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What does the Internet imply for the business of banking and how will it affect it? Are branch offices “doomed” and obsolete? Explores the major Swedish banks’ adoption of the Internet with a view to highlighting the ensuing changes in the way banks conduct their business and deliver their services. Although the number of branches is shrinking in rhythm with increased Internet use, their role is increasingly changing as banks move from a view of the Internet as a means for improving efficiency, to one of seeing it as a strategic device for transforming the business. Since more and more of the transaction processing load is taken over by technology, banks are concentrating on strengthening their marketing approach and re‐inventing their business model. In this context, traditional bank branches, with an infrastructure supporting transaction processing, are being transformed into an open‐space interface within which bank experts engage intimately with their customers, delivering specialised, advisory services.

Previous studies on innovation tend to view innovation as consisting of a creative phase of novel and useful ideas, and a non-creative, or at least a less creative phase, as this considered to be the mere implementation and validation of the initially created ideas. In contrast, this paper aims to stress on the significance of the process of validating a new idea as being a creative, learning, exploratory process that shapes the degree of novelty of the innovation as a whole.

In driving this argument, this study deductively builds on a theoretical pre-understanding derived from extant literature related to management innovation and organizational legitimacy, and inductively draws on information gleaned from three in-depth case studies.

The study shows that the validation phase in the innovation process is a creative process, rather than just being a set of activities that relate to the mere execution of the created ideas. Viewing the validation process as an exploratory search for new knowledge, this study establishes a relationship between the form of knowledge mobilized, vertically within an organization or horizontally from outside, and the form of legitimation required. Validation based on internally generated knowledge is effective in terms of achieving pragmatic (efficiency-driven) objectives. Inter-organizational knowledge inflows are associated with cognitive legitimacy – a form of legitimacy that leads to changes in the stakeholders’ beliefs about a the product. In contradistinction, horizontal, socio–cultural inflows of knowledge are likely to improve on the product itself, thereby generating more traction for validation.

This research is based on data collected from three firms only.

The idea developed here can provide business organizations a better understanding of the validation process of management innovations. This study suggests that successful innovation often requires managers to be prepared to seek knowledge beyond the confines of their own organizations.

This study contributes in three ways: it submits that there is a dynamic interplay between the moments of creation and validation, which is largely shaped by the novelty of the mobilized knowledge, depending on whether it is internal top–down or external horizontal; relatedly, the effectiveness of validation is shaped by the novelty of the knowledge garnered to justify the initial ideas; and the present paper has extended Suchman’s (1995) framework by linking the effectiveness of the various forms of legitimacy to the source of knowledge mobilized in the validation process.

Most knowledge‐related initiatives underlying the much‐vaunted discourse on knowledge management tend to lionise recursive, using activities (i.e. documenting, sharing and measuring knowledge, etc.) at the expense of making and innovative using activities (such as inventing, innovating and designing). An over‐emphasis on recursive use of codified knowledge can stifle entrepreneurial creativity. In discussing the tension between making and using skills, the paper draws on case study material derived from a rapidly expanding firm where the implementation of the intranet is considered as a “creativity killer”, an infrastructure that supports recursive using activities. Employees remained faithful to their informal, social networks, referred to as “community of practice”, as the principal mode of sharing and developing knowledge. One of the main implications of the study is that firms that mainly rely on activities of making – a characteristic of firms that are in their initial and expanding phases – should put premium on a collaborative infrastructure that promotes making activities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interplay of the internet and the spatial designs of the bricks‐and‐mortar contexts within which face‐to‐face services are provided.

Focuses on the travel, the banking and book‐selling industries; the methods involve interviews, observation and visual material of the new physical spaces within which customer‐sales representatives interact face‐to‐face.

The internet has not reduced the importance of physical space; on the opposite, this study argues, it has revalorised and emphasized the significance of space.

The study's explorative nature does not allow for generalization. Whereas space and time are traditionally regarded as contextual factors, this study recognizes their dynamic nature, regarding spacing and timing as economic phenomena. However, further studies may seek to establish more thoroughly such economic effects.

Changes in spatial layouts of a work place leads to novel spatial practices, which require new personnel competencies. For example, employees' more intimate interactions with customers entail new demands on employees' interpersonal skills and competence. By the same token, new metrics are required for measuring the performance and efficiency of employees.

Highlights the relationship among new technologies, changes in the nature of face‐to‐face services, spatial layouts, and change in time orientation, namely a change from time effectiveness towards interaction effectiveness.

The paper seeks to identify the drivers behind the displacement of the locus of innovation from a hierarchical model to a distributed environment including customers, (lead) users, intermediaries and other external stakeholders.

Exploring the corporate, technological and contextual transformations the paper combines ideas from innovation (taking Rothwell's 1994 fifth‐generation innovation process as a point of departure) with knowledge management theories.

Immobility of tacit knowledge – a prerequisite for innovation – is a crucial factor behind the increasing disintegration of the R&D function. Innovation‐related activities will tend to be allocated between companies and other external sources (customers and users, etc.) depending on the location of tacit knowledge underlying them. Increasingly, customers are taking over more and more of firms' innovation‐related activities because of the high costs of importing to the R&D department the tacit knowledge underlying them. Firms, in their turn, will retain those (manufacturing) activities of which they possess experience‐based knowledge.

The present research is explorative in nature; thus, the propositions tentatively developed are in need of further elaboration and empirical investigation.

To the extent that innovation is displaced into distributed environments, one of the crucial implications for organisations is how to build the necessary competencies to effectively exploit, coordinate and streamline knowledge flows from different sources and turn them into new ideas and innovations.

The value of the paper is its extension of Rothwell's Fifth generation innovation process model.

The aim of this paper is to explore the Internet as a new locus for value creation. Three value‐adding strategies ‐ content, context and infrastructure ‐ are used to analyse three examples of Internet ventures involving a virtual university, the restaurant business and the music industry. The establishment of a home page on the Internet creates a new context in which providers and consumers of products and services interact and transact more conveniently and cost‐efficiently. It is argued that a new context may enhance the quality of content itself. It is therefore crucial for managers to consider the effect of Internet on all the components of the value proposition, separately and in aggregation.

The paper discusses networking through brand affiliation/endorsement as an increasing mode of internationalisation. Brand affiliation or brand endorsement involves a form of franchising, whereby local services take on a global reach. Whereas conventional theories on the internationalisation process explicitly or implicitly assume that internationalisation is a matter of tapping a new geographical market, mired with risk and uncertainty due to its “foreignness”, brand affiliation means that the offerings of a local business take on the global features associated with the global brand. The global brand endorses or vouches for the locally bound business, thereby providing it with a global recognition and reach. In spite of the global explosion in the practice of affiliation and franchising, there has been little concern with this form of internationalisation, or with the issues and the challenges posed for the franchisees, which are most often SMEs, in managing two brands, two identities and two cultures. The present paper seeks to explore this business relationship and its inherent contradictions, mainly from the franchisee's perspective, and asks whether the dictates of global requirements for efficiency, functionality and consistency can be reconciled with social and cultural values associated with localisation, and what the theoretical and practical implications of this internationalisation process are.

The aim of this study is to examine how knowledge-intensive born global firms operating in international markets develop and maintain long-term relationships with their customers that insure their continued growth beyond the initial stage of internationalization. The study adopts a case study approach, focusing on two Indian born global firms operating with the knowledge-based services sector. The study shows that getting to know the customer intimately helps firms to retain customers over long periods of time. Customer-relationship management strategy is in line with the entrepreneurial orientation of the firms under consideration.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that experts' degree of passion for, and attachment to their expertise knowledge facilitates knowledge acquisition and its transfer.

The article draws on case study methodology. Twenty experts within the petrol industry were interviewed with a view to examining the motivators and inhibitors of transferring their expertise knowledge to freshly recruited engineers.

It seems to emerge that the more passionate an expert is the more intent they will on seeing thrive and diffuse to others. Assuming that expertise is dialogical, that is, the process of transferring is at the same a process of acquiring it. The two processes are conflated.

The main limitation of the study is that it relies on an in‐depth case study within a specific, scientific industry. How relevant are the findings remains to be studied.

To the extent that passion is an intrinsic motive and since it is not amenable to management control and intervention (“expertise cannot be managed!”), attempts at managing it may be counter‐productive. If curiosity and passion are the main drivers behind transferring (and pursuing intellectually challenging tasks) are the mainspring, managers are faced with providing context that stimulates such drives, not necessarily resorting to monetary rewards.

The originality of this study is to emphasize the significance of passion in the process of transferring and acquiring knowledge.