International Journal of Innovation Science

Jones, Graham; Chirino Chace, Bernardita; Wright, Justin

2021 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1108/ijis-06-2020-0087

The innovative capacity of an organization is typically realized through unit-level teams. Previous studies correlate innovation performance with cultural diversity of teams, but note that team dynamics need to be optimized to derive maximum benefit. Herein, this study offers an assessment of available team building instruments through the lens of diverse innovation teams. In a demonstration project in the pharmaceutical industry, this study then outlines specific tools and approaches which can be successfully deployed through team coaching and mentoring.Design/methodology/approachA cluster of nine innovation teams with varying degrees of cultural diversity was provided with assessment and management instruments which had been identified and field tested by a mentoring team. Content included cultural awareness tools, innovation team profiling methods and Team Science (SciTS) ideology. Teams were funded, coached and mentored through a six-month performance period and assessed at regular intervals.FindingsTeam assessments provided correlations between performance (measured by project completion and new intellectual property generated) and diversity together with wealth of information on intra-team culture and dynamics. Concrete recommendations from the study include adoption of appropriate communication standards to promote inclusivity, use of SciTS operational tracking metrics to enhance engagement, use of the FourSight group profiling methodology and cultural quotient scale cultural awareness instruments at team-forming stage to promote effective dynamics and enhance inclusivity.Practical implicationsCultural diversity has a positive impact on innovation teams. This said, for maximum benefit cultural awareness of team members should be optimized to avoid unintended conflicts developing. Such issues can be exacerbated when teams are deployed remotely and preventative measures should be established. These issues became of heightened significance as a result of telecommuting imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and have longer-term implications, as corporations consider global air travel reduction through environmental concerns. A tracking tool is described to monitor team engagement and promote inclusivity. It is expected that the learnings can influence how teams can best form, normalize and operate within corporate innovation programs and form the basis of long-term impact studies.Originality/valueThis represents the first systematic study on the impact of cultural diversity and team dynamics within innovation programs in the pharmaceutical industry. The tools and methodologies deployed are widely available and can be adopted by innovation teams in many adjacent industries with established innovation ecosystems.

Parihar, Amitesh Singh; Sinha, Vinita

2021 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1108/ijis-09-2020-0158

The purpose of this paper is to identify the strengths and areas of improvement for taking organizations one step ahead in terms of adopting digitalization, analytics and governance. Also, the paper aims to identify the organizational cultural traits that influence the adoption of digitization and technology, analytics and governance.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative analysis of survey questionnaire collected from working professionals of various manufacturing industries to find out the driving traits and the restraining traits and to propose which is dominating. Sector: manufacturing, sample: working professionals across functions and sample size: 80–100 people.FindingsThis research suggests the cultural traits that influence the adoption of digitization and technology, analytics and governance in any organization.Practical implicationsAs organizations explore new ways of working, their organizational culture and employee perspective would play an important role in prioritizing the interventions. This research aims to suggest a strategy to strengthen the driving forces and/or weaken the restraining forces.Originality/valueThere are various papers available on the individual topics but the uniqueness of this paper is that it represents all three factors in a single research and their influencers.

Sinha, Manish; Srivastava, Divyank

2021 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1108/ijis-09-2020-0155

With the current pandemic situation, the world is shifting to online buying and therefore the purpose of this study is to understand how the industry can improve sales based on the product recommendations shown on their online platforms.Design/methodology/approachThis paper has studied content-based filtering using decision trees algorithm and collaborative filtering using K-nearest neighbour algorithm and measured their impact on sales of product of different genres on e-commerce websites and if their recommendation causes a difference in sales.This paper has conducted a field experiment to analyse the customer frequency, change in sales caused by different algorithms and also tried analysing the change in buying preferences of customers in post-pandemic situation and how this paper can improve on the search results by incorporating them in the already used algorithms.FindingsThis study indicates that different algorithms cause differences in sales and score over each other depending upon the category of the product sold. It also suggests that post-Covid, the buying frequency and the preferences of consumers have changed significantly.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited to existing users of these sites, it also requires the sites to have a huge database of active users and products. Also, the preferences and likings of Indian subcontinent might not generally apply everywhere else.Originality/valueThis study enables better insight into consumer behaviour, thus enabling the data scientists to design better algorithms and help the companies improve their product sales.

Mishra, Siwalik; Bhattacharya, Sonali

2021 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1108/ijis-09-2020-0170

The purpose of this study is to identify and understand key strategies relating to the staffing, employee experience and employer branding of an inventive startup in robotics training and consumer robotics manufacturing space, keeping in mind the constraints and challenges faced by the company right from the beginning to date.Design/methodology/approachA case-based method approach has been used. The Founder-Chief executive officer was interviewed multiple times. Interviews were transcribed for further analysis. Data was also sourced from the company website, news and digital media reports.FindingsHuman resource strategies used by the company in venturing out in this niche market were explored and linked to the concepts of staffing, employee experience and employer branding. This case can be used for teaching the human resource challenges of a growing start-up.Practical implicationsWith the help of this case, readers may be able to appreciate the practice of critical concepts of staffing and employee experience in a growing startup.Originality/valueThe premise of a budding start-up in a niche industry, such as robotics training in educational institutions and manufacturing of small-scale consumer robotics, adds to the novelty of the case.

Jain, Shailesh; Gandhi, Aradhana Vikas

2021 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1108/ijis-10-2020-0181

This paper aims to understand the impact of modern technologies such as artificial intelligence on impulse buying behaviour of Indian shoppers specifically in fashion retail outlets.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical study on the effect of artificial intelligence on impulse purchase decisions was conducted through an e-survey of the Indian shoppers. The data collected was analysed using factor analysis and multiple regression analysis.FindingsThe impact of modern technologies which are used by the retailers to enhance sale and consumer engagement was studied. The relationship between use of artificial intelligence parameters such as the purchase duration, recommended products, product information and human interaction and its impact on Impulse Purchase was studied and the results revealed that all these factors except product information had a significant impact on the impulse purchase decision of the buyer.Practical implicationsThis study will be useful to the fashion retailers to gauge the effect of incorporating artificial intelligence and its impact on driving sales by attracting shoppers to their outlets.Originality/valueThis study specifically focusses on the impact of modern technologies on impulse purchase of Indian shoppers in fashion retail outlets. Other research works have focussed on impact of visual merchandising, store layouts, store environment and promotional activities on impulse purchases. This is one of the few studies which deals with the impact of artificial intelligence on impulse buying behaviour of Indian shoppers specifically in the fashion retail segment.

Jha, Pallavi; Bhattacharya, Sanjay

2021 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1108/ijis-09-2020-0169

The concept of emotional intelligence (EI) and servant leadership (SL) are two variables that have been essential for the organization leaders to ensure a healthy and happy work–life for their subordinates. The purpose of this study to be conducted was for leaders understand the role EI and SL play in maintaining employee job satisfaction and help them to create engaging environment and bring effectiveness in the work productivity of the assets.Design/methodology/approachQuantitative method was used and a total of 150 people were taken as a sample which consisted of several leaders and their subordinates and an emotional intelligence questionnaire by NHS and SL: multidimensional questionnaire was floated to rate the leaders EI and SL behavior comparing it with the leaders self-rating. The result was analyzed using SPSS, Pearson correlation and regression was used to understand the significance level and reliability of all the independent and dependent variables, respectively.FindingsThrough correlation and regression, it was found that presence of EI and SL style in a leader plays a huge role in employee job satisfaction. It was also found that EI and SL are the substantial predictor which have positive impact over employee job satisfaction.Originality/valueThe outcome of the study will help the leaders understand the significance that the EI and SL have in their role to maintain employee job satisfaction, as well as the training and development measures for leaders.

Dsouza, Durant; Sharma, Dipasha

2021 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1108/ijis-10-2020-0184

This study aims to understand the consumer behavior in the context of online food delivery services that has become crucial for all the players in the market to meet their bottom line, especially given the fact that COVID-19 has altered the mindset of consumers. The current perception was addressed and analyzed to understand the trends. So, this study examined various parameters such as e-services quality, food quality (FQ), safety measures (SM), customer satisfaction (CS) and customer loyalty (CL) in correlation to each other.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey was conducted for users of the online food delivery services to understand the intentions during the month of June 2020. The total number of responses gathered were 201. The responses collected were analyzed based on the constructs formed for the following tests: reliability, convergent and discriminant analysis. Also, principal component analysis was performed to ensure that the variables are correlated to each other. This ensured that the structural equation model built is valid and of best fit. The hypotheses were tested for the discussed variables, and the results were presented accordingly.FindingsThe research has indicated that FQ plays a vital role for CS which indirectly influences CL. Also, the SM adopted by a restaurant and delivery service will help retain their customer base, thus ensuring loyalty.Practical implicationsThe study will help managers of restaurants and online food platforms reorient their business model and framework according to the parameters that affect the mindset of the consumer and also help improve the retention of their customer base.Originality/valueThis study is original in nature and takes onto account the COVID-19 situation. The study provides insights for online food platforms to touch mainly the pain points and insights by the consumer which will aid in developing new strategies for business development and customer retention in the future.

R.L., Manogna; Mishra, Aswini Kumar

2021 International Journal of Innovation Science

doi: 10.1108/ijis-07-2020-0104

The study aims to analyze the impact of Research & Development (R&D) intensity on the firm’s performance, measured by growth of sales in the emerging market like India. Innovation strategy and its outcomes for firms may be different in developing countries as compared to developed countries. Thus, a study that focuses on the emerging economy like India, with a majority of the population dependent on agriculture, is of prime importance to the firm performance in the food and agricultural manufacturing industry. For this study, the broader focus will be on one widely recognised factor which may influence the growth rate of firms, i.e. investment in innovations which is in terms of R&D expenditure.Design/methodology/approachThe paper investigates the relationship between the R&D efforts and growth of firms in the Indian food and agricultural manufacturing industry during 2001–2019. To empirically test the relationship between firm’s growth (FG) and R&D investments, system generalised method of moments technique has been used, hence enabling to avoid problems related to endogeneity and simultaneity.FindingsThe findings reveal that investments in innovations have a positive effect on the growth of firms in the Indian food and agricultural manufacturing industry. Investment in R&D also enables the firms to reap benefits from externalities present in the industry. Further analysis reveals that younger firms grow faster when they invest in R&D. More specifically, this paper finds evidence in the case of the food and agricultural industry that import of raw materials negatively affects the FG and export intensity positively affects the growth in the case of R&D firms.Research limitations/implicationsThis study suggests that the government should encourage the industries to invest optimally in R&D projects by providing favourable fiscal treatments and R&D subsidies which are observed to have positive effects in various developed countries.Originality/valueTo the best of the author’s knowledge, the current paper is the first to analyse the impact of innovation in food and agricultural industry on firm’s performance in an emerging economy context with the latest data. This paper agrees that a government initiative to increase private R&D expenditure would have favourable effects on FG as growing investments in R&D lead to further growth of the firms.