November 2018 Download this article as a PDF

Welcome to the November 2018 issue of the Technology Innovation Management Review. This month’s editorial theme is Innovation in Practice. The authors in this issue share insights on strategies for collaborating in innovation ecosystems, assessing strategic maturity for innovation, the practice of studying creative communities, and implementing best practices for cybersecurity.

In the first article, Fabian Schroth and Johann Jakob Häußermann from the Fraunhofer Center for Responsible Research and Innovation at Fraunhofer IAO in Berlin, Germany, examine the extent to which companies develop different and new strategies for collaborating with research institutions within innovation ecosystems. Their findings identify two ideal types of collaboration strategies, and they discuss the practical implications of these strategies for managers seeking to collaborate in such systems.

Next, Ferhat Demir, management lecturer, trainer, and consultant, presents a new conceptual model for assessing the maturity of strategic management in any organization. The Strategic Management Maturity Model for Innovation (S3M-i) is composed of six maturity levels with seven dimensions, and it is designed to align innovation with business strategies. The article introduces the model and provides guidance for putting it into practice in assessing a company’s strategic management maturity level for innovation.

Then, Pekka Buttler from the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland, introduces the Practice Method for Studying Creative Communities (PMSCC). This real-time method focuses on the micro-interactions through which organizations generate ideas and therefore offers practitioners and researchers an opportunity to gain new insights into an otherwise relatively opaque process. The article present results from a research project utilizing the PMSCC to illustrate how the method can produce worthwhile findings, foster new insights, and help practitioners hone their creative processes.

Finally, Urpo Kaila from the Finnish IT Center for Science (CSC) and Linus Nyman from the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland, share information security best practices for startups and SMEs. The article provides a lightweight yet comprehensive security framework for owners or managers of small companies who have not yet implemented security-related practices. It also serves as a general introduction to the topic for readers seeking a general understanding of security best practices and their implementation.

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: best practice, collaboration, creativity, cybersecurity, framework, information security, innovation, innovation ecosystems, maturity model, method, model, practice, research, research institutions, strategy

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