In this paper we explore how knowledge brokers - specialised design and engineering companies offering services to clients in diverse industries - use analogies for product development. Our research is based on interviews with project leaders of 13 knowledge brokering companies. The interviews...

In this paper, we are going to report on the results of an exploratory piece of research about the typical front-end-related activities in 28 innovation projects carried out by 14 German and 13 Japanese companies to reduce project uncertainty. In all cases we observed a range of activities to...

Discussion of "market pull" versus "technology push" approaches in the field of busi-ness innovation research has followed a certain trend. The empirical research under-taken until now has been concerned in particular with the question of how each of these approaches differently influence the...

The existing literature shows that interdepartmental collaboration within companies enhances innovativeness due to easier access to and integration of knowledge spread over dispersed actors. As companies are well aware of these benefits they also use competition between innovation projects to...