Purpose This study aims to develop a better understanding of radical innovation performance and proposes a comprehensive and theoretical model of the barriers impeding radical innovation from the perspective of researchers working in research institutions in China. Both quantitative and qualitative techniques were used to test the hypotheses regarding barriers to radical innovation and the model proposed in this research. Design/methodology/approach The data was collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with researchers from different research institutions across several cities in China. Next, the data was analyzed by deploying the structural equation modeling technique and calculating the statistical significance of correlations, regression and path coefficients among the latent variables. Findings The results indicated the major barriers impeding radical innovation in Chinese research institutes. Based on these findings, suggested policies, regulations and business models are put forward that can promote radical innovation in these institutes through increasing research freedom, enhancing organizational flexibility, attracting talented researchers and expanding research collaboration. Originality/value The research proposes a comprehensive and theoretical model of the barriers impeding radical innovation from the perspective of researchers working in research institutions in China.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically China’s determined thrust to attain a high level of technological innovation and the factors affecting moving towards a smart and sophisticated manufacturing ecosystem in conjunction with the Belt and Road Initiative (OBOR). Design/methodology/approach This research provides empirical determination of the factors affecting moving towards smart manufacturing ecosystems in China. The method is based on combining two approaches: semi-structured interview and questionnaire-based with academics, experts and managers in various Chinese industrial sectors. The results are based on the multivariate analysis of the collected data. A case study of the current manufacturing ecosystem was also analyzed, in order to understand the present state as well as the potential for China’s competitive edge in the developed OBOR countries. Findings The results illustrate the importance of the infrastructure dimension comprising variables related to ecosystems, industrial clusters and Internet of Things IoT and other advanced technologies. A case study of the city of Shenzhen’s transformation into a smart cluster for innovative manufacturing points out how China’s OBOR initiative for regional collaboration will further transform the regional smart clusters into an ultra-large innovation based smart ecosystem. Originality/value This research is the first to study China’ policies towards playing a prominent role in the Fourth Industrial Revolution 4IR in the context of the OBOR initiative, through empirically defining the factors affecting moving towards a knowledge-intensive smart manufacturing ecosystem where the added value is mostly innovation based.

Purpose This paper aims at studying the concept of innovation ecosystems and investigating the factors affecting them based on their interrelationships with respect to different innovation archetypes. Design/methodology/approach The methodology is based on using multivariate statistical analysis of the inter-correlations among a number of variables which led to extracting a reduced set of new significant factors that affect China’s innovation ecosystem. Findings The results showed that innovation archetypes differ significantly with respect to the majority of the new factors. Practical implications Through identifying these challenges, decision-makers can develop a better understanding of the variables affecting each archetype of innovation and act accordingly. Originality/value The study is the first to fill the gap of addressing a large number of variables affecting innovation and analyzing their interrelationships.

The creation of new knowledge is essential for survival in a global economy, for providing better public services, and for maximising profits over long timeframes. People in an organisation create knowledge, and the organisation facilitates or hinders the creation. Knowledge is created through interaction, and this interaction often results in the emergence of a community. The community invariably develops a common social, philosophical, and cognitive ground amongst the members of an organisation, and helps members to share and learn knowledge of others. In an organisation people learn and share knowledge by watching each other, by talking to each other, by reading documents written by each other to gain a common understanding. Common understanding helps in creating a community. The community is a dynamical eco-system where new ideas are nurtured, existing ideas pruned, and some ‘killed off’. The understanding supports quiescent changes and paradigm shifts as well. A community is defined as a body of people “organized into a political, municipal, or social unity”—a body that shares values, beliefs, and aspirations and creates its own icons. All communities have an exchange system—rewards for good behaviour and opprobrium for bad. And language is amongst one of the important icons for communities as diverse as national and regional communities, and scientific and technical communities. A specialist community uses the language of the populace and then starts to specialise the meaning of certain words within the existing stock of words of the parent language, creates its own words, and places similar restrictions on the grammar of the populace at large when used within the community. This specialisation process results in the language of the community, and the language is called language for special purposes (LSP), language for specific purposes, or just special language of X, where X refers to a specific branch of human enterprise—language of physics, of business, of sports. There are further specialisations: LSP of nuclear physics, financial trading, and football. Special languages can be differentiated from the language of everyday usage at the level of vocabulary; the differences are increasingly less discernible at the levels of grammar, syntax, and semantics. Special languages are in many ways a social phenomenon: consciously created to foster a sense of common purpose amongst a group of people and sometimes used to exclude. Special languages are key instruments of personal and group promotion. A specialist community, individually and collectively, weaves a fabric of facts and imagination (Goodman, 1978); in essence, the weave is a collection of specialist texts. We attempt to relate the development of an LSP to a specific community (of practice).

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