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The purpose of this paper is to test the effect of internal and external collaboration on the degree of newness (incremental/radical) in innovation projects. This adds to the understanding of the particular patterns of open innovation (OI) and what characterizes the innovation emerging through this approach.

Tests are performed on the effect of internal and external collaboration on the degree of newness (incremental/radical) in innovation projects. This adds to the understanding of the particular patterns of OI and what characterizes the innovation emerging through this approach. The empirical analysis is based on a data set including responses from 512 Danish engineers.

The results show that external collaboration has significantly different effects on the degree of newness depending on the type of external partners involved, and they also show that radical innovation output is positively related to involving the R&D department (internal) and universities (external involvement) and negatively related to involving suppliers.

The results provide a more detailed understanding of how different OI patterns affect the development of incremental vs radical innovation in existing organizations. In particular, three findings add new insights into how OI affects innovation to reach the highest degree of newness: high importance of collaboration with external partners with distinct interests and skills; low reliance on existing customers and suppliers for the development of radical innovation; and narrow and focused internal involvement rather than broad internal involvement.

Research on best practices suffers from some fundamental problems. The problem addressed in the article is that authors tend to postulate, rather than show, the practices they address to be best – whether these practices do indeed produce best performance is often not investigated.

This article assumes that the best performing companies must be the ones deploying the best practices. In order to find out what are those practices, the highest performing companies in the 2002 International Manufacturing Strategy Survey database were identified, and the role 14 practices play in these companies was investigated.

Process focus, pull production, equipment productivity and environmental compatibility appear to qualify as best practices. Quality management and ICT may have been best practice previously, but lost that status. E‐business, new product development (NPD), supplier strategy and outsourcing are relatively new, cannot yet be qualified as, but may develop into, best practice. Four other practices do not produce any significant performance effects.

There are four limitations to the research: Incompleteness of the set of practices tested: lack of insight into the effects of interaction between practices and the way in and extent to which they were implemented; good explanatory but poor predictive power; and lack of contextuality.

Taking the position that best practice must be what best performing companies do, the paper is useful for managers using benchmarking to review the design and performance of their manufacturing system, and for scholars engaged or interested in best practice studies.

The vast majority of literature relating to operations management originates from studies in developed markets. Emerging markets are increasingly important in global business. With this in mind, the purpose of this paper is to analyze differences in outsourcing strategies between manufacturing firms from emerging markets and from developed markets.

The paper is based on statistical analyses of a large data set of manufacturing firms obtained from the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS).

The findings suggest that companies that outsource internationally focus on achieving cost benefits, while companies that outsource domestically focus on achieving capacity flexibility. In addition, the reasons to outsource were found to be independent of the location of firms in both emerging and developed markets. However, within the group of firms from emerging markets, strategies seem to differ according to whether firms are domestically owned or are subsidiaries of companies from developed markets.

The decisions of firms to outsource do not differ much whether the firms are located in developed‐ or in emerging‐market economies. Firms outsource domestically when they want to increase their capacity flexibility; they outsource internationally when looking for cost advantages.

The value of the paper is that it illuminates an important contemporary phenomenon based on analyses on data from a large‐scale international survey encompassing firms both in developed and in emerging markets.

Although risk and innovation are often linked, current studies exploring the correlation between these terms are scarce. This study empirically examines the relationship between construction firms’ risk perception, risk management planning and innovation orientation.

A conceptual framework was formed through the literature and validated by the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique, employing the data collected from 182 practitioners working in the Vietnamese construction sector.

This study highlighted that innovation orientation can be categorized as creation and adoption. The findings indicated that while risk perception can hinder innovation creation, effective risk management planning can mitigate the adverse effects. The findings also highlighted that the focus on innovation adoption will negatively affect innovation creation. Additionally, the findings showed that risk management planning has a positive relationship with innovation creation.

This study fills the research gap by explaining why innovation creation is often prioritized by innovation adoption, as risk perception acts as a deterrent. The results imply that construction firms should balance adopting innovations and fostering an environment conducive to innovation creation. It is recommended that these firms invest organizational resources in forming effective risk management plans to create a more secure environment for innovation creation.

The purpose of this paper is to present the strategic intangible process assets characterization (SIPAC) methodology illustrated by an example of its application to the field of information technology (IT). This is a pioneering methodology for characterizing the impact and quality of intangible process assets and intellectual capital as levers to achieve organizational objectives. This strategic intellectual capital approach will help to identify both intangible assets and indicators geared to meeting organizational objectives. This is of vital importance since the success of an organization can be construed in terms of goal achievement.

The paper illustrates an example of the step-by-step application of the proposed methodology at an IT company. The aim is to describe its use in a real case so that other companies can benefit from the replication of the methodology used.

The proposed methodology (SIPAC) that the authors have designed and applied has been found to be useful and provide an insightful new point of view for strategic decision making in the IT industry taking into account intangible process assets.

The proposed methodology has been exemplified in a real case. This should help organizations to use the methodology to replicate the results.

Each and every organization has know-how represented by intangible assets. This paper meets an identified need to use intangible process assets as levers to help organizations achieve their business goals.