Generic pharmaceutical companies strive to develop generic versions of drugs to obtain marketing rights after those drugs go off patent. Being a highly competitive industry, these companies have to work towards simultaneously reducing the development time and costs while meeting all the quality standards. While the literature has discussed the multiple trade-offs in product development, there is limited research on how the companies can break these trade-offs and simultaneously improve performance on multiple objectives and particularly in the context of the generic pharmaceutical industry. In this research, we try to bridge this gap and develop an improvement framework for simultaneously achieving the objectives in terms of development time, cost and quality. We apply the framework in a generic pharmaceutical company by redesigning its new product development process following Six Sigma methodologies and demonstrate the benefits through pilot projects with varying levels of complexity. The results show that a well-designed process which facilitates process standardization, optimization and collaboration can help in simultaneously achieving improvements in development time, cost and quality.

The current open innovation literature needs to be complemented with work on the managerial challenges faced by companies working with an innovation intermediary to solve research and development (R&D) problems. Based on an exploratory case study design, we investigate these managerial challenges in seven chemical companies working with the same innovation intermediary. Three recurring challenges were identified in all companies: (1) enlisting internal scientists to work with the innovation intermediary; (2) selecting the right problems; and (3) formulating problems so as to enable novel solutions. Based on the knowledge management literature, we explain how these challenges arise out of scientists' different work practices in internal vs. external R&D problem solving and we identify and discuss a number of remedies to these challenges.

The relationship between social capital and R&D team innovation has received increasing attention in the literature. However, little is known about the mechanisms between the two. This study aims to narrow the gap by investigating the mediating roles of psychological safety and learning from mistakes between the three dimensions of social capital and innovation at team level. Our sample comprised 151 R&D teams with 585 members from nine Chinese high-tech companies. The results showed that psychological safety and learning from mistakes (LFM) partially mediated the relationship between the structural and cognitive capital and innovation in R&D teams, and fully mediated the relationship between the relational capital and innovation in R&D teams. We further discussed subsequent managerial implications and future research directions.

Patent trolls have many faces, since the media uses this expression in various ways. The patent troll phenomenon thus seems to be an ambiguous term that is discussed in several directions. This paper reveals that a patent troll as such has no distinct shape or appearance. Our analysis redeems a troll classification solely from firms’ market position, such as being nonpracticing, and shows that a patent troll business can only be defined by the respective practice to enforce intellectual property rights (IPR). Using 10 case studies, of which five are treated in detail, the analysis reveals a distinct typology of IPR enforcement mechanisms and suggests a framework to assess the troll business and its effects. This paper furthermore identifies the nature of troll behavior to be: (a) a practice to enforce IP rights enabling repayments for earlier innovation investments and (b) a strategy that may create costs to affected industries. The differentiated troll analysis reveals negative but also positive effects of the troll business on incentives to innovate.

This research evaluates the frontier National Telecommunication Program (NTP) in Taiwan using the data envelopment analysis approach and analyzes the influence of team communication and structure on R&D performance by establishing a structural equation modeling relationship. The results show that team communication is highly correlated with R&D performance. The high-scored projects have internal communication patterns with a higher meeting frequency but shorter dialogue duration, a uniform distribution of regular meetings, a scheme for the lower hierarchy to meet with the project leader, a well-managed channel to access accumulative expertise, and an open forum for communication. They also have external communication patterns with a gatekeeper bridging inward and outward information, a lower frequency of time-consuming external sourcing, and a higher frequency of external cooperation, referencing, learning, and benchmarking. Though team structure has no significant influence on R&D performance, the high-scored research group focused more on the structural dimensions of research strategy, laboratory management, and motivation incentives. This research will provide effective principles of project management to team leaders and industrial policy guidelines to program sponsors.

University spin-out (USO) companies play an increasingly important role in generating value from radical, generic technologies, but this translation requires significant resources from other players to reach the market. Seven case studies illuminate how relationships with each type of partner can be leveraged to help the firm create value. We find that most firms in the sample are aware of the importance of corporate partners and actively seek to cultivate these relationships, but may not be taking full advantage of the resources available through nonparent academic institutions and other USOs with similar or complementary technologies.

More (rather than fewer) material resources are thought to be the key driver in innovation project performance. Recent empirical evidence, however, suggests that the influence of material resource availability on innovation projects is not as simple and straightforwardly positive as it may seem. We build on the concept of an innovation project team's resource elasticity to disentangle the material resource–innovation output conundrum. This concept is analogous to the marketing concept of price elasticity and points to four types of innovation project teams based on their resource elasticity: In resource-elastic teams, the relationship between material resources and innovation outcomes is positive (hence, they are ‘resource driven’ when able to dispose of adequate material resources or ‘resource victims’ when lacking these material resources). In contrast, and as a significant departure from previous work, resource-inelastic teams show no or even a negative relationship between material resource adequacy and team performance (thus, the teams are ‘resourceful’ if they can perform with limited material resources or ‘resource burners’ if they show low success with adequate material resources). Because neither adequate nor inadequate material resources seem to be a reliable predictor of success, we synthesize empirical research efforts that point to each team type's key characteristics to derive novel implications for managing innovation projects.

New sensor and actuator concepts based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) are increasingly being developed from lab status toward commercialization. The associated technology development for the provision of improved functionalities and cost reduction often requires highly interdisciplinary development teams where scientists and engineers from different disciplines closely work together. Managing these teams is a key challenge for MEMS/NEMS organizations. This research examined eight technology developments in MEMS/NEMS in international companies. Based on in-depth interviews with innovators, we explored the managerial aspects of development teams. We identified and discuss (1) leadership, (2) market, (3) team structure and culture, (4) innovation motivation, (5) innovation driver, (6) experience and know-how, and (7) product vision and innovation strategy as key influences on teams in the early development phases of MEMS/NEMS. Our study reveals that integrative and manufacturing know-how and capabilities are the most critical capacities to be developed by the team from the idea to the concept phase. The team's lived experience during long development times from 5 to 10 years or more may allow a fast response to changes from market and technology (e.g. materials and nanotechnology). The results indicate that the process of how know-how and capabilities are created by the team is more important than the mere existence of specific expertise.