Strengthening digital collaboration to enhance social innovation capital: an analysis of Italian small innovative enterprises
| Published date | 08 December 2020 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JIC-02-2020-0058 |
| Pages | 610-632 |
| Date | 08 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Knowledge management,HR & organizational behaviour,Organizational structure/dynamics,Accounting & finance,Accounting/accountancy,Behavioural accounting |
| Author | Roberto Chierici,Debora Tortora,Manlio Del Giudice,Barbara Quacquarelli |
Strengthening digital collaboration
to enhance social innovation
capital: an analysis of Italian small
innovative enterprises
Roberto Chierici and Debora Tortora
Department of Business and Law, University of Milan–Bicocca, Milan, Italy
Manlio Del Giudice
Department of International Business Administration, Link Campus University,
Roma, Italy and
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow,
Russian Federation, and
Barbara Quacquarelli
Department of Human Sciences for Education, University of Milan–Bicocca,
Milan, Italy
Abstract
Purpose –The study aims to investigate whether and how digital transformation, in terms of digital
collaboration, joint efforts with internal/external partners to achieve common goals and the adoption of digital
tools supporting this pra ctice, affect social inno vation capital in the cont ext of small innovative
enterprises (SIEs).
Design/methodology/approach –The research hypotheses derived from the analysis of the literature,
evaluating how sharing resources, sharing intensity and digital patterns affect the collective capacity of SIEs to
innovate, were investigated by applying multiple regression analysis. Data were retrieved from a sample of
Italian SIEs through an online survey.
Findings –The main findings suggest that the propensity to spread resources and the sharing intensity
positively affect the collective capacity of SIEs to innovate. Also, the effect of resources sharing on collective
innovation increases as more digital patterns are used as tools. The connection is weaker for the intensity of
resources sharing.
Research limitations/implications –The study is conducted on Italian SIEs, a particular cluster of small
and medium enterprises (SMEs). It would be interesting to compare and contrast the results of an analysis of a
large sample of international companies, of different sizes and belonging to digital and non-digital sectors.
Originality/value –The results enrich the existing literature on social innovation capital, by clarifying its
competitive benefits on the characteristic context of the SIEs and underlining the mediating role of the digital
patterns.
Keywords Digitalisation, Social capital, Innovation capital, Firms’collaboration
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In the age of global hyperconnection, innovation, a fundamental pillar of company
competitiveness, although investigated often and with different approaches, needs to be
considered in the social process perspective (Hellstr€
om, 2004;Doh and Acs, 2010;Franz et al.,
2012;de Melo et al., 2020).
JIC
22,3
610
The article is based on the study funded by the Basic Research Program of the National Research
University Higher School of Economics (HSE) and by the Russian Academic Excellence Project “5-100”.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/1469-1930.htm
Received 28 February 2020
Revised 31 July 2020
30 September 2020
1 October 2020
Accepted 8 November 2020
Journal of Intellectual Capital
Vol. 22 No. 3, 2021
pp. 610-632
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1469-1930
DOI 10.1108/JIC-02-2020-0058
Since digital technologies, digital platforms and digital infrastructures extended to macro,
meso and micro levels, business innovation processes changed in significant ways, favouring
collaboration and knowledge sharing among individuals, firms, other agents and the context
(Nambisan et al., 2018,2019;Malhotra and Majchrzak, 2019;van Wijk et al., 2019).
Even though, from a business viewpoint, collaborational approach has an important role
in the development of every organisation, it appears to be crucial especially for those small
firms that are engaged in developing innovation. Small firms often lack the abundance of
resources (i.e. human capital, financial resources and so on) required to engage in sole
complex innovative projects (Hannan and Freeman, 1984;Freel, 2000;Ko et al., 2020). Hence,
collaboration represents a way to overcome this physiological lack of resources. Accordingly,
as theoretical and practical evidence showed, the concept of innovation has been redefined,
going beyond the boundaries of technology (i.e. new products/processes), since changes
originate from all the elements comprising a firm’s business model. Innovation moved on
from the technology push theory (Freeman, 1994;Rothwell, 1994) to the market pull process
(Rothwell, 1992;Brem and Voigt, 2009), continuing towards the coupling innovation process
theory (Rothwell and Zegueld, 1985), a combination of the previous two theories, then
followed by the functional integration innovation process theory (Imai et al., 1985) and the
systems integration and networking innovation process theory (Dodgson et al., 2002). In sum,
innovation has been progressively based on models of systems integration and open
innovation (Chesbrough et al., 2006;Huizingh, 2011). In particular, open innovation has been
defined as a new paradigm in innovation management (Chesbrough and Crowther, 2006).
Open innovation emerged in the high-tech context, and it now affects several sectors and
industries (Bughin et al., 2008). In short, open innovation refers to the formal and informal
linkages of external collaboration in which an organisation engages with the actors of the
ecosystem to foster its innovative performance (Scuotto et al., 2017a). Also, previous studies
investigated the degree of openness to exploring new knowledge sources across organisation
boundaries, contributing to expand existing internal knowledge with a higher level of
innovation (Wang et al., 2020). Hence, the boundaries between internal and external sources of
innovation disappear among the many and various actors in the innovative process.
In other words, the capacity for innovation does not exclusively lie within corporate
contexts using a firm’s own resources. It is nourished by external relationships, with the
emphasis on cooperation (Katz et al., 2013) in the innovative process (Sisodiya et al., 2013;
Salter et al., 2014;Rubera et al., 2015). The relational behaviour of the players involved is
interlinked with knowledge resources (Hayter, 2013), from mere access to partners’
knowledge platforms to the transfer of information and know-how to the co-production of
new knowledge, requiring organisations to be increasingly complex (Klerkx and Aarts, 2013).
Hence, by adopting a collaborative business model, innovation value is generated by a
combination of complementary resources (Eppler et al., 2011;Eppler and Hoffmann, 2012;
Rohrbeck et al., 2013). Inflows and outflows of knowledge are used to accelerate internal
innovation and extend markets for the external use of innovation. On the one hand, new ideas
flow into a firm in an inbound process of open innovation. On the other hand, the outbound
process enables external organisations to acquire internally developed innovations and to
commercialise them, thanks to more suitable business models (Brunswicker and Wim
Vanhaverbeke, 2015).
Nevertheless, in this context, it is important to avoid the creation of exclusively path-
dependent innovation knowledge from external sources. Thus, organisations should develop
internal capabilities and practical tools and systems to manage and integrate the different
sources of knowledge, both internal and external (Ferraris et al., 2017). In this context, an
interesting area of investigation examines the contribution of digital transformation–the
process of exploiting digital technologies and supporting capabilities to create a robust new
digital business model (Gartner, 2019)–to intra- and inter-organisational collaboration to help
Italian small
innovative
enterprises
611
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