The fast transformation of technologies into new products or processes is one of the core challenges for any technology-based enterprise. Within the innovation process, we believe, the early phases (“fuzzy front end”) to have the highest impact on the whole process and the result...

In new product development (NPD) unacceptably high failure rates have often been related to insufficiencies during the early development phases. Nevertheless, only little effort is devoted to the early phases, in theory as well as in practice, and managers often indicate the front end as being...

Since the end of the 1970s much discontent has beenexpressed about a decrease in capital expendituresby Western companies . 1 This investment gap -measured by corporate investment as a decliningpercentage of GNP- is cause for concern, 2 and reflectsa low level of innovation. Clearly, during...

Researching the design and usage of complex socio-technical systems as for instancevirtual communities is especially challenging. Such research subject can often hardly bereduced for meaningful study. Virtual communities, consisting of a (social) context thatinteracts with information...

This study focuses on the early stages of international innovation activities, i.e. theorganizational processes through which promising ideas from around the globe are collectedand evaluated. We ask: What characteristics make foreign knowledge interesting to domesticR&D managers? We envision...

This paper summarises results of a survey of 304 knowledge based firms in six centraland east European (CEE) countries. Knowledge-based entrepreneurs in CEE are not‘gazelles’ (i.e., fast growing new technology based firms which have the potential toreshape the industrial landscape). They...

The literature on national systems of innovation (NIS) has neglected the issue ofentrepreneurship because of several incompatibilities between the two notions.The Schumpeterian legacy, the current person-centric view of entrepreneurship,and methodological problems related to treating...

This paper provides an audit of Slovenian initiatives for promoting innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through knowledge transfer from Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The first two sections set out a brief review of knowledge transfer and innovation performance in...