Publication records

This paper asks whether adversity spurs the introduction of process innovations and increases the use of managerial incentives by firms. Using a large panel data set of workplaces in Canada, our identification strategy relies on exogenous variation in adversity arising from increased border security along the 49th parallel following 9/11. Our longitudinal difference-in-differences estimates indicate that firms responded to adversity by introducing new or improved processes, but did not change their use of managerial incentives. These results suggest that the threat of bankruptcy may provide impetus for improving efficiency.

 

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In this article we report on the design, prototyping and results of a research effort aimed at identifying whether and how trust affects the innovativeness of a partnership between two players. The methodology combined an experiment and two questionnaires. The research aimed to increase our understanding of trust and its impact on the innovative outcome of cooperation and to derive some guidance for economic actors, namely R&D managers and executives who intend to build innovation-oriented relationships with their business partners. Specifically, we investigated the effect of trust on partners' creativity and willingness to invest financially in a joint development. Our results show that more trustful partners invest higher amounts in the alliance, while there seems to be an optimum amount of mutual trust between partners who maximize their joint creativity and innovativeness; if the level of mutual trust is below or above this threshold, their joint creativity seems to increase less or even to decrease. Our findings suggest that joint development projects should always include explicit trust development activities at the beginning of the project, and that the amount of trust in the joint team should be monitored to avoid the negative consequences of excessive trust.

© 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

"Think outside the box" is the slogan of countless creativity experts who rightly connect creative thinking to corporate innovation. Jörg Reckhenrich, Martin Kupp and Jamie Anderson advocate, instead, that you think outside the canvas. A review of the thinking of the German artist, Joseph Beuys, shows how managers can unleash bold new ideas.

© 2009 The Author Journal compilation © 2009 London Business School

During the last two weeks of December 2005, the four founding partners of the Rare Find, based in Cape Town, South Africa, were all on the road following up business ideas. Nearly all of these ideas had resulted from a well-placed magazine article in one of the South Africa's leading real estate publications several months earlier.