​This work contributes to entrepreneurship research and offers practical implications for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship promotors by critically analyzing a networked approach to value creation processes of young knowledge-intensive entrepreneurial firms and assessing precise strategies and tactics for entrepreneurial firms to exploit these structures. In this context the concept of co-innovation competence is introduced and empirically analyzed. Results indicate that entrepreneurs follow a specific approach towards networking minimizing transaction costs taking an on-demand-based perspective of networking. In this case entrepreneurs may relate to regional innovation promotors and also reach beyond regional structures to explore suitable partners and exploit structural holes.

Large, mature companies often struggle when it comes to the uncertain process of breakthrough innovation. But innovation is an imperative in today's cutthroat business environment. To fulfill its potential, there has to be a better way—and there is. Beyond the Champion argues that innovation is a talent all its own that requires distinct skills and expertise, just like finance or marketing. Viewing innovation as a discipline in its own right, it is easy to see that breakthrough wins require an organizational design with clearly delineated roles, responsibilities, and career tracks for those who shoulder the responsibility for new products. Drawing on the results of a four-year study and two decades of related research, this book outlines three fundamental competencies necessary for innovation: discovery, incubation, and acceleration. Mapping these skills onto roles and opportunities for advancement, the authors deliver a pioneering blueprint for sustainable innovation.

This book presents a new model, the competency framework, for students, innovators, entrepreneurs, managers, and anyone who wants to better understand the dynamic world of innovation and entrepreneurship. Focused on both the individual and strategic organizational level, this book is about people and the competencies each person needs to learn to be successful in creating a more dynamic future. Matthews and Brueggemann’s framework for innovation and entrepreneurship competencies empowers individuals to excel at innovation and new venture creation. It provides a practical guide and clear and concise understanding of the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and experiences that are needed to increase imagination, creativity, innovation and new venture creation capability. Innovation and Entrepreneurship will be attractive for students of entrepreneurship, innovation, management and cross-disciplinary classes, such as design thinking. Presented in a modular format, Innovation & Entrepreneurship informs the future direction of people and technology, as well as the educational systems producing the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs. Based on extensive academic research, this book is organized into two sections: Twelve innovation elements and twelve competency categories. The elements are the foundation and the competency categories are the building blocks that inform our path toward a more precise understanding of how innovation and entrepreneurship plays an important role in economic development and our daily lives.

This book presents unique insights and advice on defining and managing the innovation transformation journey. Using novel ideas, examples and best practices, it empowers management executives at all levels to drive cultural, technological and organizational changes toward innovation. Covering modern innovation techniques, tools, programs and strategies, it focuses on the role of the latest technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence to discover, handle and manage ideas), methodologies (including Agile Engineering and Rapid Prototyping) and combinations of these (like hackathons or gamification). At the same time, it highlights the importance of culture and provides suggestions on how to build it. In the era of AI and the unprecedented pace of technology evolution, companies need to become truly innovative in order to survive. The transformation toward an innovation-led company is difficult – it requires a strong leadership and culture, advanced technologies and well-designed programs. The book is based on the author’s long-term experience and novel ideas, and reflects two decades of startup, consulting and corporate leadership experience. It is intended for business, technology, and innovation leaders.

Dr Pechlaner and Dr Innerhofer, the editors of Competence-Based Innovation in Hospitality and Tourism, argue that the industry operates within highly challenging and competitive environments. Changing environmental and market conditions continually force hotel businesses and service providers to offer their customers new and modified products and services, in order to remain competitive; those which respect value perceptions of markets and sustainable stakeholder reactions. This then raises the question of how innovations within this industry must be developed in order to achieve competitive differentiation. The book demonstrates that the development and analysis of successful innovation strategies should integrate the resource-based view and its advancements, the competence-based view, as well as the dynamic capabilities approach and the relational view. Resource-based strategic management approaches view the firm as a bundle of resources and competences. They point to the importance of firm-specific resources and competences in explaining variations in competitive positions and performance differentiation between companies. The challenge of hospitality and tourism is to develop resources and competences that drive innovations. This book will serve to advance the status quo of tourism research literature by combining innovation theories with network theories and tourism and destination development, by illustrating the development of cooperative competences and innovations in tourism and by showing, in a tailored way, how the challenge of the development of resources and competences that drive innovations in tourism can be managed.

Collaborative Networks A Tool for Promoting Co-creation and Innovation The collaborative networks paradigm offers powerful socio-organizational mec- nisms, supported by advanced information and communication technologies for p- moting innovation. This, in turn, leads to new products and services, growth of better customer relationships, establishing better project and process management, and building higher-performing consortia. By putting diverse entities that bring different perspectives, competencies, practices, and cultures, to work together, collaborative networks develop the right environment for the emergence of new ideas and more efficient, yet practical, solutions. This aspect is particularly important for small and medium enterprises which typically lack critical mass and can greatly benefit from participation in co-innovation networks. However, larger organizations also benefit from the challenges and the diversity found in collaborative ecosystems. In terms of research, in addition to the trend identified in previous years toward a sounder consolidation of the theoretical foundation in this discipline, there is now a direction of developments more focused on modeling and reasoning about new c- laboration patterns and their contribution to value creation. “Soft issues,” including social capital, cultural aspects, ethics and value systems, trust, emotions, behavior, etc. continue to deserve particular attention in terms of modeling and reasoning. Exploi- tion of new application domains such as health care, education, and active aging for retired professionals also help identify new research challenges, both in terms of m- eling and ICT support development.

Dr Pechlaner and Dr Innerhofer, the editors of Competence-Based Innovation in Hospitality and Tourism, argue that the industry operates within highly challenging and competitive environments. Changing environmental and market conditions continually force hotel businesses and service providers to offer their customers new and modified products and services, in order to remain competitive; those which respect value perceptions of markets and sustainable stakeholder reactions. This then raises the question of how innovations within this industry must be developed in order to achieve competitive differentiation. The book demonstrates that the development and analysis of successful innovation strategies should integrate the resource-based view and its advancements, the competence-based view, as well as the dynamic capabilities approach and the relational view. Resource-based strategic management approaches view the firm as a bundle of resources and competences. They point to the importance of firm-specific resources and competences in explaining variations in competitive positions and performance differentiation between companies. The challenge of hospitality and tourism is to develop resources and competences that drive innovations. This book will serve to advance the status quo of tourism research literature by combining innovation theories with network theories and tourism and destination development, by illustrating the development of cooperative competences and innovations in tourism and by showing, in a tailored way, how the challenge of the development of resources and competences that drive innovations in tourism can be managed.

Innovations constitute one essential success factor for the development, progress, and success of companies. Thus, striving for the creation of innovation can be beneficial. One way to create innovations is to increase the innovation capability of companies in order to enhance the knowledge base in that company. In plenty of innovation-related research, it turned out that customers can be one important source of new knowledge. Thus, they can also be a driver for increasing innovation capability and hence ultimately help to foster the creation of innovations. Due to potential effects of customers on innovation capability, companies could strive to generally integrate customers into their innovation activities. However, companies should consider differences of customers in order to identify the most promising customers for their innovation activities. Therefore, the idea of competences of an individual is applied, since competences integrate abilities, skills, and knowledge and are thus a wide construct respecting different facets of a customer. With the concept of customer competences, companies might be enabled to identify the most beneficial customers for their innovation activities in order to increase their innovation capability. Accordingly, in order to explain interrelations between particular customer competences and the innovation capability of a company, this research delivers a well-founded basis by investigating the general existence of interrelations between customer competences and the innovation capability of companies. You can download the "Documentation Volume" for free here: https://cuvillier.de/uploads/cms_file/cms_file/351/Illigen_Documentation_Volume.pdf

This book seeks to increase understanding of the links between skills and innovation. It explores the wide range of skills required, and it presents data and evidence on countries' stocks and flows of skills and the links between skill inputs and innovation outputs.

Strategic Innovation offers a flexible, customizable template that managers, executives, and business leaders can use to introduce an effective innovation strategy throughout their organization. The authors, Nancy Tennant Snyder and Deborah L. Duarte, provide the tools needed to craft a workable strategy for embedding innovation as a core competency across an enterprise. Instead of innovation for innovation's sake, the authors offer a proven business-focused way to change a culture from point-in-time innovations from a few to a continuous pipeline of innovations from everywhere and everyone. Based on the real-life example of Whirlpool a solid company with a significant track record and global reach—Strategic Innovation shows how the world's largest appliance company put innovation in place as a core competency. During this process, Whirlpool transformed itself from a quality producer of appliances to a customer-focused company that strategically embeds innovation throughout the organization. Filled with challenges and struggles, and ultimately successful results, the Whirlpool story can help any organization develop a successful innovation strategy. Written as a practical guide, the book contains in each chapter a variety of hands-on resources including checklists and worksheets. Strategic Innovation offers the tools, ideas, and approaches needed for transforming an organization to a company where anyone and everyone can contribute to the organization's prosperity—through innovation.