October 2016 Download this article as a PDF

Welcome to the October 2016 issue of the Technology Innovation Management Review. This issue was developed in collaboration with the International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM) – a network of researchers, industrialists, consultants, and public bodies who share an interest in innovation management. The articles in this issue were developed from papers presented at the 2016 ISPIM Innovation Conference, which was held in Porto, Portugal, from June 19–22, 2016 under the theme of "Blending Tomorrow's Innovation Vintage".  

The authors in this issue share insights on the growth ambitions of entrepreneurs, strategy formation in innovation ecosystems, boundary objects for knowledge integration, entrepreneurial universities, and teaching methods for innovation and entrepreneurship.

In the first article, Arto Wallin, Kaisa Still, and Katja Henttonen from VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland, examine entrepreneurial growth ambitions among technology startups. Based on a case study of 21 growth-seeking technology startups operating in Finland, the authors found that an entrepreneur's growth ambitions may be influenced by their startup's institutional and market context, the scalability of their business model, their personal characteristics and experience, and their perceptions of the barriers and constraints of the field. The key implication for organizations aiming to foster technology entrepreneurship is that their support should be tailored to the entrepreneurs' specific growth ambitions and associated needs.

Next, Jarkko Pellikka and Timo Ali-Vehmas from Nokia Technologies in Espoo, Finland, propose a conceptual framework for senior leaders to form strategies to create and capture value in innovation ecosystems. In addition to their analysis of key concepts from the relevant literature, their practical contribution links and contrasts the practical questions arising during strategy development using traditional business-strategy literature with those arising when taking an ecosystem perspective.

Then, Sari Mäenpää, Anu Helena Suominen, and Rainer Breite from Tampere University of Technology, Finland, investigated the use of boundary objects for knowledge integration during a networked innovation process. The focal company in their case study participated in facilitated workshops with multiple stakeholders coming together to solve a major production-automation problem. As a test and refinement of an existing model for knowledge integration, the results show how managers can systematically approach problems requiring expert external knowledge and better integrate knowledge required for innovation within their project networks.

Next, Martin Sperrer, Christiana Müller, and Julia Soos from the Graz University of Technology in Austria assess the progression of Austrian universities of technology towards becoming "entrepreneurial universities". After reviewing the concept of the entrepreneurial university and the relevant stakeholders of today's higher-education institutions, they share the results of their assessment in the form of a scorecard that highlights where good progress had been made and where challenges remain.

Finally, Anna Trifilova, John Bessant, and Allen Alexander from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom answer the question "How can you teach innovation and entrepreneurship?" by emphasizing the importance of gaining tacit knowledge in addition to explicit knowledge. They describe their current research into eight teaching approaches for innovation and entrepreneurship while emphasizing the need for novel project-based, practice-centred, and experiential learning approaches.  

We are proud to be associated with ISPIM and are grateful for their assistance in putting together this issue. We hope you will enjoy and find value in the insights provided through these articles. Also, consider attending the upcoming ISPIM Innovation Forum in Toronto, Canada, from March 19–22, 2017. The deadline to submit outlines is November 25, 2016.

In November, our editorial theme is Innovation in Tourism for which I am pleased to welcome guest editors Dominic Lapointe from Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada, and David Guimont from Cégep de Rivière-du-Loup and Living Lab en Innovation Ouverte (LLio) in Rivière-du-Loup, Canada, in collaboration with the International Association for Tourism Policy.

For future issues, we are accepting general submissions of articles on technology entrepreneurship, innovation management, and other topics relevant to launching and growing technology companies and solving practical problems in emerging domains. Please contact us with potential article topics and submissions.

Chris McPhee
Editor-in-Chief

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Keywords: boundary objects, ecosystems, entrepreneurial university, entrepreneurship, growth ambitions, innovation, knowledge integration, startups, strategy, tacit knowledge, teaching