Evolution of R&D Capabilities: The Role of Knowledge Networks Within a Firm

Abstract

In this paper, we suggest that the characteristics of individual positions in an intraorganizational network of inventors or intrafirm knowledge network predict the likelihood with which knowledge created by an inventor is used in the firm's research and development (R&D) activities. Such choices lead to path dependence and subsequent specialization. We provide empirical evidence that a firm's R&D is concentrated in those areas where it chooses to recombine knowledge, offering support for the path-dependent evolution of capabilities. We test this theory by analyzing the R&D networks in DuPont, a highly regarded Fortune 500 chemical company. Cox Proportional Regression models of intrafirm citations on network characteristics offer strong empirical support for our theory.R&D capabilities, knowledge networks, evolutionary, path dependence

Investigating the effects of ICT on innovation and performance of European hospitals: an exploratory study

“…Furthermore, according to innovation literature the exchange and combination of data and knowledge between various functional domains of an organization, and also with other organizations (from the same sector and from other sectors), are of critical importance for product innovation (see, e.g., Nerkar and Paruchuri 2005;Castellaci 2008;Zeng et al 2010).…”

“…Both hospital-specific applications provide economical storage of and convenient access to information by hospital personnel of various different skill levels and specializations , functions and departments, which -as mentioned above -promotes innovation (Nerkar and Paruchuri 2005). ERP systems serve to organize and manage different fields of activities, which provides a basis for organizational innovation that is quite important for hospitals.…”

“…This interoperability facilitates the exchange of data and knowledge with other organizations, which according to the literature promotes innovation (e.g., Nerkar and Paruchuri 2005;Castellaci 2008;Zeng et al 2010). The adoption of the 'vertical' health sector HL7 standards seems to have the strongest positive effects on both product and process innovation, while the adoption of the 'horizontal' XML-based standards has weaker effects only on process innovation.…”

User-Generated Open Source Products: Founder's Social Capital and Time to Product Release

“…To capture both forms of collaboration, we characterize founders' social capital as incorporating both embeddedness and brokerage (see Grewal et al 2006, Nerkar andParuchuri 2005). For example, executing innovation requires the mobilization of available resources, which vary directly with embeddedness, but creativity often stems from integrating diverse information, obtained from social capital such as brokerage (Obstfeld 2005).…”

“…Embeddedness measures the volume of information and resource input founders receive from the network; brokerage measures the novelty of such information and resources Waguespack 2007, Nerkar andParuchuri 2005). For the second factor, we measure both user engagement, which reflects how the end user community participates in the projects (Stewart et al 2006), and the product's audience focus, which determines which community the products target, i.e., the developer users or end users (Subramaniam et al 2009).…”