Business incubators (BIs) are key to promoting entrepreneurship, regional development, and societal impact, yet research often focuses on single outcomes overlooking how BIs capture value across multiple domains. This study examines how combinations of BI characteristics and strategic choices enable BIs to achieve value capture breadth - defined as capturing economic gains for the BI, value for their tenants, their region, and society. Using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis on 122 German BIs, we analyse BI characteristics such as age, type, and size, along with strategic choices like service variety and openness orientation. The findings reveal six configurations that lead to BI value capture breadth, highlighting the importance of aligning BI characteristics with strategic choices. The study offers actionable insights for BI managers, policymakers, and regional developers to tailor their strategies for maximising BI value capture across multiple domains.

Business incubators (BIs) play a crucial role in fostering entrepreneurship and regional innovation. However, while considerable attention has been given to their positive impact on tenants, little is known about how BIs capture value from offering their services. Drawing on the open innovation framework and regional innovation systems literature, this research investigates the relationship between internal and external openness of BIs and their ability to capture value, considering the influence of regional knowledge resources on this relationship. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 109 German BIs, collecting data from a survey of their managers and from regional data sources. Our findings suggest that fostering internal networking among tenants is positively associated with BIs’ value capture, emphasizing the importance of facilitating knowledge exchange within incubator environments. Surprisingly, external openness was not related to BI value capture. Moreover, we identify a negative moderation effect of regional private knowledge levels on the relationship between external openness and BI value capture. These findings bear implications for research and practice alike.

Campus living labs (CLLs) foster sustainability within higher education institutions (HEIs), yet their institutional embedding remains challenging. Relying on the idea of strategic niche management (SNM), this paper examines three processes key to protected space development: vision articulation, social network building, and learning. This research explores the factors that enable the development of protected spaces for successful CLLs. Using an embedded case study approach, seven sustainability initiatives were analysed at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. We found that the perceived success in CLLs is related to sustainability outcomes, scaling pathways, and process outcomes. In addition, different groups of factors driving the development of protected spaces were identified: broad factors that contribute to all or multiple key processes, specific factors that support only one process, and peripheral factors that were less frequently mentioned. ‘Organisational culture’ appeared to be an important broad factor contributing to all key processes. ‘Resources’ and ‘Coordination’ were also important, specifically for social network building, but also mentioned as currently being absent by many. Finally, this paper contributes by incorporating a new factor, ‘Orchestration’, a subtle yet strategic form of coordination. It offers insights for HEIs aiming to develop CLLs as part of their sustainability strategy.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) can play a critical role in sustainability transitions in both urban and rural areas, but their uptake is hindered by a wide variety of barriers. While networks have been identified as a support structure for mainstreaming NBS, it is unclear what specific roles networks play in addressing the multiple barriers that NBS mainstreaming faces. Through qualitative research using focus group meetings and semi-structured interviews within two sectors in the Netherlands where attempts towards a nature-based transition are observed – i.e., agriculture and construction – we identify seven different functions through which networks address six specific barrier categories. We find broad network functions (e.g., knowledge sharing) that address multiple types of barriers simultaneously and targeted network functions (e.g., lobbying towards policy makers) aimed at alleviating one specific type of barrier. We also document that networks leave certain barriers unaddressed, such as technological and political barriers in the construction sector and social barriers in both sectors. Our results contribute to a more in-depth understanding of network function – barrier combinations for nature-based sustainability transitions, both in an urban and a rural context, which can help networks to further strategize and allocate their resources.

Understanding people's perceptions of climate change and associated environmental risks is paramount in assessing how individuals respond to climate change. Awareness of the consequences of climate change determines the present and future behaviours and expectations, as well as the actions taken to mitigate the likely impacts. We surveyed the perceived and expected climate change consequences of experts and community members in the Lake Victoria basin in East Africa, compared them with hydro-meteorological observations and projections, and established that some perceived trends, such as increasing temperature or rainfall intensity, correspond with meteorological observations. However, the perceived increase in drought occurrence (believed to be a recent consequence), was not substantiated by the meteorological data. It was only in the northwestern region that drought frequency increased since the year 2000, while the rest of the basin did not experience such a trend. Community members were concerned about the already noticeable consequences of climate change on their livelihoods through agriculture or fishing, while experts were mainly focused on the amplification of hazards such as floods and droughts. This divergence may imply that experts underestimate the consequences that society is already facing. Nevertheless, both groups expect that climate change will undoubtedly lead to the deterioration of human well-being by affecting food security, increasing poverty, and increasing the incidence of disease. This is a serious concern that requires immediate attention. Such insights into people's climate change perceptions can help policy-makers, researchers, and community members to better tailor adaptation solutions acceptable to the local context. Effective governance is essential to enable people to adapt to climate change and other challenges, including those resulting from the impacts of globalisation, demographic trends, and the degradation and scarcity of resources.

While empirical research on open innovation initially focused on value creation, there has been a growing interest in value capture among academics and companies. Understanding value capture is crucial, as the success of open innovation activities depends on the value capture potential of all actors involved. To provide an overview of the key findings and guide future research, we conducted an integrative literature review of 69 empirical studies on value capture in open innovation. When analyzing these studies, we focused on what value is captured, who captures it, and how actor strategies influence the value captured in collaborative innovation activities. Our analysis identified four areas for further research, namely (i) broadening concepts and measures of value, (ii) understanding the importance of contextual factors in capturing value, (iii) adopting a dynamic perspective in studying value capture, and (iv) capturing social and environmental value in light of wicked problems.

Background: Entrepreneurship camps are an important platform for students to learn through action-based learning, problem-solving, knowledge and information sharing, which is enhanced through the development of social networks and their dynamics within the networks. Aim: The research aims to: (1) explore the formation and development of networks and structure in the network over time and (2) explore the association between predominant personality traits and network position measures and network locations in the networks. Setting: This study is conducted on a multicultural entrepreneurship camp involving 35 master’s students from three Norwegian and two South African universities, which took place for two weeks in South Africa. The objective of the entrepreneurship camp is to empower students through entrepreneurship by knowledge and action-based learning. Methods: This is a quantitative study using social network analysis (SNA) in a case study. Three rounds of questionnaires were distributed to capture the network data, individual learning and personality traits. Results: There is an increase in network density over time, and the students’ network positions have improved during the camp. The two predominant personality traits that positively relate to network position and cliques are extraversion and openness to experience. Conclusion: The case provides evidence of a favorable climate for learning by improved network position and overall network density. The predominant of personality traits in relation to a specific network measure were also identified. Contribution: This study contributes to theory by offering one of the first empirical investigations of entrepreneurship camps using social network analysis and also exploring the personality traits (Big Five).

Research on open innovation (OI) has demonstrated the benefits of openness for firm innovation processes, but studies have mostly offered cross-sectional insights on incumbent firms. This study offers a more dynamic perspective on the relevance of OI for nascent ventures. Combining entrepreneurship and OI theories, we argue that it is key for resource-scarce nascent ventures to achieve critical venture-creation milestones. While OI can help these ventures to leverage salient external partnerships, we argue that it affects their speed of reaching these milestones. We test our hypotheses on a longitudinal sample focusing on external collaboration practices of nascent ventures in the renewable energy or information and communications technology industries. Our results show that, while engaging in R&D collaborations slows down nascent ventures' product development and sustainable profit generation activities, joining industry associations does not have a slow-down effect. Our results complement the OI literature by warning about the downsides of openness for nascent ventures, particularly during the venture creation phase, where speed is a high priority.

The empirical relationship between educational attainment and pay levels has been widely acknowledged in the labour-economic and labour-sociology literatures. While the causalities underlying this relationship are not conclusively established, researchers broadly agree that higher educational attainment leads to higher income levels in dependent employment, temporary hiring, and freelancing alike. The 'gig economy', where workers complete jobs mediated by online platforms, challenges this paradigm as gig workers can access jobs without any educational certificates. Building a theoretical framework based on agency-driven accounts, we investigate whether we can empirically observe a relationship between educational attainment and wage levels in the gig economy. Our OLS regression analyses of 1607 gig workers in 14 Western economies illustrate no statistically significant correlation. Instead, the platform's review system as well as the gig workers' level of previous job experience serve as the major signalling mechanisms that help to reduce information asymmetry. Qualitative insights gained from in-depth interviews explain this finding by revealing how gig workers gain the necessary qualifications for their jobs, most importantly, through self-study, learning-by-doing, and trial-and-error processes. Our findings therefore point out that advanced educational credentials are only of limited use for gig workers.

Although corporate social innovation studies in developing countries acknowledge the importance of firm resources and capabilities for attaining social goals, they overlook the way in which these interact with broader institutions to generate successful outcomes. We address this gap by exploring the relationship between firm resources-capabilities and institutions that is conducive to meeting both business and social interests in developing countries. By employing a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of corporate social innovation projects performed by joint ventures of Dutch SMEs and their local partners in developing countries, we show that firm resources and/or capabilities complement strong institutions in these countries. Corporate social innovation can also be facilitated by firm capabilities in running highly legitimate projects that substitute institutional voids in these economies, attesting to multiple paths that corporations can take to achieve social innovation.

This study explores the conditions that explain the successful realization of social innovation projects by for-profit organizations in developing economies. Drawing on the strategic alliance literature, we suggest that firm specific resources and governance of partnerships, and the specific institutional context in which they are embedded, play a significant role in achieving social goals. We adopt a crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis of 46 social innovation projects performed by joint ventures of Dutch SMEs and their local partners in 26 developing countries. We find that the organizational resources or capabilities of legitimate for-profit organizations complement strong institutions in these countries. This can be realized regardless of the market viability of social innovation projects. We also show that social innovation can be facilitated by the relational and governance capabilities of legitimate for-profit organizations that substitute weak institutions in these economies. Our findings highlight multiple paths that for-profit organizations can take to be socially innovative.

The major role that the electrification of the energy system is projected to play in the transition to a sustainable economy increases the pressure on the electricity grid and thereby creates a demand for the implementation of smart grid technologies. The interdependencies present in the electricity system require, and have led to, the wide-scale adoption of pilot projects to develop knowledge about the application of these technologies. While the knowledge sharing that stems from these projects is one of the justifications for subsidising these projects, it has remained largely a black box. Based on the analysis of interviews with the project leaders of sixteen smart grid pilot projects, complementary secondary data sources and a survey, we studied knowledge sharing at four levels: intra-organisational, intra-project, inter-project and project-external knowledge sharing. At each level we observed specific sublevels, mechanisms and barriers, resulting in complex knowledge sharing dynamics. While the projects succeeded in developing knowledge, knowledge sharing between projects run by different consortium partners rarely occurred and project-external knowledge sharing was primarily unidirectional and involved generic knowledge. Based on the results a set of recommendations was developed that can stimulate the knowledge sharing and thereby increase the value generated by these projects.

Although innovation studies in developing countries acknowledge the importance of resources for firm innovation, their emphasis tends to be on bottlenecks created by resource constraints and institutional weaknesses. We address this shortcoming by exploring the relationship among firm resources and formal and informal institutions leading to innovation in these settings. By adopting a crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis of firms in sub-Saharan Africa, we confirm the thesis that informal institutions substitute underdeveloped formal institutions and in combination with firm-level resources afford firm innovation. More importantly, we find that informal institutions also complement more developed formal institutions in the presence or absence of high levels of firm resources or accommodate them in the presence of high levels of firm resources to support firm innovation. Our findings point to multiple paths that firms can take to be innovative that best fit their existing institutional context.

This study develops a framework of internal and external factors that influence the adoption of eco-innovation. We studied 80 adoption processes in the Dutch brewing industry and the Dutch paper industry and analysed the relative importance of different factors. We find that internal factors were more important than external factors. The analysis also shows differences between the industries. The financial advantage was important for both industries, but especially for the paper industry. For the brewing industry, ethical responsibility and stakeholders played a more important role in the adoption. The analysis also revealed differences for small and large firms. Ethical responsibility and stakeholders are relatively more often mentioned by small firms, whereas clear objectives and regulations were mentioned more by large firms. Our study highlights that the adoption of eco-innovation is a complex process and the position in the supply chain as well as the size of a firm influence what is important in the adoption of eco-innovation. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

This paper is amongst the first to examine coopetition strategy for sustainable development at the network level. Companies who want to successfully implement complex innovative technologies that support sustainable development need to collaborate with other actors of the innovation ecosystem, including their competitors, so that they can develop standards, interoperable products, pool knowledge, and resources and bundle forces to compete against other technologies. Collaboration with competitors brings benefits, but also many risks. We investigated how firms cope with these risks when establishing an innovation ecosystem to implement a new technology in society. We conducted research in the Dutch smart grids sector and explored how these firms minimize inherent risks of coopetition. We found that system-building actors in the Dutch smart grid field not only minimize inherent risks, but from the start of their collaboration they implement so-called enablers to prevent these risks upfront.

Past research has reported that learning processes in early stage R&D are either chaotic, or absent. We challenge this finding by elaborating Van de Ven et al.’s trial‐and‐error learning model and explore an alternative conceptualization. We explored the combinations of positive and negative outcomes and action course continuation and modification. We use data gathered in an R&D setting of a 4‐years pre‐competitive knowledge generation project in the Dutch paper and board industry. Whereas the Van de Ven and Polley (1992) approach applied on our data also would lead us to conclude that ‘no learning’ would happen, our decomposed model identified three distinct learning patterns: (1) a virtuous pattern of positive outcomes resulting in continuations of action courses; (2) a vacuous pattern of negative outcomes resulting in modifications of action courses; and (3) a verification pattern of positive outcomes resulting in modifications of action courses. We observed the virtuous and verification patterns during the first 2 years and virtuous and vacuous learning in the second 2 years. These results might be useful for R&D managers since they provide insight into how an early stage R&D project can develop and where managers might intervene and adjust action courses.

Collaborative learning is often used in higher education to help students develop their teamwork skills and acquire curricular knowledge. In this paper we test a mediation model in which the quality of group discussions mediates the impact of gender diversity and group motivation on collaborative learning effectiveness. Our results show that the proportion of women in groups, and the group level need for cognition and core self-evaluations (within group average) positively predict discussion quality that in turn predicts group (academic) performance. Our results show that discussion quality fully mediates the effects of need for cognition and core self-evaluations on group performance. The effect for gender diversity on group performance is only partly mediated by discussion quality.

The 2020 renewable energy targets have stimulated the debate on the efficacy of policy schemes. Discussion on the efficacy of these schemes has largely been on the growth in the share of renewable energy, and less on the alignment of policies to the needs of investors. However, research in this field has emphasized that ‘who is investing’ is as relevant as ‘how much is invested’. This study aims to identify and better understand ‘who is investing’, by researching more than 1000 investments by 646 firms that produce electricity with Dutch onshore wind energy. These firms received renewable energy subsidies under Dutch policy schemes between 1996 and 2013. The regression results highlight the type of investors that invest more in wind energy. The results show that firms with a higher wind energy capacity are firms that have more investment experience; are latecomers to the wind industry; have an industrial background in the electricity or wind industry; are medium- or large-sized and are limited liability companies. Data on investments, combined with a document analysis, show that changes in policy schemes affect the perceived risks and expected returns of investors, and that these changes influence the amounts invested and the type of investors in wind energy.

Political behavior, intuition and rationality play important roles in strategic decision making. However, a framework that specifically accounts for the interplay between these dimensions is still missing. This study addresses this gap by using a configurational approach and conceptualizes the interplay of political behavior, intuition and rationality as a combination of key dimensions that lead to strategic decision effectiveness. The study presumes that the dimensions can combine in different ways to achieve this outcome. We draw on a serious game and interviews with decision makers to explore this interplay. Our empirical data suggest that different configurations of dimensions lead to decision effectiveness. The fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis’ solutions are resembled by the combinations found in the content analysis. Practically, we enable decision makers to recognize the patterns that unfold during the formulation phase of the strategic decision- making process. This allows them to determine whether the observed interplay is likely to lead to an effective decision and act upon it. Theoretically, the research reveals more variety in the pathways to achieve strategic decision effectiveness than vested research has brought to light.

Collaboration between firms is important to stimulate the transition to a more sustainable society. This special volume shows that collaboration is indeed one of the preferred forms of governance to manage relations between firms in a sustainability context. Collaboration enhances sustainable benefits by creating legitimacy of sustainable technologies, reducing waste and improving environmental and social performance of firms. The institutional environment, in particular environmental laws and regulations, has a beneficial impact on collaboration and relationship management in sustainable supply chains. Two studies in this special volume show, however, that stringent environmental regulations may hinder economic performance and result in outsourcing to foreign suppliers with potential detrimental effects for environmental performance. These negative effects can be overcome by firms that invest in sustainable innovation. This special volume also shows that eco-innovation leads to sustainable benefits, such as lower greenhouse gas emissions.