Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles of four distinct but related aspects of psychological capital – optimism, hope, self-efficacy and resilience – in facilitating employee creativity. Drawing on the psychological capital perspective and the creativity literature, we propose that optimism and hope increase employee self-efficacy and resilience, which benefits employee creativity. Moreover, the authors hypothesize that self-efficacy and resilience have mediating roles in the psychological capital context, which, in turn, has a positive effect on individual employees’ creativity. Design/methodology/approach: Data were obtained from a survey of multiple manufacturing firms on individual employee psychological capital and creativity. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses regarding psychological capital and creativity in a sample of 468 individual employees. Findings: The results provide evidence that only resilience plays a mediating role between optimism and hope and employee creativity. The authors found that psychological capital is positively related to employee creativity. Practical implications: These findings provide guidance for understanding how to better address the psychological capital that contributes to employee creativity in the workplace. Specifically, this study provides a rationale for facilitating the development of employee creativity by exposing the effect and path of psychological capital. Originality/value: This study is the first to examine the antecedents and mediating role of four distinct yet correlated dimensions of psychological capital on employee creativity. The findings of this study contribute to the theoretical development of a conceptual model that investigates the black box of the four aspects of psychological capital and creativity.

Purpose: This study aims to examine the relationships among open innovation, organizational ambidexterity and firm performance. One important aspect of open innovation is that it enables a firm to develop its organizational ambidexterity capability and become more efficient in using this capability to improve its performance.Design/methodology/approach: The authors introduce a moderated mediation theoretical framework to reveal the bridging role of organizational ambidexterity in the effect of open innovation on firm performance. The theoretical model is empirically validated using survey data from 215 high-tech firms.Findings: The authors find that open innovation plays a moderating role in the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and firm performance. Furthermore, organizational ambidexterity plays a significant mediating role in the relationship between open innovation and firm performance, and open innovation has a nonlinear, inverse U-shaped moderation effect on the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and firm performance.Research limitations/implications: This is one of the first studies to undertake a moderated mediation analysis by highlighting the mediating role of organizational ambidexterity and the moderating role of open innovation in influencing firm performance. The authors make a theoretical contribution to the field of open innovation and organizational behavior, and the authors provide concrete and feasible decision-making suggestions to decision makers adopting open innovation.Practical implications: The empirical results can help high-tech firm managers ascertain the organizational ambidexterity practices that can be employed and determine the level of open innovation to enhance firm performance.Originality/value: This research provides new insights into whether and how firms can grasp the benefits of organizational ambidexterity to undertake open innovation activities. The findings not only contribute to advancing the mediating effect of organizational ambidexterity but also verify the inverse U-shaped moderation of open innovation in the relationship between organizational ambidexterity and firm performance.

The paper intends to examine the mediating role of intellectual capital in the relation between the openness of service companies’ search strategies and thr innovation performance. It models the relationship between external search strategies of open innovation and proposes how intellectual capital matters for openness strategies in the service industries. Moreover, the paper intends to expand the field of open innovation through exploring the mediating effect of intellectual capital. This paper fulfills an identified need to study how intellectual capital can be enabled in the open innovation of the service industries. Both Hierarchical Multiple Regression and the Structural Equation Model were employed to test the innovation model by the panel data of the second Taiwan Innovation Survey including 948 service firms. Empirical insights enable us to have a better understanding in terms of how service companies learn from external knowledge sources. This paper suggests that the impact of openness strategies on innovation performance becomes indirect through the partial mediator of intellectual capital so that innovation performance in service industry benefits from simultaneously incorporating intellectual capital with the efficient openness strategies. Finally, the paper includes implications for more insights into how service companies improve their innovative activities with external searching strategies and practices in terms of intellectual capital.

Despite increasing attention to the role of diverse alliances in emerging market, few studies have explicitly explored the roles of environment and network position on diverse R&D alliances. This study investigates how environment and network position interact with diverse R&D alliances to affect firm innovation performance. Specifically, we examine the moderating effects of technology uncertainty, market uncertainty, network centrality position and competitive intensity. The findings from a survey of 144 biotechnology firms indicate that diverse R&D alliances have a positive effect on firms’ innovation performance, and these effects are moderated by environmental factors and alliance network position. The overall R&D alliance network was also examined to understand a broad variety of collaboration patterns of emerging biotechnology firms.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate alliance partner diversity (APD) as a driving force that potentially enhances firms’ innovation generation (IG) in interfirm open alliance contexts. The authors propose that APD enhances IG but that the effects depend on both alliance network position and the double-edged external knowledge search strategy. Building on the knowledge-based view and social capital theory, the authors formally model how external knowledge search strategies can lead to productive or destructive acquisitions of external knowledge in interfirm open alliance networks. The authors theorize that when an individual firm adopts a central position in a complex interfirm open alliance network, its propensity toward beneficial IG depends on its knowledge search strategy (i.e. its breadth and depth) due to the joint influence of network position and knowledge search strategy on innovation.Design/methodology/approach: Using an original large-scale survey of high-tech firms, this study shows that the relationship between partner diversity and IG is contingent on a firm’s network position and knowledge search strategy. The authors also offer an original analysis of how knowledge search strategy (i.e. its breadth and depth) in network centrality (NC) affects the efficacy of knowledge acquisition in interfirm open alliance networks. Empirically, the authors provide an original contribution to the open innovation literature by integrating social capital and knowledge-based theory to rigorously measure firm IG.Findings: Overall, our findings suggest that the knowledge search strategy imparts a double-edged effect that may promote or interfere with external knowledge in IG in the context of the diversity of alliance partners.Research limitations/implications: The work has important limitations, such as its analysis of a single industry in the empirical models. Therefore, further studies should consider multiple industries that may provide useful insights into innovation decisions.Practical implications: External knowledge search is valuable, particularly in the high-tech industry, as external knowledge acquisition generates innovation output. This study serves to raise managers’ awareness of various approaches to external knowledge searches and highlights the importance of network position in knowledge acquisition from interfirm open alliance collaborations.Originality/value: This paper is the first to investigate the double-edged effect of knowledge search on interfirm open alliance networks. It also contributes to the theoretical and practical literature on interfirm open alliance networks by reflecting on external knowledge search and underlying network centrality and APD factors.

Purpose: This study attempts to reveal product platform strategy via business-to-business (B2B) platform ecosystems. The authors advance the views of platform ecosystems in the innovation literature by introducing a contingency perspective that underscores the role of market, organizational and technological innovativeness in product platform strategy.Design/methodology/approach: This study explores three contingent factors, specifically market innovativeness, technological innovativeness and organizational innovativeness that affect the product platform strategy of high-tech firms. The theoretical model is empirically validated using survey data from 191 high-tech firms.Findings: Using a data set of high-tech manufacturing firms, the results show that product platform strategy is positively related to firm performance. Additionally, the results provide evidence supporting the positive moderating effect of the three-way interaction among market, organizational and technological innovativeness on the contribution of product platform strategy to firm performance.Research limitations/implications: A platform product strategy is a determining factor in firm performance that requires firms to have a “fit” with their innovation activities. This study contributes to theoretical development at the intersection of product platform strategy and innovativeness.Practical implications: When firms seek to align their technological innovativeness with their organizational innovativeness, the benefits of such innovativeness may be more pronounced in a platform product context. Moreover, the results may help guide platform managers and decision makers in identifying and securing appropriate innovation activities to enhance product platform strategies.Originality/value: This study provides a product platform strategy in B2B platform ecosystems and shows how different innovation activities interact to improve the product platform strategy.