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The paper aims to understand how individuals differ in individual absorptive capacity – their ability to recognize, assimilate, transform and exploit external knowledge. These individual absorptive capacities are a key knowledge management building block for an organization’s open innovation practices. The study examines individual antecedents – human capital, social capital and cognition – and innovation outcomes of individual absorptive capacity.

This is a quantitative study of 147 employees in a single medium-sized Dutch industrial firm. Based on a survey and structural equation modeling, the antecedents’ prior knowledge diversity, network diversity and cognitive style are examined in relation to individual absorptive capacity. Further, the mediating effects of individual absorptive capacity on its antecedents and innovation outcome are investigated.

The main findings are that prior knowledge diversity, external network diversity and a bisociative cognitive style explain differences in individual absorptive capacity. A bisociative cognitive style appears to be the most important factor. Also, this study finds that individual absorptive capacity mediates between its antecedents and individual innovation performance and is therefore a relevant factor to capture value from external knowledge sources.

The study extends open innovation theory by exploring individual-level factors that explain the ability to capture value from external knowledge. It suggests that differences in open innovation practices are explained by heterogeneity at the individual level. Further, it explains how individuals’ potentials for open innovation are mediated by their absorptive capacities. These insights enable future researchers to further examine individual-level factors in knowledge management practices and to explore cross-level individual-organizational interactions for open innovation.

This paper highlights that individuals’ engagements in open innovation practices are explained not only by individuals’ motivations but also by their abilities to absorb external knowledge. Further, it helps managers to design knowledge management practices to promote employees’ absorptive capacities, to improve open innovation processes.

This study investigates the neglected individual-level factors of open innovation practices from a micro-foundational and knowledge management perspective. To our best knowledge, this is the first study to examine individual-level antecedents and outcomes of individual absorptive capacity.

The paper aims to understand how knowledge-intensive teams can develop and enhance their team absorptive capacity (ACAP) level, by exploring whether individual and organizational factors are complements or substitutes for team ACAP.

The study applies a configurational approach using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to identify combinations of individual and team factors that are associated with team ACAP. Data were gathered through a survey among 297 employees of four medium-sized Dutch firms, working in 48 functional teams.

The primary finding is that knowledge-intensive team ACAP depends on a triad of complementary factors: team members’ individual ACAP, factors that enable knowledge integration and factors that motivate knowledge integration. Underdevelopment of one or more factors leads to lower team ACAP.

The study contributes to the discussion on the locus of knowledge-creation and enhances understandings of why knowledge-intensive teams differ in knowledge processing capabilities. It suggests future research on cross-functional teams in new ventures and large firms.

The paper informs managers and team leaders about the factors that determine knowledge-intensive teams’ ACAP, enabling them to develop team-specific strategies to increase their teams’ performance.

The study takes a holistic perspective on knowledge-intensive team ACAP by using a configurational approach. It also highlights the potential of team-level research in the knowledge management literature for both researchers and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the early development stages of International New Ventures (INVs). Specifically, the authors explore how INVs acquire and leverage four kinds of capital – strategic, managerial, financial and social – to recognise a foreign opportunity, begin the pre-foreign entry activities, and finally start the INV.

A stage-based, multidimensional framework was used to investigate how INVs acquire and use the four capitals throughout the internationalisation process. Drawing on four case studies of high-tech INVs, this study tracks their development in three stages: foreign opportunity, pre-foreign operation and post-foreign operation.

Results indicate INVs build advantages and internationalisation activities occur before formal operations begin. INVs deliberately orchestrate certain kinds of capital contingent to the specific internationalisation stage. Further, the authors find that not all types of capital are equally important throughout the internationalisation process: INVs identify foreign opportunities when endowed with managerial and social capital; INVs source a majority of their managerial and financial capitals externally before internationalising; and INVs only contribute all four capitals simultaneously after internationalising.

Findings contribute to knowledge about the development of INVs pre-internationalisation and pre-founding. The study is limited to a comparative sample of INVs, which impacts the generalisability. However, the findings provide a starting point for investigating similar effects using more representative samples.

Entrepreneurs can be proactive in networking activities to allow them greater opportunity to interact with potential resource providers dependent on the stage of internationalisation.

This study contributes to the international entrepreneurship literature with qualitative evidence of the micro-level processes of internationalisation. Very few studies investigate the early, pre-internationalisation and pre-foundation, development stages of INVs.

The purpose of this article is to obtain an in-depth insight into the nature and impact of customers´ cocreation experiences in online communities and the effects of customer cocreation on innovation processes.

This study is focused on an online cocreation community created by a market research company on behalf of a company. By means of a case study approach and through in-depth interviews, the authors identify the actual customer experiences and measure (or assess) the degree of involvement of customer creativity and experience in new idea generation.

Cocreation experience can be enhanced through evoking pragmatic, sociability, usability and hedonic experiences and more positive experiences and therefore, outcomes of collaborative innovation in online communities can be achieved. Findings show a classification of each role the community moderator/community manager and peer online community members perform as antecedents of cocreation experience, highlight the value of group feeling/sense of community/sense of belonging and homophily/communality in achieving that, the nature of a supportive online platform and give an overview of positive and negative outcomes of cocreation experience.

This case study provides with valuable insights in the phenomenon of customer cocreation and how to enhance participation of community members in collaborative innovation in online communities through positive experience, which is important for businesses involved in innovation trajectories and product and service improvement efforts.

Twenty first century problems are increasingly being addressed by multi technology solutions developed by regional entrepreneurial and intreprepreneurial innovators. However, they require an expensive new type of fabrication facility. Multiple technology production facilities (MTPF) have become the essential incubators for these innovations. This paper aims to focus on the issues.

The authors address the lack of managerial understanding of how to express the value and operationally manage MTPF centers through the use of investigative case study methods for multiple firms in the study.

Owing to the MTPF centers' novelty and outward similarity to high volume semiconductor fabrication (HVF) facilities, they are laden with ineffective operation and strategic management practices. Metrics are the standard for both operational and strategic management of HVF facilities, yet their application to this new type of center is proving ineffectual.

These new types of regional economic resources may be at risk. A new approach is needed.

The authors develop an operational and strategic metrics management approach for MTPFs that are based on these facilities' unique nature and leverages both the HVF and R&D metrics knowledge base.

Innovations at the interface of micro technology, nanotechnology and semiconductor micro fabrication are poised to solve many of these problems and become a basis for job creation and prosperity. If a new management technique is not developed, then these harbingers of regional economic development will be closed.

While there is an abundance of research on metrics for HVF, this is the first attempt to develop metrics for MTPFs.

This paper aims to assess the biodiesel value chain produced by the State of Chiapas and, through a financial model, determines its profitability and feasibility as a business.

The literature review was based on searching in journal databases and in official web sites. To quantify value chain activities, a questionnaire was used to interview project leader. Besley's methodology was used to create the financial model and determine the net present value (NPV). Finally, the SWOT model summarized the analysis based on the results obtained.

All the costs of the value chain were calculated and the results show that the greatest cost corresponds to the “internal logistical activity,” with 74 percent of the total cost/liter. The NPV of the project was positive and the project was thus considered financially feasible.

Biodiesel production plants must know the real costs of raw material (sewing and harvesting the seed) as well as extraction by farmers and regional producers in order to calculate their real profit margin and set competitive prices.

The research responds to a specific demand by the State of Chiapas to assess the feasibility of its value chain by identifying the activities that do not create value.

Sustainable regional development is often accompanied by the introduction and gradual implementation of innovative concepts, like, e.g. “integrated natural resources management” or “sustainable tourism”. From a managerial perspective, in order to contribute to improved sustainable regional development, the innovative concepts need to become rooted in everyday policy practice in such a way that they enable rather than hinder collective action. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Enabling collective action is a managerial challenge that is partly dependent on the presence of a sufficient degree of integration in the governance system that forms a context for the action. This challenge can be studied with the help of the concept of boundary judgments. Boundary judgments are normative and cognitive perceptions of actors on the relevancy of specific actors, factors, issues, etc. for their domain of action (what is “fit”, what is acceptable, what is needed?). The paper illustrates the importance of boundary judgments through two empirical studies in The Netherlands.

Divergent boundary judgments hamper the inclusion of the innovative concept in everyday actions for improving sustainable regional development. However, managers avoiding this complexity by relying on old definitions of their tasks also block the possible innovation. The challenge is to keep the balance between these two extremes.

The paper explains and illustrates the concept of “boundary judgments” and their importance for different types of managers (project leaders and policy makers) to take them into account, alongside the more obvious variation of values and interests among stakeholders.