether and how a company with a low level of internal R&D may introduce radical innovations based on its suppliers' technologies. The findings suggest that high investments in internal R&D are not necessary if the company has sufficient supplier management capabilities for establishing and managing successful collaboration.

The third study addresses the integration of radical ideas from outside an R&D unit's usual idea sources. In this setting characterized of high uncertainty mechanisms, which typically promote turning ideas into new products, are not available, and the integration of ideas relies on coordination mechanisms that facilitate knowledge exchange across disciplinary and hierarchical borders.

Finally, the fourth study addresses individual motivation in radical innovation development. It is found that multiple managerial actions at individual, team, and organization level related to goal assignment and organizational support influence the developers' motivation toward radical innovation development tasks. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the motivational effects of innovation methods. This general requirement is highly relevant also for open innovation.

The dissertation brings attention to the variety in approaches that companies may adopt in using open innovation to promote radical innovation and reports of methods and challenges in doing so.

Companies have learned that radical innovations are crucial to long term success. However, many companies struggle to introduce radical innovations, since many recommendations regarding incremental innovations do not apply. Increased research has addressed the question of which capabilities are required to manage radical innovation, but so far a common framework is missing. Our paper bridges this gap by developing an

What is a disruptive innovation?  This study confronts this question here by presenting different approaches, which endeavor to explain the dynamic behavior of disruptive technologies in competitive markets. Firstly, this study introduces destructive technology as a radical innovation, based on new products and/or processes, which with high technical and/or economic performance destroys the usage value of established techniques previously sold and used in markets, generating technological, industrial, economic and social change. Then, this study explains the behavior of disruptive technologies with different models: approach of revolutionary innovation by Abernathy and Clark, disruptive technologies by Christensen, competitive substitution by Fisher and Pry, predator-prey relation by Farrell and killer technology by Coccia. These approaches are in many ways complementary and a full understanding of the characteristics of disruptive technologies in markets requires an appreciation of all approaches and more. Finally, this study shows some consequences of disruptive innovation for new entrant, incumbent firm and markets in a setting of competition with firm-level strategies for sustaining and safeguarding competitive advantage.

Fishbone diagram is a graphical technique to show the several causes of a specific event. Fishbone diagram is applied here as a novel method of graphical representation to identify, explore and analyse the sources of innovation and especially general purpose technologies (GPTs). Firstly, the study here shows the driving forces of GPTs, such as: higher democratisation, high investment in R&D, etc. Secondly, these drivers of GPTs and in general of new technology are systematised within fishbone diagrams for technological analysis. Some examples are illustrated by applying the fishbone diagram to specific GPTs, such as steam engine and information and communication technologies (ICTs). Overall, then, fishbone diagram seems to be an appropriate and general technique of graphical representation for the technological analysis and foresight of path-breaking innovation in society.

This research, based on four in-depth case studies, probes an overlooked unit of analysis in innovation management literature, namely management action and cognition, and offers a new qualitative contribution into resource allocation approaches that support radical innovation. The interpretivist approach revealed that a management team’s resource and path dependencies and prevailing mental models underpin resource allocation routines, which prevent managers from pursuing radical innovations. Of particular interest, were innovations that disrupt and re-shape the exiting terms of economic engagement in established industries. It was found that managers with restrictive mental models will adopt up to five disruptive innovation rejection strategies: rewarding incrementalism; ignoring the positive aspects of disruptive innovations; focusing on historical perceptions of success; creating perceptions of success with high effort; and holding beliefs in the face of disconfirming information. Initial longitudinal data suggests that rejection strategies can be overcome with holistic portfolio approaches.

Le modèle d'organisation ambidextre constitue l'une des réponses avancées par la littérature pour développer des innovations radicales dans les grandes entreprises. Il met en avant la coexistence d'unités dédiées à l'exploitation et d'autres à l'exploration et au développement de ces innovations. L'articulation de ces unités, à la fois séparées et intégrées, a été peu étudiée. Sur la base d'une étude

This study investigates how the absorptive capacity of scientific spin-offs affects the benefits and challenges of customer involvement in the development of radical innovations. We conducted 36 interviews in 3 spin-offs over 4 years to collect data regarding customer involvement in the development of radical innovations. The findings show the importance of spin-offs developing both potential and realized absorptive capacities to internalize customer knowledge and technology emergence awareness and to simultaneously offset customers' lack of technical knowledge in formulating their needs. Both market and technical knowledge appeared to be important for spin-offs, and these were available from both customers and the parent research center. The findings' main implication is spin-offs need a blending capability to balance between (1) market and technical knowledge, (2) market-pull and technology-push approaches, (3) the involvement of customers and parent research centers, and (4) potential and realized absorptive capacities. This study contributes a conceptual framework on the blending capability of customer involvement in the development of radical innovations and a set of propositions for future research.

Destructive technology is a radical innovation, (a
new product and/or process) which with high
technical and/or economic performance destroys
the usage value of established techniques previously
sold and used in markets, generating technological,
industrial, economic, and social
change.