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Family firms that simultaneously engage in multiple levels of innovation – incremental and radical – are likely to enjoy performance advantages across generations. The purpose of this paper is to research under which management conditions (i.e. top management team (TMT) diversity in terms of generational or non-family involvement) family firms are more likely to achieve innovation ambidexterity. Also, the paper addresses the mediating role of open innovation (OI) breadth in this relationship.

A large cross-sectional sample of 335 small- and medium-sized family firms is used. The hypotheses were tested in a mediation model. The relationship between TMT diversity and ambidexterity is measured using a binominal regression analysis, the one between TMT diversity and OI breadth using a Tobit model.

Drawing on the family firm upper echelon perspective, the results indicate that TMT diversity induced through external managers and multiple generations is positively related to innovation ambidexterity. As the mediation analysis reveals, the relationship can be explained by the higher propensity of diverse TMTs to get involved in OI breadth. The findings add to the discussion on family firm heterogeneity and its influence on different kinds of innovation.

So far, few studies have been concerned with ambidextrous family firms. Contrary to their reputation, this study identifies family firms as radical as well as open innovators. As such, this research takes account not only of the heterogeneity of family firms, but also of the heterogeneity of family firm innovation.

The purpose of this study is to explore the process of scaling second-hand fashion and how different strategic paths develop over time. This is theoretically grounded in two distinct scaling logics synthesised from the literature: a process that includes strategies for organisational growth (breadth-scaling) and a process that influences change in formal and informal institutions (depth-scaling).

The paper presents a process-based study based on the growth of a second-hand fashion retail organisation over 20 years. Qualitative materials such as interviews, observations and documents were collected and analysed.

The findings illustrate how a circular business model (CBM) can make use of a mix of strategies aiming for both organisational growth and impacting practices and habits within the fashion industry. Strategies building on breadth-scaling logic are found to be a prerequisite for engaging with depth-scaling strategies since they contribute to necessary resources and confidence, while depth-scaling secures future scaling opportunities by changing the conditions for scale.

The study contributes to the relatively scant literature on the process of scaling CBMs by exploring how different strategic paths unfold over time. The process-based approach, in combination with the two scaling logics, gives new insights into how CBMs go from niche to mainstream and thus influence the transition to a circular economy (CE).

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive view of the different competition-based approaches that policymakers can exploit to foster external knowledge search and their positioning among innovation policy measures. A growing number of companies have implemented initiatives to access external knowledge to increase their innovativeness, consistently with the open innovation paradigm. Competition-based approaches have received increasing attention by the private sector as a way to access external knowledge. However, despite their potential role as innovation policy measures, a limited attention has been devoted so far to investigate them from the policymakers’ perspective.

To this aim, a two-stage empirical analysis has been carried out to develop a taxonomy of competition-based approaches. The first stage leveraged a multiple case study methodology including a sample of 20 competition-based approaches, while the second one leveraged interviews with Italian and European key informants.

This paper proposes a novel taxonomy including eight competition-based approaches, which differ among each other in terms of policy strategy, scope breadth and output required. Moreover, this paper enriches a well-established taxonomy of innovation policy instruments with the identified competition-based approaches.

This study contributes to the current debate on innovation policy by providing a taxonomy that includes eight competition-based approaches that can be exploited by policymakers to foster external knowledge search as well as their positioning among the innovation policy instruments. The taxonomy will hopefully support policymakers in identifying of the most suitable instruments in the light of their policy strategy and objectives.

We address the following research questions: (1) Is the innovation trajectory of the acquirer affected by previous acquisitions? (2) In which direction knowledge recombination from the acquisition is pushed further? (3) Is the technological acquisition more a means for knowledge exploration and radical innovation or, on the contrary, a way for consolidating previous technological specialization?

The nature of this study is exploratory; therefore, we opted for an inductive approach based on the L'Oréal case study analysis. Data were triangulated from different sources: (a) the L'Oréal website and press releases collected in the 2009–2015 period; (b) journal articles and books on the global cosmetics industry and the insightful work of Jones (2010); (c) the Questel Orbit database containing data on patents; and (d) the Zephyr – Bureau van Dijk database containing information on the acquisitions of firms.

Empirical evidence from a patent data analysis reveals a paradoxical path. On the one hand, acquisitions enable the company to explore new technological spaces; on the other hand, they allow it to reinforce a preexisting technological trajectory, even when the knowledge base of the target is distant from that of the acquirer. Thus, in our case study, the absorption and recombination of knowledge from a variety of domains support specialization more than diversification technology strategies.

We add to innovation management literature a new perspective, by offering a detailed analysis, through patent data, of the knowledge recombination process, led by technological acquisitions.

The study aims to investigate whether and how digital transformation, in terms of digital collaboration, joint efforts with internal/external partners to achieve common goals and the adoption of digital tools supporting this practice, affect social innovation capital in the context of small innovative enterprises (SIEs).

The research hypotheses derived from the analysis of the literature, evaluating how sharing resources, sharing intensity and digital patterns affect the collective capacity of SIEs to innovate, were investigated by applying multiple regression analysis. Data were retrieved from a sample of Italian SIEs through an online survey.

The main findings suggest that the propensity to spread resources and the sharing intensity positively affect the collective capacity of SIEs to innovate. Also, the effect of resources sharing on collective innovation increases as more digital patterns are used as tools. The connection is weaker for the intensity of resources sharing.

The study is conducted on Italian SIEs, a particular cluster of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It would be interesting to compare and contrast the results of an analysis of a large sample of international companies, of different sizes and belonging to digital and non-digital sectors.

The results enrich the existing literature on social innovation capital, by clarifying its competitive benefits on the characteristic context of the SIEs and underlining the mediating role of the digital patterns.

Through a comprehensive review of the literature on open innovation (OI), this study aimed to achieve two objectives: (1) to identify the main thematic areas discussed in the past and track their evolution over time; and (2) to provide recommendations for future research avenues.

To achieve the first objective, a method based on text mining was implemented, with the analysis focusing on 1,772 journal articles published between 2003 and 2018. For the second objective, a review based on recent and relevant papers was conducted for each thematic area.

The paper identified nine thematic areas explored in existing research: (1) context-dependency of OI, (2) collaborative frameworks, (3) organizational dimensions of OI, (4) performance and OI, (5) external search for OI, (6) OI in small and medium-sized enterprises, (7) OI in the pharmaceutical industry, (8) OI and intellectual property rights, and (9) technology. The analysis of the most recent papers belonging to the more investigated areas offers suitable suggestions for future research avenues.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no review has yet been undertaken to reorganize the OI literature.

The purpose of this paper is to identify human capital factors that pertain both to setting up and successfully running a business. To achieve this objective, the authors apply and extend the theory of career choice offered by Lazear (2005) that explains individual selection into entrepreneurship.

The authors hypothesise that individuals with broader educational and professional backgrounds are more likely to start a business and are more likely to run a business in the long term. The authors tested the hypotheses using unique data from 800 current entrepreneurs, 800 employees who were previously entrepreneurs and 842 employees with no entrepreneurial experience, by means of a logit regression with robust standard errors and extensive robustness checks.

The authors empirically show that individuals with more diverse educational and professional backgrounds tend to have both greater chances of starting a company, as well as a higher probability of entrepreneurial success. Surprisingly, having managerial experience proved to exert a negative influence on the likelihood of starting a business while having an insignificant impact on the odds of entrepreneurial success.

The findings are informative for those planning or pursuing an entrepreneurial career, but they are also relevant for the purpose of entrepreneurship education.

The author's extend the body of research supporting Lazear's (2005) theory by showing that broad education and professional experience not only contribute to a higher propensity to start a company but they are also success factors in business per se.

According to a survey of professionals in agricultural education, The Journal of Leadership Education (JOLE) is a new and primary outlet of leadership education research and professional scholarship. The purpose of this study was to assess five years of JOLE’s primary and secondary research theme areas, frequent primary and secondary research themes by year, prolific authorship, and research methods and types using a mixed-methods design. A compilation of the research results is reported. Research themes appear cyclic and add little to improving an apparent lack of research continuity. Research must continue to determine cycle depth and the influence on research in leadership education as an integrated specialization area of agricultural education. This research may be used comparatively with the National Research Agenda to determine where future research should be focused.

It is important students learn about leadership. The purpose of this study was to assess whether a leadership course for sport management graduate students led to gains in knowledge of leadership and understanding of themselves as leaders. Using quantitative (pre- and post-surveys) and qualitative (email interviews) data, this study found a one-semester course in sport leadership led to gains in theoretical and applied knowledge of leadership. Additionally, students grew personally as leaders and felt more comfortable practicing leadership in their current jobs and more prepared for future professional lives. Teachers should consider using a mix of active learning, case studies, and writing assignments to help students learn leadership concepts, practice making leadership decisions, and reflect on their leadership capabilities when educating effective leaders.