Satish Nambisan

Case Western Reserve University | CWRU · Weatherhead School of Management

The concepts of ‘scaling,’ ‘scalability,’ and ‘scale-up’ are increasingly used in business research and practice. However, the literature reveals a range of definitions for each, and often, their meanings are only implied. This diminishes the ability to build cumulative and meaningful insight - and conduct research - on each concept. In this editor...

The concepts of 'scaling,' 'scalability,' and 'scale-up' are increasingly used in business research and practice, but the literature reveals a range of definitions for each, and often, their meanings are only implied. This diminishes the ability to build cumulative and meaningful insight-and conduct research-on each concept. In this editorial, we o...

Information systems (IS) scholars have pursued phenomenon-specific research to meaningfully engage with and contribute to addressing societal grand challenges (GCs). While such efforts are invaluable, a broader framework that identifies generalized organizing problems in tackling GCs and reveals promising pathways for digital technologies to add va...

This study provides a systematic overview of innovation research strands revolving around AI. By adopting a Systematic Quantitative Literature Review (SQLR) approach, we retrieved articles published in academic journals, and analysed them using bibliometric techniques such as keyword co-occurrences and bibliographic coupling. The findings allow us...

We investigate the impact of the angels’ share—the angel investors’ proportion of ownership—on entrepreneurial performance. We argue that below the blockholder level of ownership, the angels’ share is associated with greater innovation but lower market performance. In contrast, we predict that above the blockholder level of ownership, the angels’ s...

Both global and local forces have become more intense and mercurial. Satish Nambisan offers a framework that the leaders of multinationals can use to develop and deploy digital strategies, improving global operations to meet these novel market conditions.

For multinationals, the benefits of digital globalization are clear, but not the inherent business risks. Nambisan and Luo offer a practical framework to evaluate and manage the risks of digital globalization.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have gained in significance for all types of firms, including family-influenced firms. However, despite their idiosyncratic motives, little is known about the issues family-influenced firms face in adopting complex and knowledge intensive technologies, such as AI. Peculiar characteristics of AI technologies...

How multinational companies can use digital technology to compete in a world where business is driven by the forces of both globalization and deglobalization. Digital technology has put globalization on steroids; multinational companies now account for one-third of world GDP and one-fourth of world employment. And yet complicating this story of unc...

Social media technologies have given rise to influencers who shape the purchasing behaviors of their followers (peer consumers), thus enabling consumer-initiated social commerce. However, few studies have explored how social media influencers, and more broadly, consumers, actively integrate resources to engage in service innovation in social commer...

Big data analytics constitute one of the driving forces of the fourth industrial revolution and represent one of the founding pillars of Industry 4.0. They are increasingly leveraged to create business insights from online reviews of products and services by a wide range of organizations and firms. In this work, we develop a typology of online revi...

The emerging digital context for international business along with rising deglobalization forces have accentuated multinational enterprises’ organizing challenges, particularly with regard to managing relationships with global platform and ecosystem partners. We propose that the loose coupling perspective, which suggests the coexistence of coupling...

Digitisation has opened up powerful new ways for multinational enterprises (MNEs) to connect with global markets, resources and partners and to pursue innovation in foreign markets. While the unique characteristics of digital technologies and digital assets embody an expansive and promising global landscape for innovation, MNEs’ success in pursuing...

It is time for the entrepreneurship field to come to terms with leading-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI holds great promise to transform entrepreneurship into a more relevant and impactful field, but it must overcome conflicts between the AI-driven-research approach and that of the traditional, theory-based research process. We explore these...

Machine-age technologies, including automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence, are profoundly expanding the variety of service interfaces and therefore the possible ways that customers and firms can interact across customer journeys. This expansion challenges service firms’ capabilities to deliver coherent streams of interactions for effect...

Digital platforms and associated ecosystems provide a promising new environment for entrepreneurship. While the benefits to entrepreneurs (and new ventures) associated with membership in these ecosystems are well understood (e.g., market access), the associated costs or "downsides" are yet to be studied. Digital ecosystems require entrepreneurs to...

The emergence of digital platforms and ecosystems (DPE) as a venue for value creation and capture for multinational enterprises holds considerable implications for the theory and practice of international business. In this paper, we articulate these implications by considering the dual perspectives of cross-border platforms and ecosystems-as a venu...

The emergence of novel and powerful digital technologies, digital platforms and digital infrastructures has transformed innovation and entrepreneurship in significant ways. Beyond simply opening new opportunities for innovators and entrepreneurs, digital technologies have broader implications for value creation and value capture. Research aimed at...

In recent decades, two emergent phenomena have jointly transformed the nature and pursuit of entrepreneurship across industries and sectors: open innovation and platformization. Open innovation involves a shift towards more open and distributed models of innovation, while platformization refers to the increasing importance of digital platforms as a...

This study investigates the impact of corporate venture capital (CVC) funding on new firms’ subsequent intellectual property (IP) outcomes (i.e., patents, copyrights, and trademarks). The central premise is that CVC funding will encourage the development of technology-centric IP outcomes while dissuading the development of market-centric IP outcome...

New digital technologies have transformed the nature of uncertainty inherent in entrepreneurial processes and outcomes as well as the ways of dealing with such uncertainty. This has raised important questions at the intersection of digital technologies and entrepreneurship—on digital entrepreneurship. We consider two broad implications—less bounded...

Technological innovations typically benefit those who have good access to and an understanding of the underlying technologies. As such, technology-centered health care innovations are likely to preferentially benefit users of privileged socioeconomic backgrounds. Which policies and strategies should health care organizations adopt to promote equita...

Entrepreneurial ecosystems command increasing attention from policy-makers, academics, and practitioners, yet the phenomenon itself remains under-theorized. Specifically, the conceptual similarities and differences of entrepreneurial ecosystems relative to, e.g., clusters, ‘knowledge clusters’, regional systems of innovation, and ‘innovative milieu...

Rapid and pervasive digitization of innovation processes and outcomes has upended extant theories on innovation management by calling into question fundamental assumptions about the definitional boundaries for innovation, agency for innovation, and the relationship between innovation processes and outcomes. There is a critical need for novel theori...

This paper provides an overview of the main perspectives and themes emerging in research on open innovation (OI). The paper is the result of a collaborative process among several OI scholars – having a common basis in the recurrent Professional Development Workshop on ‘Researching Open Innovation’ at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management....

Our understanding of how entrepreneurs capture knowledge about market needs and identify and exploit promising opportunities remains limited, despite the abundance of studies on the origins of opportunities. We propose that demand-side narratives—the cumulative articulations of needs, desires, ideas and experiences of demand-side participants—form...

In this article, we offer a broadened view of service innovation-one grounded in service-dominant logic-that transcends the tangible-intangible and producer-consumer divides that have plagued extant research in this area. Such a broadened conceptualization of service innovation emphasizes (1) innovation as a collaborative process occurring in an ac...

Product lifecycle management (PLM) platforms . which consolidate activities across the development lifecycle under a common application umbrella . promise to help companies to address many contemporary challenges in NPD. Yet, as with other enterprise-scale platforms, managers have difficulty deploying PLM. Based on observations from six case studie...

Innovation ecosystems have emerged as an important context for entrepreneurship. Ecosystem entrepreneurs, however, face a unique set of challenges associated with the need to balance the goals and priorities set by the ecosystem leader with the goals and priorities of the new venture. We focus on ecosystem entrepreneurs' self-regulatory processes a...

In most technology-based markets, industry technical committees (TCs) that establish new technical standards and specifications have assumed importance for companies as a critical source of information on existing and emerging technologies. In this study, we investigate how the technological distance of a TC from the firm will shape the impact of T...

In this paper, I follow up on my previous article about information systems as a reference discipline for new product development (Nambisan, 2003) and assess the extant research on this topic. To facilitate the assessment, I develop a framework that considers information technology's (IT's) dual roles as operand resource and as operant resource and...

This article analyzes the impact of corporate venture capital (CVC) funding on branding efforts in new firms. Building on resource dependence theory, the authors propose that CVC funding will induce new technology firms to be more dependent on corporate partner brands, thereby attenuating subsequent, independent branding efforts – as indicated by t...

Success in business ecosystems that include well-established companies and new ventures requires collaboration and competition, a task that demands strategic thinking to leverage a firm's resources and capabilities. Strategic thinking and the entrepreneurial activities in an ecosystem influence one another in a cycle that perpetuates and even spark...

OVERVIEW: An innovation capitalist can help companies manage the organizational and managerial challenges inherent in sourcing innovation externally. Innovation capitalists are innovation intermediaries; they mediate large firms’ interactions with external sources of innovation. In particular, innovation capitalists seek out promising new ideas fro...

Companies have increasingly shifted from innovation initiatives that are centered on internal resources to those that are centered on external networks (said another way, a shift from firm-centric innovation to network-centric innovation). In this paper, we combine insights from product development and network theory with evidence from an extensive...

Established companies in countless industries have recognized the need to access globally dispersed knowledge networks to develop and acquire innovations necessary to better serve their customers. To maximize and coordinate their access to this diverse knowledge, some incumbents have developed innovation platforms whereby new ventures and smaller c...

In recent years, many companies have established virtual customer environments (VCEs) that offer facilities ranging from online discussion forums to virtual product design centers to partner with their customers in product development and product support activities. In this study, we focus on one form of VCE, online customer forums, and propose tha...

Service innovation, unlike product innovation, is not easily scalable in the production process. In general, as firms attempt to grow, one potential direction for growth is through a firm's ability in applying the same processes and resources used for a single unit of production to larger volumes, thus saving costs through economies of scale. Where...

Almost by definition, there are more good ideas floating around outside your corporate boundaries than inside. Tapping into this external ‘Global Brain’ is now key to successful innovation. But there are many ways to skin this particular cat. Which one is appropriate for you?

Many companies that have made considerable investments in IT applications to support their product development activities have realized limited value from such efforts. In this chapter, we argue that a deep understanding of the complementarities that exist in the product development context is critical to ensure that business value is derived from...

Innovation has assumed considerable importance in the contemporary business world. In most industries, the very survival of firms is increasingly dependent on their ability to rapidly develop and introduce innovative products and services. At the same time, information technology (IT) has emerged as a critical resource for companies to enhance the...

As the nature and process of innovation have changed drastically in the past several years, so has the role of information technology (IT) in supporting the innovation activities. The objective of this book has been to examine the issues related to the application of IT in product/service development from multiple disciplinary and theoretical persp...

In recent years, the establishment of IT-enabled customer co-innovation and value co-creation platforms or virtual customer environments (VCEs) has radically changed the nature and extent of customer involvement in product innovation and product support activities. VCEs offer facilities ranging from online customer discussion forums to virtual prod...

In recent years, consumer participation in health care has gained critical importance as health care organizations (HCOs) seek varied avenues to enhance the quality and the value of their offerings. Many large HCOs have established online health communities where health care consumers (patients) can interact with one another to share knowledge and...

An increasing number of firms are hosting virtual customer environments (VCEs) to involve their customers in product development and product support activities. While the benefits to companies from hosting such VCEs are clear, another closely related issue has received far less attention: Why do customers participate voluntarily in value cocreation...

Information Technology and Product Development: A Research Agenda presents important new research from varied disciplines aimed at developing new theoretical concepts and insights on the application of IT in product and service innovation. Drawing on the work of researchers in such varied management areas as information services, technology managem...

Many companies have established technology-based platforms or virtual customer environments to partner with their customers in innovation and value creation. In pursuing such initiatives, most companies seem to focus primarily on customers) innovative contributions, paying limited attention to customers' interaction experiences in the VCE. But the...

Virtual customer environments (VCE), which provide services ranging from online discussion forums to virtual design toolkits, enable firms to involve their customers in innovation and value creation. Evidently, companies can benefit from operating such VCEs; however, most firms do not seem to attach sufficient importance to the nature of customers'...

Companies seeking new ideas or product concepts from outside sources may find the "innovation bazaar," with its wide array of choices and methods of acquiring them, a confusing, chaotic place. Nambisan and Sawhney have crafted a conceptual guide for managers who understand the importance of going outside their firms for innovation but are uncertain...

Large firms puzzling over whether to pay for developed technology or take a risk on bleeding-edge concepts now have a third choice-a new kind of "innomediary" that identifies and refines innovations, reducing market risk in return for a share in the potential rewards.

The challenges faced in preparing future technologists for global networks of innovation are discussed. University curricula must prepare them to be able to recognize and embrace technologies, components, markets and customers wherever in the world they happen to be. The emerging global innovation environment requires the next generation of enginee...

The importance of industry involvement in the success of technology management education is discussed. The participation of technologists and business managers of different industry in these programs helps them to acquire knowledge on the advancements in the global technology landscape. The participation of industry leaders in workshops on technolo...

In the last decade, the field of technology management has attracted considerable attention from practitioners and scholars. The rapid emergence of powerful and innovative technologies in manufacturing, computing, telecommunications and the life sciences, such as biotechnology are making the strategic management of technology, a critical task in vi...

Baskerville and Myers (2002) recently suggested that the information systems (IS) field has "come of age" and that it can now serve as a reference discipline for other fields. In this article, the discourse about their vision is extended by considering the potential for the IS field to contribute to new product development (NPD) research. It is arg...

Virtual customer communities enable firms to establish distributed innovation models that involve varied customer roles in new product development. In this article I use a multitheorotic lens to examine the design of such virtual customer environments, focusing on four underlying theoretical themes (interaction pattern, knowledge cre- ation, custom...

Virtual customer communities enable firms to establish distributed innovation models that involve varied customer roles in new product development. In this article I use a multitheoretic lens to examine the design of such virtual customer environments, focusing on four underlying theoretical themes (interaction pattern, knowledge creation, customer...

The software industry is experiencing dramatic growth worldwide. This paper offers a theoretical framework to examine the growth and evolution of software firms from an innovation–orientation perspective. While it is apparent that the attitudes and perceptions of a firm’s key stakeholders towards innovative product development hold valuable insight...

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between complementary product integration and the initial technology strategy of a high-technology new venture. With customers placing considerable emphasis on cross-product integration, the success of a new venture is dependent as much on its ability to integrate its product with relevant complementar...

Over the past few years, several universities have started offering graduate programmes in Management of Technology (MOT). These MOT programmes have originated from different academic schools (business, engineering, etc.) and hence, there is considerable diversity in terms of focus, key themes emphasised, student backgrounds, etc. As this young and...

Although synergies exist between product and service sectors in most technology industries, extending beyond your dominant position requires understanding how the sectors differ.

In the last decade there has been a significant increase in the offering of graduate management of technology (MOT) programs in colleges and universities. In fact, MOT programs have been one of the fastest growing "new" areas of study in universities. The rise of these programs, in part, reflects the growing need for people who are able to understa...

Supply chain management (SCM) has rapidly emerged as the central field of competition in many industries and has captivated the top executives of companies in the recent past. Electronic commerce (EC) technologies have the potential to revolutionize how firms coordinate and manage their supply chain activities. This paper focuses on the emerging pa...

Much of the technology diffusion research has focused on the "intention to adopt" of an adopting unit to explain its adoption behavior; the opportunity for adoption and the underlying adoption propensity are often not differentiated. However, the opportunity to adopt need not be uniform among adopting units. From the perspective of organizational l...

Software development (SD) and new product development (NPD) share several similarities. However, scholars in the two fields have generally focused on different aspects of “development.” Specifically, the SD literature emphasizes development methodologies, techniques, and process metrics, while the NPD studies typically focus on organizational facto...

Fostering information technology innovation has assumed primacy in discussions of information systems management. Changes in the nature of available information technologies and their potential applications underscore the importance of creating new knowledge for deploying a technology within an organization rather than transferring such knowledge f...

Summary form only given. The Management of Technology (MOT) field has emerged from its relative obscurity of the 1970s and 1980s to the mainstream of business management. The rapid emergence of powerful and innovative technologies in the manufacturing, computing, and telecommunications areas have made the strategic management of technological asset...

The article focuses on roadblocks in the adoption of Web technology. Theory and practice inform that the adoption of new technologies is dictated by factors such as perceived costs and benefits, complexity, compatibility with existing systems, ease of use, and so forth. A favorable mix of these factors leads to high organizational intention to adop...

The advent of the Internet revolution has brought radical changes to the business landscape all across the globe. The primary focus has been on how the Internet technology can be deployed in the market place to extend the reach of organisations and to facilitate business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions. An equally important and re...

This study draws upon stakeholder theory and social network analysis to examine the diffusion of national information infrastructure (NII) among two key stakeholders—the end users (or customers) and application/ service providers. The context chosen is Singapore ONE. The study also investigates the types of mechanisms utilized by network participan...