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Tanev Stoyan et al., « How do value co-creation activities relate to the perception of firms' innovativeness? » ,

PurposeThe paper seeks to examine the relationship between the number of competitive intelligence (CI) information topics used by small Canadian firms and their innovation performance, measured by the number of newly launched products, processes and services.Design/methodology/approachA CI information framework was applied including 42 information topics classified into four groups, i.e. industry, competitors, customers and firm. The 45 firms in the sample were classified into three types, i.e. new technology‐based, specialized supplier, and service firms. Statistical analysis was used to analyze the relationship between CI information and innovation.FindingsAnalysis of the results suggested that there was a clear relationship between the CI information firms used and their innovation performance, specialized suppliers firms were the most efficient users of CI information, information about industry and competitors was the least used but highly relevant for firms' innovation performance, and information about customers was found to be highly used and relevant for the innovation of all firms.Practical implicationsThe methodological validation of the CI information framework could help executive managers in the development of analytical tools enhancing the role of CI for new product/process/service launch.Originality/valueThe results demonstrate the need for using appropriate firm classifications and in depth statistical analysis when studying the relationship between CI information and innovation.

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We focus in this paper on value propositions for external stakeholders created by new companies that are committed to scale, that is, to growing the amounts they are worth rapidly. For example, a company that grows its value from $0 to $1 billion in less than ten years is a company that scaled. Scaling company value is the guiding principle that these focal companies use to manage their internal affairs, as well as their interactions with external stakeholders. For these new companies, the value propositions that matter most are those that help them scale, and value proposition portfolios for their stakeholders are their most valuable assets. The purpose of this article is to identify (1) features that make a value proposition for an external stakeholder different from other new company resources, and (2) factors that make a value proposition beneficial to a new company committed to scale. Important contributions have been made to improve our understanding of the value proposition concept since it was first introduced in 1983 (Lanning & Michaels, 1988; Lanning, 2020). While these contributions have been widely discussed and cited (Goldring, 2017; Payne et al., 2017; Eggert et al., 2018; Wouters et al., 2018; Payne et al., 2020), we find it difficult to understand what the features are that make a value proposition distinct from other company resources, what the factors are that make a value proposition for external stakeholders valuable, and how new companies that wish to scale can costeffectively develop, communicate, and deliver value propositions. Most of the extant research on value propositions focuses on established companies, rather than new companies committed to scale. These studies implicitly assume that a company that can invest in refining or enhancing its value propositions already has an established customer base, distribution channels, One of the most valuable resources a company owns is the "portfolio of value propositions" to its diverse external stakeholders, such as customers, investors, and resource owners. In this article, we fill a gap in the value proposition literature by identifying features that make the value propositions of new companies different from other resources, along with factors that make them valuable. A value proposition is conceived as being what enables and improves business transactions between a new company and external stakeholders. We reason that two features in particular make value propositions of new companies distinct: (1) business transactions between a new company and one or more external stakeholders, and (2) investments to create and improve a new company's value propositions that enable business transactions. We provide a definition of "value proposition" and postulate that a value proposition will benefit a new company when it: (1) strengthens the new company's capabilities to scale; (2) increases demand for the new company's products and services; and (3) increases the number, diversity, and rapidity of external investments in the new company's value proposi...