If employees have access to additional relevant knowledge and information, they can be more innovative, which is a reason for many firms to ally. Key in an alliance is the sharing of existing and creating of new knowledge, but transferring knowledge inside an alliance is not obvious or easy. Knowledge exchanged within an alliance must be perceived as relevant in order for it to be used. If individuals in an alliance can readily perceive knowledge to be relevant, the right knowledge is transferred and is transferred in an efficient manner. Building on stickiness of knowledge and knowledge relevance theory, we examine the relationship between an individual's job experience as well as intrinsic motivation on the one hand, on their perception of the relevance of others' knowledge on the other hand. These relationships are positively moderated by an individual's favourable position and connection strength in the network of individuals engaged in the alliance, respectively. We find a weak but insignificant negative relationship between job experience and perceived knowledge relevance. Being well‐positioned in a network brings out the positive effect of job experience, as expected, whereas connection strength does not further enhance the positive effect of intrinsic motivation.

An important challenge for franchisors is to find individuals with strong intentions to become franchisees that they can actively support in this ambition. We contribute to franchising research by developing and testing a model to explain individual intentions to become franchisees as a specific type of entrepreneurial intention (EI). We combine Achievement Motivation Theory (AMT) with the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to propose inverted U-shaped associations between individual motivations (i.e. need for achievement and risk-taking propensity), their cognitive assessments of franchising (i.e. attitude towards franchising and perceived behavioural control), and their EI regarding franchising. Our survey of 666 individuals demonstrates that need for achievement impacts attitude towards franchising and perceived behavioural control regarding franchising following respectively inverted U-shaped and declining positive relationships, and they partly mediate the relationships between need for achievement and EI regarding franchising. We find a negative linear association with attitude towards franchising.

Innovation is about individuals collaborating to share existing knowledge and create new knowledge. Increasingly these collaborations cross organisational boundaries, like in R&D alliances. Many of these alliances are coopetitive, partners cooperate, but also compete with each other. Although knowledge sharing in coopetitive settings has been studied on the firm and the unit level, the micro (individual) level is underresearched. We consider individual alliance-related work performance of alliance members in a (moderately) coopetitive R&D alliance, drawing on social network theory and the organisational coordination perspective. We examine the influence of individual alliance members' position and level of activity in the alliance advice network on their work performance. We also examine the substitutive role of the alliance formal network, representing the official channels of knowledge sharing. We suggest that individuals' work performance is better explained by their position in the formal network, rather than in the advice network.

PurposeWhile some studies have found that cognitive biases are detrimental to entrepreneurial performance, others have conjectured that cognitive biases may stimulate entrepreneurial action. This study uses a typology of availability and representative heuristics to examine how two patterns of biases affect entrepreneurial performance. Drawing on ideas from cognitive science, this study predicts that various levels of biases in each pattern stimulate entrepreneurial behavior and performance.Design/methodology/approachA profile-deviation approach was employed to analyze data from 253 entrepreneurs and zero-truncated Poisson regression and the zero-truncated negative binomial regression to test hypotheses.FindingsThis study finds some positive associations between a particular level of cognitive biases in each of the two patterns and entrepreneurial behavior and performance. Results show that the patterns of biases often stimulate and never hurt entrepreneurial behavior and performance. The opposite holds for a lack of cognitive biases, which hurts and never stimulates entrepreneurial behavior and performance.Originality/valueThis study examines patterns of cognitive biases of entrepreneurs instead of single biases. The study broadens the perspective on the heuristics and cognitive biases of entrepreneurs by examining patterns of biases emanating from the availability and the representativeness heuristic that make a difference for entrepreneurial behavior and performance. The study also brings the “great rationality debate” closer to the entrepreneurship field by showing that a normative rule based on statistics and probability theory does not benefit entrepreneurial behavior and performance.

Facing the liability of smallness, SMEs face substantial challenges in internally developing solutions to spur the generation of new ideas that challenge existing practices. In this study, we point to co‐creation with customers as an external solution to boost radical organizational creativity. Relying on a sample of SMEs in the Northern Netherlands, we examine the impact of co‐creation on radical organizational creativity. Following insights from organizational learning theory, we also test the moderating effect of the nature of the organizational structure and the level of organizational creativity support. We find that customer co‐creation has a positive impact on SME’s radical creativity. Surprisingly, we find that organizational creativity support negatively moderates this relationship. Together these findings enrich our theoretical understanding of the drivers of radical organizational creativity. Moreover, they provide SME managers specific guidelines on how to generate radically new ideas.

With an increasing need in organizations to come up with novel and useful ideas to renew and survive, team creativity has grown in importance to managers and researchers. As the cognitive resources of team members are the core input for team creativity, researchers increasingly look at team cognition in general and team cognitive styles in particular. In this research stream, the environmental context in which team members are embedded has received limited attention. We therefore experimentally test variation in the physical workplace environment and how it influences the relationship between team experiential cognitive styles and team creativity. Manipulating the nature of architectural elements in the room, we distinguish between a physical workplace with (i) experiential cues and (ii) rational cues. We also use a control condition where architectural elements are absent in the workplace environment. We rely on resource-matching theory to build our hypotheses. Using data of 75 student teams of a Dutch university, we find that the relationship between teams' experiential cognitive style and team creativity was positive in the control condition. This positive relationship became insignificant in the two conditions where experiential or rational cues were introduced. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This study examines individual knowledge sharing in a coopetitive R&D alliance. R&D is increasingly carried out in an R&D alliance setting, where individuals share highly specialized tacit knowledge crossing firm boundaries. A particular challenging setting is the coopetitive R&D alliance, where partner firms partially compete and individuals may leak competitive knowledge. This setting has been studied on the level of the partner firm. We want to deepen insights by examining the individual level. Drawing on the motivation-opportunity-ability framework, we study the influence of individuals' job experience (ability) on their performance in the alliance. We also examine effects of two- and three-way interactions between job experience, a central position in the social alliance network (opportunity) and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. We find a positive association of job experience with individual performance, a positive interaction between job experience and extrinsic motivation and a positive three-way interaction between job experience, central network position and intrinsic motivation, and discuss the impact of these findings.

An indispensable guide enabling business and management students to develop their professional competences in real organizational settings, this new and fully updated edition of Problem Solving in Organizations equips the reader with the necessary toolkit to apply the theory to practical business problems. By encouraging the reader to use the theory and showing them how to do so in a fuzzy, ambiguous and politically charged, real-life organizational context, this book offers a concise introduction to design-oriented and theory-informed problem solving in organizations. In addition, it gives support for designing the overall approach to a problem-solving project as well as support for each of the steps of the problem-solving cycle: problem definition, problem analysis, solution design, interventions, and evaluation. Problem Solving in Organizations is suitable for readers with a wide range of learning objectives, including undergraduates and graduates studying business and management, M.B.A students and professionals working in organizations.

Studies of alliances, and R&D alliances in particular, focus mostly on issues at the meso and macro levels of analysis. It may be for this reason that it remains unclear what explains their success (or rather, their failure). Despite calls, few studies have been able to study the micro dynamics inside an alliance (Zollo et al. 2002). The inner-working of alliances is still unclear. Drawing on social capital and social network theory, we study how individuals in an R&D alliance transfer knowledge. We find that individuals perform better in an alliance when they are well-connected in the formally mandated network, but, counter- intuitively, worse when they are actively seeking and giving advice to (from) others in the extra-role, emergent advice network. Each of these effects is strengthened by the tie strength of relations maintained in each network. We discuss the theoretical implications for social network theory, for the innovation management literature and the literature on alliances. We also discuss managerial implications.

As today’s firms increasingly outsource their noncore activities, they not only have to manage their own resources and capabilities, but they are ever more dependent on the resources and capabilities of supplying firms to respond to customer needs. This paper explicitly examines whether and how firms and suppliers, who are both oriented to the same customer market, enable innovativeness in their supply chains and deliver value to their joint customer. We will call this customer of the focal firm the “end user.” The authors take a resource-dependence perspective to hypothesize how suppliers’ end-user orientation and innovativeness influence downstream activities at the focal firm and end-user satisfaction. The resource dependence theory looks typically beyond the boundaries of an individual firm for explaining firm success: firms need to satisfy customer demands to survive and depend on other parties such as their suppliers to achieve customer satisfaction. Accordingly, the research design focuses on three parties along a supply chain: the focal firm, a supplier, and a customer of the focal firm (end user). The results drawn from a survey of 88 matched chains suggest the following. First, customer satisfaction is driven by focal firms’ innovativeness. A focal firm’s innovativeness depends, on the one hand, on a focal firm’s market orientation and, on the other hand, on its suppliers’ innovativeness. Second, no relationship could be established between a focal firm’s market orientation and a supplier’s end-user orientation. Market orientation typically has within-firm effects, while innovativeness has impact beyond the boundaries of the firm. These results suggest that firms create value for their customer through internal market orientation efforts and external suppliers’ innovativeness.

This study examines the role of mixed emotions in the risk perception of entrepreneurs, an important determinant of entrepreneurial decision making. We extend the literature on mixed emotions by applying the cognitive appraisal tendency approach and contrasting it with ambivalence stemming from the valence–based approach. We test our hypotheses on a data set of 253 entrepreneurs from the United States. We show that mixed and conflicting emotions are an important predictor of the risk perception of entrepreneurs. At the same time, we find that emotional reactions of entrepreneurs on strategic issues change substantially as they found more ventures and become habitual entrepreneurs.

Introduction The field problem solving project starts with an intake and an orientation . In terms of the problem solving cycle, the intake and orientation should be regarded as the ‘problem definition' step. In terms of a consulting project, the intake should be regarded as the contracting phase. The intake usually consists of one or two meetings with company representatives, and results in a written preliminary project proposal including an initial assignment. During the orientation the preliminary proposal will be transformed into a final proposal. It will result in a further detailing of the technical content of the preliminary proposal, but typically not of its contractual conditions. The orientation is based on five to ten interviews with people who deal with the initial assignment, and the intention is to create a broader perspective on this assignment. Although during the intake the student is typically not an in-house trainee yet, orientation may be conducted on an in-house basis, but this is not really required. The intake and orientation together should not take more than four weeks in a six- to eight-month project. Intake The intake starts with an initial contact with a company representative, exploring the possibilities of an FPS project. The choice as to the company to be approached can be based on a variety of reasons. Students or their supervisors may have had prior contact with the company. Interest in the company may also be based on an external exploration. In either case, the prospects of interesting a company are higher if one proposes a specific – but not too narrowly defined – topic for a potential project. If the contact is successful, an appointment for a first meeting is made. If the supervisors intend to use the results of the FPS project for their research output as well (see Section 5.3), a company has to be found that faces a field problem of the type in which the supervisors are interested and wants to address this problem.

This study compares the effectiveness of five responses to external uncertainty in markets with network externalities: avoidance, imitation, control, cooperation, and real options reasoning as a form of strategic flexibility. Our analysis of 385 new technology ventures shows that direct and indirect network externalities have opposite effects on the effectiveness of these strategies. Moreover, under network externalities, attempts to make ventures less dependent upon environmental instabilities perform differently compared to attempts to control the environment. Finally, we show that real options reasoning does not always perform better under conditions of higher uncertainty, such as uncertainty due to direct network externalities.

Innovation is widely acknowledged nowadays as the source for firms' competitive advantage. Whereas previous innovation research mainly focus on the group and organisational levels, only a relatively small number of studies cover individual perspectives on innovation performance. Based on a systematic literature review, we provide a comprehensive framework, identifying individual characteristics that impact innovation at individual, team and firm levels. We also distinguish between various types of innovation (i.e., technological innovation, product innovation, process innovation) and consider variables that mediate or moderate the relationship between individual characteristics and innovation performance. Gaps are highlighted and future research directions are formulated.

The field problem solving project starts with an intake and an orientation. In terms of the problem solving cycle, the intake and orientation should be regarded as the ‘problem definition' step.

This chapter concerns the second step of the problem solving cycle: the analysis and diagnosis step. Our starting point in this chapter is that the first step, the problem definition step, has been finished. Thus, in one way or another, the problem has been defined, some of its potential causes and consequences identified, the assignment and the problem solving approach determined.

Many studies emphasize the importance of government support in technology development. However, this study is among the first to provide empirical findings of the relevance of government roles for the performance of technology development projects. Based on earlier research and the strategic management literature, a theoretical model and hypotheses are developed to study the relevance of government roles and project teams' strategic behavior for technology development projects. Our results show that government championship is an important positive factor for the performance of technology development projects. Government championing behavior overcomes regulatory barriers, enthusiastically promotes the technology's advantages, and gets key decision makers involved. As such, government championship has more impact than government financial/technical assistance on both project performance and benefits to customers. The findings also show that both the proactiveness and defensiveness dimensions of project teams' strategic behavior contribute positively to project performance and benefits to customers. The paper concludes with implications for practice: From a policy perspective, government should extend its technology policies by taking on the role as a champion, while companies should invest in building professional relations with champions in government.