0000000000248552
AUTHOR
Julia Olmos-peñuela
The pivotal role of students’ absorptive capacity in management learning
Within a research context dominated by an increasing interest in innovative learning method- ologies in management education, an individual’s capacity to establish links between existing and new knowledge, that is, absorptive capacity (AC), has been surprisingly neglected in management (higher) education inquiry. This study helps to close this gap by investigating the role of management students’ AC on their academic performance. The study also examines the moderating effect on this relationship of using traditional learning methodologies (such as lectures), innovative learning methodologies (such as interacting with digital platforms), and having a cooperative climate in the classroom. Sec…
Entrepreneurial orientation and new product development performance in SMEs: The mediating role of business model innovation
Abstract In the current business context, entrepreneurial orientation (EO) has been highlighted as key to improving firm performance. Despite the overall positive evidence on the association between EO and firm performance, scholars have stressed the importance of taking into account and properly managing intermediate capabilities. The present study analyses the link between EO and New Product Development (NPD) performance, considering Business Model Innovation (BMI) as a mediating variable. A sample of 400 Spanish SMEs is used to test the proposed research model through structural equation modelling and partial least squares analyses. Results reveal that EO contributes to BMI and NPD perfo…
Fostering novelty while reducing failure: Balancing the twin challenges of product innovation
This paper aims to further our understanding of how the degrees of innovation novelty and innovation failure are connected. It argues that a better understanding of the specific predictors of innovation novelty and failure would improve our understanding of the innovation process and inform R&D managerial interventions to reduce the occurrences of failure and enhance radical innovation. This investigation draws on data on 5387 Spanish manufacturing firms from the 2009 Spanish Community Innovation Survey (CIS). Unlike prior studies which examine product innovation, degree of innovation novelty, and innovation failures in separate models, this study relies on a multivariate model to account f…
La Vinculación Ciencia-Sociedad: Estereotipos y Nuevos Enfoques
[ES]: La importancia social de la ciencia ha evolucionado notablemente desde mediados del siglo XX, dando lugar a un cambio en el enfoque y desarrollo de la actividad científica. En este contexto, se ha producido un aumento notable de los estudios que analizan en profundidad los procesos de intercambio y transferencia de conocimiento que se producen entre los investigadores y los agentes sociales, en gran medida para su promoción desde las políticas científicas e institucionales. Este artículo describe la evolución de los enfoques sobre las relaciones ciencia-sociedad y analiza los principales elementos de los procesos de intercambio y transferencia de conocimiento mediante un estudio empír…
Strengthening SMEs’ innovation culture through collaborations with public research organizations. Do all firms benefit equally?
The purpose of this paper is to explore whether collaborating with public research organizations (PROs) contributes to strengthening the innovation culture of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). We examine to what extent their innovation culture is reinforced by collaborations with research organizations and investigate the type of organizational strategies that enhance this effect of collaboration. The empirical study is based on a survey of firms that collaborate with the largest Spanish PRO, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Our results indicate that SMEs differ greatly in their capacity to strengthen their innovation culture through collaboration with research organizatio…
Do Perceptions of Academic Scientists Influence Non-Academic Collaboration?
The recognition of academic research as a potential source of economic growth and social welfare has attracted the attention of both policymakers and academics over the past decades. Incentives have been introduced by policymakers to encourage academics to make their research accessible to wider audiences to improve societal benefits. Academics may work as part of collaborative R&D teams that help to benefit their research, such as to increase academic access to facilities and resources. However, this engagement may come with a potential cost or what has sometimes been referred to as the “dark side of collaboration.” Engaging with non-academic partners in collaborative R&D projects can have…
Reflecting on the Tensions of Research Utilization: Understanding the Coupling of Academic and User Knowledge
This paper addresses debate of how research is utilized that questions measuring ‘acts of use’ of research (patents, spin-offs, or license income). A science system is a progressive business where research builds upon diverse existing research and knowledge. The extent of research utilization is determined by the extent to which prior research can feed into research that ultimately leads to acts of use. We use the term ‘knowledge transformers’ to refer to research users that transform academic knowledge into the socio-economic domain, and define ‘usability’ of prior research as the ease with which it may contribute to research that knowledge transformers are able to absorb. We argue that to…
“To Own, or not to Own?” A multilevel analysis of intellectual property right policies' on academic entrepreneurship
The political environment around universities has led them to create an infrastructure to manage academic inventions. While some consider that the advantages of a university entrepreneurial structure outweigh any potential negative effects, others question their detrimental effect on academic scientists’ entrepreneurial behavior. However, this debate remains unresolved as none of these two views have been fully empirically supported. Using multilevel models for a population of 2230 professors in 27 universities in Canada (82 individuals per unit on average), we test the effect of three features of institutional intellectual property right policy characteristics, namely, property rights (own…
Scientists’ engagement in knowledge transfer and exchange: Individual factors, variety of mechanisms and users
[EN] This article aims to provide a deeper understanding of the individual factors behind scientists' involvement in a wide variety of knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) activities. By doing so, the article addresses three major shortcomings in the literature. First, this article considers scientists' involvement in both formal and informal KTE activities. Secondly, the study focuses not only on KTE activities with the private sector, but also with other types of agents. Thirdly, the article adopts an individual approach to distinguish between three types of KTE predictors: individual capacities, training and career trajectories, and motivations. Overall, the results of the regression mo…
Does it take two to tango? Factors related to the ease of societal uptake of scientific knowledge
Science policy increasingly focuses on maximising societal benefits from science and technology investments, but often reduces those benefits to activities involving codifying and selling knowledge, thereby idealising best practice academic behaviours around entrepreneurial superstars. This paper argues that societal value depends on knowledge being used, making knowledge's eventual exploitation partly dependent upon on whether other users-societal or scientific-can use that knowledge (i.e. on how far new knowledge is cognate with users' existing knowledge). When scientists incorporate user knowledge into their research processes, what we call 'open research behaviours', their knowledge may…
Overcoming the “lost before translation” problem: An exploratory study
This paper draws on Stokes’ (1997) framework to position the disconnection between theory and practice as a knowledge production problem. In this sense, we argue that a better understanding of different academic profiles is extremely important to focus efforts on those academics that may overcome the ‘lost before translation’ problem. Our data, that come from a survey of researchers affiliated to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), provide a good opportunity to explore the factors that might increase or impede the likelihood that researchers engage in research that reconciles the quest for fundamental understanding with the consideration of use (Pasteur’s profile), rather than in …