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Innovation failure: What we know and what is missing
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Despite the valuable contributions of earlier learning studies, the specific analysis of how entrepreneurs and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) learn has been sidelined in the literature. Significant research opportunities remain open in various unexplored realms. By adopting a multidisciplinary perspective that combines a variety of frameworks (i.e., organizational, economic, and innovation management), the collection of 11 studies of this special issue dedicated to learning delivers valuable insights into how entrepreneurs and SMEs capitalize on learning processes, while identifying how these processes are affected by the type of experience (i.e., success and failure). This paper first overviews the contributions of the 11 papers included in the special issue. Next, we discuss a number of yet unresolved topics that deserve academic attention, paying special attention to entrepreneurs’ direct and indirect experiences, knowledge obsolescence caused by technology upgrading, and the role of digital technologies—i.e., Internet-of-things and artificial intelligence—in the learning processes.
In turbulent environments, one of the fundamental problems is the high risk of failure in new innovation projects
that affects organizational behaviour and performance of firms and also nations. The study here clarifies the
theoretical structure of project-level failure proposing a new definition, based on systems approach (Innovation
failure is when organization does not achieve the main goal of project because of a set of errors), and a taxonomy of
three general types of error in innovation failures: errors in planning and/or design, in project execution/
implementation and in marketization. A case study research clarifies the proposed framework of innovation
failures with examples from pharmaceutical sector, aerospace and aircraft industries, and information &
communication technology sector. Results suggest that the failure in innovation projects is due to proposed
errors associated mainly with bounded rationality of organizations in dealing with goal difficulty, environmental
complexity and uncertainty. Different strategies of problem solving to reduce errors and risks leading to innovation
failures and improve technological development are proposed, such as learning processes, adaptation
perspective, game theory approach, stage-gate method, etc. The proposed systemic concept of innovation failure
and related taxonomy of general typologies of error can guide R&D managers, designers, analysts, and policymakers
etc. to know main determinants of failure in innovation projects and how appropriate strategies can
improve organizational performance and R&D processes of firms for competitive advantage in markets and
society.
Two studies using different paradigms activated either ideal self-guides (a person's hopes or wishes) or ought self-guides (a person's sense of duty and responsibility) and measured Ss' concern with different forms of self-regulation: approaching matches to desired end states or mismatches to undesired end states and avoiding mismatches to desired end states or matches to undesired end states. A 3rd study asked ideal versus ought discrepant Ss to select among alternative strategies for friendship. The results suggest that a concern with approach is greater for ideal than ought self-regulation, whereas a concern with avoidance is greater for ought than ideal self-regulation.
In today’s business environment, New Product Development (NPD) teams play a pivotal role in propelling innovation. Within NPD teams, both successful and failed projects contribute in enhancing learning processes, yet the epistemological pathways activated by successful projects differ distinctly from those stimulated by failed projects. In this study, we investigate the pathways towards team learning in the context of successful and failed NPD projects using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). Drawing from the team learning literature, we examine which configurations of project characteristics (complexity and uncertainty), interpersonal team characteristics (innovation norms, cohesion, and decision-making autonomy), and environmental characteristics (technological and market turbulence) lead to NPD team learning. Our analysis identifies three configurations of factors tied to NPD team learning in successful projects and four configurations in failed projects. In successful projects, project and team characteristics are core in enhancing team learning. In failed projects, together with team characteristics, core conditions are represented by project complexity, uncertainty, while environmental characteristics play a dual role.
Despite the considerable efforts made to investigate the factors that could potentially influence open innovation (OI), very little is understood about the impact of environmental factors such as dynamism. In addition, the question relating to the relationship between environmental factors and OI remains unresolved. Further, the conditions under which this relationship is more or less pronounced are also little understood. With our study, we examined these gaps through data collected from 209 emerging market small and medium enterprises (ESMEs) operating in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Our analyses show that environmental dynamism negatively influences OI and that this nexus is mediated by organizational learning culture. In addition, we found that the mediation effect of organizational learning culture is moderated by relational trust, in that it is improved at high levels of relational trust. Finally, we found that the organizational learning-OI nexus is moderated by firm size and industry type. These findings extend our knowledge of the role played by micro-environmental factors in OI activities.
The New Product Development (NPD) process is a complex phenomenon involving decision-making under incomplete information and uncertain outcomes. Cognitive biases such as overconfidence, anchoring, planning fallacy, and sunk-cost fallacy can significantly impact decision-making in NPD processes, leading to suboptimal outcomes. Also, the reliance on heuristics can assist decision-makers, enabling quick and efficient decisions without extensive analysis. Identifying and mitigating cognitive biases and studying heuristics in the NPD process are key factors that can significantly impact the success of the NPD process. Further empirical research is necessary to better understand how cognitive biases and heuristics influence decision-making in the NPD process to foster a climate of innovation, favor the emergence of serendipity, and improve firm performance. Thus, authors are encouraged to submit original research papers (quantitative, qualitative, experimental), addressing missing empirical evidence on the topic of this call. Review papers are not encouraged for the present special issue.
Venture capital not only affects enterprise innovation decisions by providing funds, value-added services and allocating control rights, but also the psychological capital of venture capital can enhance its tolerance for failure in innovation activities of enterprises, and thus have a positive impact on innovation performance of enterprises. This paper uses multivariate and negative binomial regression models, propensity score matching method and Heckman treatment effect model to study the impact mechanism of venture capital on enterprise innovation performance, and the mediation role of venture capital’s tolerance for innovation failure in the relationship between the above two; this paper studies the moderating effect of the characteristics of heterogeneous venture capital institutions, such as joint investment strategies and geographical proximity, on the relationship between venture capital failure tolerance and enterprise innovation performance. The results show that venture capital can significantly improve its tolerance for enterprise innovation failure by holding shares and occupying seats on the board of directors of enterprises, thereby bring the increase of the innovation performance of enterprises; if joint investment strategy and close investment are selected, the tolerance of venture capital to innovation failure will have a more obvious effect on the promotion of enterprise innovation performance.
Studies on the impact of innovation for entrepreneurship indicate that innovation is important to foster businesses through new or improved services, products or processes. However, from a gender perspective, lack of competitiveness and innovativeness has proven to destructively affect entrepreneurs, which in many cases led to failure. There is a gap in literature on the necessity for entrepreneurship educators for a gendered educational approach, targeting the perceived fear of failure and its impact on entrepreneurial innovation. Using Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data from 1,668 entrepreneurs in Thailand, this study explores if entrepreneurs innovate in new or improved services, products or processes despite fearing to fail in their businesses: Does this differ by gender, change over time from a start-up to an established business and to which extent can this be influenced by knowing other entrepreneurs? The findings indicate that the moderating effect of knowing an entrepreneur considerably increases innovativeness by impacting fear of failure for both genders in early-stage ventures and for women in established businesses, thus reducing the fear’s negative relationship to uncertainty, risk-taking and in series constraining entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship education can help overcome fear of failure and in series lead to more innovative products, services and processes.
While innovation is an attractive path, it is also a rocky path made up of numerous challenges, even failures. This study provides new knowledge for understanding innovation failure. It seeks answers to the question: What are the perceived factors of innovation failure in SMEs? Every individual who has experienced an innovation failure has a story to tell. Therefore, the research question of this study is answered based on these stories. The main data are collected through narratives produced by individuals who have been involved in the development of completely failed innovation initiatives. In addition, four expert interviews are conducted. The results demonstrate that the most common factor for innovation failure is the occurrence of several incidents during the innovation process that slowly contribute to complete failure. In addition, the results reveal three SME-typical narratives of failed innovations as narrators the Passionate Innovator, the Solo Innovator, and the Developer Innovator.
This study employs Knowledge-based view (KBV) and Transaction Cost Theory (TCT) to analyze the moderating effect of the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome (NIHS) on the relationship between digital orientation and digital innovation performance when employee's artificial intelligence awareness (EAIA) changes. EAIA alludes to employee's concern about being replaced by artificial intelligence at work. Structural equations were used to test the research model. The key findings reveal that when EAIA is high, the negative impact of the NIHS is stronger. The finding is significant because it confirms that the NIHS, which is associated with organizational rejection of external technologies, is not a phenomenon exclusive to the pre-digital era, but its negative consequences such as biases in the digital technology assessment and neglect or suboptimal, persist in the digital era. Nevertheless, the major contribution demonstrates that the NIHS is not an isolated fact or a product of individuals’ whims or irrationality; in the digital era, the NIHS is above all rational and opportunistic attitude rooted in EAIA. Furthermore, the NIHS becomes a planned response by employees aiming to minimize the risk of losing their jobs due to the impending replacement of digital technologies, particularly those related to automation processes.
This study explores the effect of bankruptcy laws on the quality of entrepreneurship and the moderating role of an entrepreneur’s socio-cognitions in it. By adopting the pursuit of innovative opportunities to represent the quality of entrepreneurship, we find that stringent bankruptcy laws inhibit an entrepreneur from pursuing more innovative opportunities, and this effect is mitigated by the entrepreneur’s self-efficacy but does not vary with fear of failure. The findings help draw a more comprehensive picture of the linkage between bankruptcy laws and entrepreneurship and advance our knowledge on factors that influence the choice among different types of opportunity. Moreover, this study is one of the first attempts to combine insights of the institution-based view of entrepreneurship and the social cognitive theory.
IMPACT
Innovation remains a crucial focus for practising managers in both the public and private sectors, yet the practice of innovation often misunderstood if not ignored. This article highlights an under-explored aspect of innovation—failure—and discusses how the conscious application of an intelligent failure approach can support more effective innovation. It discusses a particular form of innovation practice—exnovation—which involves the conscious pruning and cessation of innovation initiatives. By having a clearer understanding of the vital role of intelligent failure and exnovation in the innovation process, managers can better support the growth of innovation cultures and practices within their organizations.
ABSTRACT
Innovation and failure in public services deserve more attention in the literature because failure is often closely linked to innovation due to multiple stakeholders, risk and uncertain outcomes. Some failures can be very valuable—they are intelligent failures and they create opportunities for deep learning and improvement if skilfully handled. Some innovations may not be fit for purpose after some time, constituting a type of failure, and may need to be removed through exnovation. This article argues that intelligent failure and exnovation are two concepts which enrich the analysis and practice of public innovation failures and are essential to understanding innovation more generally.
Purpose
The present paper aims to understand the influence of consumer's functional, psychological and emotional barriers to the use of digital banking services.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors carried out a quantitative study in which data were collected through a self-administered online questionnaire. A final sample of 202 Brazilian adults, with and without experience in using digital banking services, enabled the test of research hypotheses by means of a structural equation modeling approach.
Findings
The authors found statistical evidence that supports the hypothesis that psychological barriers, emotional barriers and user experience positively influence the resistance to the use of digital banking services. However, there is no empirical evidence supporting that the influence of functional barriers affects the resistance to the use of digital banking services.
Practical implications
Efforts to understand the mechanisms that lead consumers to adopt or reject innovative products or services are important to prevent investments in these innovations, avoiding revenue failures. The results provide managerial implications by favoring the creation of communication programs capable of reducing the possibilities of innovation failure.
Originality/value
The main theoretical contribution of this work is the identification of the predominant influence of emotional barriers, in comparison to functional barriers, on the resistance to innovation in digital banking services. Currently, the models that illustrate resistance to innovation tend to focus solely on functional aspects; however, these models can be improved by incorporating emotional aspects.
Blockchain has gained substantial recognition for its ability to induce transformation and innovation in existing business models and frameworks. Consequently, the application of this technology to the management domain and its processes has attracted increasing interest from academia and industry. Although research addressing the use of blockchain in management has gained momentum, this field presents a discontinuous overview of the current scope and boundary of the knowledge thereon. This study addresses this lacuna using bibliometric analyses to synthesize the prior literature. Data from Scopus 586 articles, entailing contributions from 72 countries, 273 journals, 1016 organizations, and 1284 authors, were analyzed. The findings indicate a maturing research focus on blockchain applications in specific managerial sectors, such as finance and supply chain management. However, this field's conceptual evolution is posited to be in its infancy in other sectors, such as for managing luxury goods and counterfeit products. Further, the thematic classification of the extant literature led to the identification of the following four major themes of research: strategy and regulation, enablement and implication, multi-domain deployment, and the inefficiencies of bitcoin. These findings are used to propose directions for further research in this field, such as the need for methodological advancement and theoretical grounding.
Failure and innovation have always been inextricably linked. What matters in today's
complex environment, however, is how companies deal with failure from innovation.
Although recent research indicates that they are often likely to fail, failure still overall
assumes a negative connotation and is thus perceived as something to avoid. By
combining prior research on types of failure (spurious vs traditional learning),
consequences of innovation failure (trauma vs opportunity), and entailing key
influencing factors (e.g., types of learning, dynamic capabilities, time, negative social evaluations), we outline a typology of approaches to innovation failures. We examine and discuss illustrative case studies of companies (Theranos, Space X, IBM, and Pfizer) to demonstrate how they approach the different types and consequences of innovation failures. We also speculate on how their strategies might change over time, how this might affect their learning curve depending on the negative social evaluations they receive, and the role dynamic capabilities play in shaping managerial decisions. These illustrative cases help readers visualize theoretical concepts and recognize the potential benefits and consequences of different types of innovation failures. We outline implications for theory and practice and suggest a future research agenda to improve our understanding of the processes at work when innovation and dealing with failure.
Despite a growing body of research on business failure and eco‐innovation, these two streams of research have developed in isolation, thus lacking an organizing framework to account for how businesses can utilize peer companies' failures as a source of eco‐innovation. This study addresses this gap in the current literature by advancing an integrated conceptual framework that illuminates failure as a catalyst for learning and the mechanisms through which organizations can enhance their environmental innovation efforts and competitiveness. The study proposes a multidimensional 2 × 2 typology encompassing dimensions of process and product eco‐innovation, alongside two underlying factors of business failure. These factors further elucidate the mechanisms through which organizations can learn from others' failures, ultimately becoming more resilient and adaptable in the face of new challenges. The implications of this analysis for future research and practice will be further examined, shedding light on promising domains for learning from failure and fostering innovation.
Managing innovation requires investments into projects that are fraught with uncertainty. Furthermore, innovation projects typically require collaborative efforts from many stakeholders, all of which must be aligned toward a common goal. The challenges of managing collaborative efforts of multiple stakeholders are compounded by the weak links between those efforts and the subsequent outcomes. In the presence of these challenges, a business culture that tolerates failure is often advocated to better manage the individuals tasked with executing the innovation projects. We develop game-theoretic models to account for the team members' strategic interactions in response to management's tolerance for failure in innovation projects. We find that a tolerance for failure can reduce the incentives required to ensure that stakeholders exert costly efforts toward innovation projects, thereby leading to increased profits and a broader set of conditions where projects may be successfully undertaken. However, as the association between efforts and outcomes becomes more certain, incentives allowing tolerance for failure become more costly, and a strict policy of innovation management should instead be considered.
Purpose
The phenomenon of fear and anxiety can cause a decline in entrepreneurship. However, the validity of this assertion remains debatable, as opportunity-driven entrepreneurs may benefit from elevated uncertainty during a crisis. This study aims to examine entrepreneurial fear of failure and the well-being of opportunity-driven entrepreneurs in their startup stage during the COVID-19 outbreak. Opportunity-driven startups are oriented toward business growth but may need assistance from incubators.
Design/methodology/approach
The study used a qualitative method, where ten participants from incubated and non-incubated startups in Indonesia were interviewed. Thematic analysis was conducted using NVivo 12 software to analyze the data.
Findings
This study shows that the interviewees subjected to incubation tended to derive motivation from fear of failure. In contrast, nonincubated interviewees showed a propensity to experience fear of failure as repression and inhibition. Furthermore, the study highlights the correlation between entrepreneurial fear of failure and eudaimonic well-being.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature with empirical results on fear of failure capturing the essence of entrepreneurial behavior during crises/pandemic in the context of business startups. It provides valuable insights into the policy implications for promoting innovation among startups in specific contexts.
The inconvenient truth about innovation projects is that they frequently fail. Innovation and failure are so entwined that the probability of failure increases with the intensity of innovation. However, while some innovation projects fail, some organisations also fail to learn from their failures, despite their importance to avoid failure in the future. Drawing on a scarce and still emerging stream of work, the present study contributes to the Learning From Innovation Failure (LFIF) literature by drawing on two complementary theories: the social learning theory and the social exchange theory. Moreover, it contributes to the empirical validation of the relationships between LFIF and its determinants in a heuristic perspective. Based on a sample of 436 manufacturing SMEs in Canada and a triangulation of symmetric and asymmetric analysis methods (correlational: structural equation modelling, SEM, and configurational: fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, FsQCA), we show that LFIF is explained by organisational (problem-solving and blaming approaches, and psychological safety), interactional (trust among employees), and individual factors (personal mastery). Moreover, while the SEM results confirm synergies between LFIF drivers, the FsQCA results shed light on three pathways of conditions to LFIF. We derive some implications for managers and suggest directions for future research on the link between the psychological safety, trust, and problem-solving approach.
Organizations face continuous problems of survival and sustainability in the market, so innovation is vital for their growth. Entrepreneurship in the organization has been defined in various ways over the years, which has led to terminological confusion. Due to the innovation required by organizations for a proactive adaptation to the change and sustainability, intrapreneurship acquires special relevance for business development. Therefore, a literature review that considers intrapreneurship and the issues related to this concept is much needed. The search term ‘intrapreneur’ resulted in 312 articles published in WoS (Web of Science) between 1985 and 2021. These articles were analyzed using the VOSviewer software for the bibliometric analysis. The main authors and contributions in the area have been identified, in relation to the research objectives, enabling the generation of guidelines and proposals for future research.
The value of a systematic project-based approach to achieving specific objectives is generally accepted in most fields, but somehow when it comes to innovation there still is a widespread, persistent belief that those contributing to the effort are somehow best left to their own devices and not be “bothered too much” with “processes” or “rules”. Innovation, then, is viewed as a creative, organic, and therefore inherently chaotic process. I would argue the opposite, though: precisely because innovation tends to venture into the unknown, the risk of getting lost is ever present, even more so than with other, more predictable types of undertakings, and therefore planning and control are even more critical to success.
Purpose
Despite the multiple calls for research on the dark side of open innovation, very few studies have approached the topic so far. This study aims to analyse successful and unsuccessful open innovation projects.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses thematic analysis to describe the factors determining their (un)success. The researchers interviewed 27 managers and owners in the manufacturing sector. Then, the respondents were asked to discuss one successful and one unsuccessful open innovation project to explore the differences in triggers and setbacks, focusing on the causes that determined the failures.
Findings
Findings show that many interviewees are reluctant to identify failure cases, which somewhat explains the paucity of studies on the topic, and others do so when the failure is recognised by a third party (such as a public institution not granting funds to the project). This study discussed how this phenomenon is linked with the paradoxical relation between innovation success and failure. It is also found that triggers and setbacks determining the project's (un)success are markedly differently based on the technological intensity of the firm. Implications for scholars and practitioners are also drawn.
Originality/value
This study provides a balanced view between open innovation successes and failures to offer informative recommendations to practitioners. Furthermore, it contributes to filling the scarcity of studies related to risks and failures of open innovation projects. This gap has been addressed by studying the factors that determine the success and unsuccess of an open innovation project.
This research presents a theory of educational change grounded in 23 years of qualitative data that document the history of a public elementary school. The pattern of change observed supports the punctuated equilibrium theory of organizational change in which short periods of revolutionary change—usually the result of failed innovation—are followed by long periods of equilibrium or incremental change. Attempts to legitimate organizational and individual behavior—the dynamics of construction, erosion, loss, reconstruction, and maintenance of organizational legitimacy—explain the sequence of stages in the change process. The study concludes that punctuated legitimacy, which created the need to reestablish legitimacy, not rational administrative attempts to improve the programs and structure of the school, was the major factor that produced significant organizational change.
Research summary
Our article examines the deliberate creation of learning opportunities in the global rollout of innovations. Some firms launch in only a subset of markets at first, with later launches being conditional on debut‐market performance. Such sequencing decreases the downside of potential innovation failure but increases the downside of potential competitive preemption. Consistent with this trade‐off, handset makers during the feature‐phone era sequence rollout more often when innovations are novel. Also consistent is that sequencing seems to respond to firms' past experience with failure and preemption, and that it begins in markets offering strong signals of success and failure—markets with competing innovations and sophisticated consumers, respectively. Our findings contribute to the understanding of entry strategy and opens avenues for researching intentional organizational experimentation.
Managerial summary
Firms can decide whether to launch innovations little by little or everywhere at once. Trial launches allow firms to test commercial viability and react to outcomes before rolling out elsewhere, but risks that competitors get their first. An immediate global launch, by contrast, reduces the scope for competitive preemption but increases the costs of potential failure. Our article uses data from the handset industry to highlight conditions that shape rollout decisions and examine the debut markets sought out for trial launches. Firms tend to trial novel innovations in particular, and their experience with prior misses as well as flops influences their preference. Trial launches often begin in markets with strong competition and discerning consumers, indicating an initial prioritization of learning over monetization. Opportunities for experimentation during market rollout thus ought to feature in strategic considerations of entry timing.
With the increasing need for firms to implement innovation in their pursuit of competitive advantage, open innovation has attracted the growing attention of academics and practitioners. However, the current literature has been lopsided, focussing predominantly on the myriad benefits of open innovation. We argue that eulogising only the positive aspects of open innovation is insufficient to help firms and motivate future research. Therefore, we recommend increased attention to the dark side of open innovation, which includes failures that can occur at various stages of the open innovation process. A review of the existing literature reveals that although researchers have, time and again, attempted to document failure in open innovation, this literature is comparatively sparse and fragmented. The extant literature also exhibits an apparent lack of effort to encourage future research, as evidenced by the absence of a comprehensive literature review. We aim to address this research gap by reviewing 76 studies identified by applying a stringent search protocol consistent with the systematic literature review (SLR) methodology. The contributions of this SLR include (a) development of a research profile of the relevant literature, (b) identification of five thematic areas, (c) elucidation of research gaps and suggestion of potential research questions as an agenda for future research on failures in open innovation, (d) formulation of a conceptual framework comprising the antecedents and outcomes of open innovation failure and (e) presentation of the various theoretical and managerial implications for scholars and practitioners.
Although many scholars have studied policy success and failure, the relationship of these phenomena to the policy process—essential for an explanatory or anticipatory analysis—remains unclear. I address this gap by linking the policy success heuristic with the multiple streams framework (MSF) and developing hypotheses to explain outcomes. I apply this conceptualization to the case of the solar energy policy in Gujarat, India by combining a qualitative policy assessment with a process trace of policy making. The findings show that the conflicted process success and the programmatic failure resulted largely from a top‐down push for a policy without a problem. This push, nevertheless, led to political success that was sustained by recoupling problems and politics through agenda denial, blame avoidance, and credit claiming. I conclude with implications for the research on policy evaluation, the MSF, and policy studies, as well as the governance of a sustainable energy transition.
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Combined with current trends in e-commerce, demand for urban logistic services are putting significant pressure on the environment. While some European examples show that collection-and-delivery points (CDPs) offer a sustainable solution, this is not always the case. This paper explores the mechanisms that support CDPs as sustainable urban logistics innovations while providing viable market offerings. To do so, it analyses a failure case using multiple data sources, such as a consumer survey, interviews and secondary data. Using diffusion of innovations (DoI) theory, the study explains how CDP failed in a developing market setting. Sustainable logistics innovations fail due to both supply chain-related and market-related factors. Significant factors on the supply chain side include network structures, IT integration and diverse value propositions while the market side includes consumer market characteristics, regulations, security issues and convenience of existing alternatives. Important factors for success include looking for horizontal collaboration opportunities, building strong network partnerships with customers and distribution channel actors. CDPs should be positioned as sustainable solutions and complemented with other urban logistics services to diversify the value proposition.
This paper takes the listed pharmaceutical manufacturing firms in China’s A-share market from 2011 to 2017 as the research sample, from the perspective of top managers’ pay gap, employs principal component analysis and general least square method to empirically investigate the effect of risk preference of top management team(TMT) on the re-innovation behavior after the failure of innovation. The study found that the risk preference of TMT is positively correlated with the re-innovation input and brand-new innovation after the failure of innovation, but not with the supplementary innovation. Besides, the pay gap not only has a positive moderating effect on the positive correlation between the risk preference of TMT and the re-innovation input, but also on the positive correlation between the risk preference of TMT and the brand-new innovation after the failure of innovation. The findings of this study contribute to: (1) through empirical research on the impact of TMT risk preference on re-innovation behavior after innovation failure, expand the relevant research content and research methods of TMT and innovation failure to make the research results more convincing; (2) by setting a reasonable executive compensation gap, TMT can avoid blindly choosing brand-new innovation behavior after innovation failure with the increase of risk preference innovation, ignoring the potential value of innovation failure projects without supplementary innovation, improving the re-innovation behavior of TMT after innovation failure and improving the re innovation success rate after innovation failure.
In our era of late capitalism, we can bear witness to the ongoing creative fashioning of successful failure into a commodity which has grown in value. This article discusses two topics: firstly, attitudes towards and narratives of failure in the entrepreneurial start-up space; and secondly, how ‘successful failure’ is increasingly becoming marketised beyond the entrepreneurial start-up space, as people face the escalating power of an injunction to ‘learn from failure’, and are expected to perform accordingly, as we now live within what has been described as an entrepreneurial economy. The example that initiated this line of research has been the phenomenon of ‘Fuckup Night’ events: ‘Fuckup Nights is a global movement and event series that shares stories of professional failure. Each month, in events across the globe, we get three to four people to get up in front of a room full of strangers to share their own professional fuckup. The stories of the business that crashes and burns, the partnership deal that goes sour and the product that has to be recalled, we tell them all’. In essence, the message is as follows: ‘Yes, you should tell everyone about your failures, as the path you have trod on the route to success’. The marketisation of triumphalist narratives of failure illustrates the rise of a new ‘ideology that justifies engagement in capitalism’, calling for ‘workforce participation’ in a new way (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007 The New Spirit of Capitalism. London and New York: Verso: 8). This article examines and theorises the commoditisation of successful failure: how certain kinds of failure have been packaged and produced for impact, how – properly packaged – successful failure has become a profitable and lucrative asset and how new markets now thrive around these newly commodified narratives of failure. The article explores the context for the emergence of appropriate market conditions for the production, circulation and consumption of ‘successful failure’ as commodity.
Bibliometric analysis is a popular and rigorous method for exploring and analyzing large volumes of scientific data. It enables us to unpack the evolutionary nuances of a specific field, while shedding light on the emerging areas in that field. Yet, its application in business research is relatively new, and in many instances, underdeveloped. Accordingly, we endeavor to present an overview of the bibliometric methodology, with a particular focus on its different techniques, while offering step-by-step guidelines that can be relied upon to rigorously perform bibliometric analysis with confidence. To this end, we also shed light on when and how bibliometric analysis should be used vis-à-vis other similar techniques such as meta-analysis and systematic literature reviews. As a whole, this paper should be a useful resource for gaining insights on the available techniques and procedures for carrying out studies using bibliometric analysis.
Keywords: Bibliometric analysis; Performance analysis; Science mapping; Citation analysis; Co-citation analysis; Bibliographic coupling; Co-word analysis; Network analysis; Guidelines.
Firms every year spend $1.3 trillion on digital transformation programs to improve efficiency because digital leaders outperform their peers in nearly every industry. However, digital transformations that are intended to improve efficiency have a high failure rate of up to 90%, resulting in adverse impact to firms' operations and intent to further innovate. While extant research talks about the importance of vision, management, and culture as critical success factors, even digital transformations within the same firm often fail to achieve similar results. Based on Diffusion of Innovation theory and data from three digital transformation programs within a firm that achieved vastly different results, we posit five factors as key influencers of digital transformation success: a) innovation attributes, b) opinion leaders, c) diffusion approach, d) timing, and e) duration. In addition to contributing to theory, this research will help practitioners increase the success rate of future digital transformations.
This study examines the consequences of inventor turnover for the termination of the patents they produced beforehand. The proponents of the knowledge-based view consider firms repositories of knowledge and inventors carriers of knowledge who create new inventions through recombination. I argue that because the knowledge about inventions resides with inventors, turnover among them may adversely affect the future use of their inventions due to the loss of tacit knowledge. As a result, firms are more likely to terminate the patents of inventors who have left than of inventors who remain. Further, the patterns of collaboration between departed inventors and others influence the aforementioned relationship. Analyses of the termination of patents, in the form of nonpayment of renewal fees, by pharmaceutical firms support the claims in the article. The findings have implications for how firms manage their knowledge portfolios in the face of inevitable inventor turnover and the resulting loss of tacit knowledge.
Recent research suggests that by reviewing previously rejected projects in NPD portfolios, it is possible to identify lessons learnt and better manage and handle new projects. Therefore, we argue that there might be hidden treasures in previously rejected new product projects due to recent technology developments or changes in customer preferences. However, after a systematic literature review and interviews with managers we found that there were no suitable tools available for firms to re-assess previously rejected projects. Therefore, by employing multiple qualitative methodological techniques, this study enriches the Stage-Gate model and innovation literature by developing a checklist that firms can use to identify potentially successful new products (treasures) among previously rejected projects (trash). As such, the checklist in this study is not only helpful for reducing the sunk cost associated with previously rejected projects, but can also exploit their potential for success, and become the company's new growth engine.
I analyze project continuation decisions where firms may resolve uncertainty through news about competitors’ research and development (R&D) failures, as well as through their own results. I examine the tradeoffs and interactions between product-market competition and technological learning from parallel R&D projects. Leveraging the biopharmaceutical industry’s unique characteristics to overcome barriers to measuring project-level responses, I use a difference-in-differences strategy to evaluate how competitor exit news alters a firm’s own project discontinuation decisions. The findings reveal that technological learning dominates competition effects. Firms are most sensitive to competitor failure news from within the same market and same technology area—more than doubling their propensity to terminate drug development projects in the wake of this type of information. Finally, I explore how levels of competition, uncertainty, and opportunities to learn moderate the response to competitor failure news.
This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy.