Creative Imitation: Exploring the Case of Cross-Industry Innovation

Wirtschaftswissenschaften

Enkel, Ellen, Gassmann, Oliver

Creative Imitation: Exploring the Case of Cross-Industry Innovation

Enkel, Ellen, Gassmann, Oliver: Creative Imitation: Exploring the Case of Cross-Industry Innovation, R&D Management Journal, 2010; Jg. 40 (3): 256-270.

Originalarbeiten in wissenschaftlichen Fachzeitschriften mit Review-Verfahren

In cross-industry innovation, already existing technologies, systems, concepts and general principles developed in other industries are creatively imitated and retranslated to meet the needs of the company's current market or products. Such solutions can be technologies, patents, specific knowledge, capabilities, business process, or whole business models. Innovations created through a cross industry context are very new phenomenon for theory and practice, following an open innovation approach. Cognitive distance between the cross industry knowledge acquired and the company or problem to be solved was seen as counterproductive factor in previous research. Within cross industry our study suggests that it is the opposite: the more distant the analogical solution is the greater the potential for disruptive innovation. But our cross case analyses of 25 cases show as well that barriers are higher when the perceived cognitive distance is high. Therefore, only innovation efforts with medium distance or companies with low barriers will profit from cross industry innovation.

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