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Open research questions in Innovation and Knowledge Management

148 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 3,946 Innovation and Knowledge Management papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • First, a notable limitation of this study is that it assumes the three dimensions of digital enabling data systems exert uniformly posi- tive effects on both knowledge reconfiguration deepening and extension. While prior studies present mixed findings regarding the roles of learning and experience iner- tia in innovation, with many scholars emphasizing their positive effects (Liao 2002; Tsai et al. This underexplored duality limits the theoretical depth of our moderating effect analysis.

    Exploring the impact of digital enabling data systems on the innovation performance of digital service firms: the roles of knowledge reconfiguration and knowledge inertia · 2026 · DOI

  • IC adoption in CCFs is constrained by rigid correspondence between technical and organizational systems, and evidence on how CCFs address this challenge remains scarce.

    Breaking the Mirror: How Conventional Construction Firms Embrace Industrialized Construction · 2026 · DOI

  • This implies that future studies should investigate the interactions between the mechanisms of explainability, transparency practices, and various modalities of human-AI interaction in relation to the relationship between redistribution of epistemic author- ity and governance tension.

    Generative AI, epistemic authority, and knowledge governance tension: implications for innovation novelty and reliability · 2026 · DOI

  • Rather than being larger replicas of European champions, SADI companies display network strategies that reflect a mixture of inward- and outward-looking approaches, and these strategies influence their per- formance in ways that the existing studies have not yet explored.

    Business network strategies and performance of specialized, advanced, differentiated, and innovative (SADI) Chinese companies · 2026 · DOI

  • Finally, as this study is limited to a single municipal case, future research would benefit from comparative and longitudinal studies examining how emerging learning conditions influence innovation outcomes across different public-sector contexts. Innovation in public services: Filling a gap in the literature.

    Conditions for Workplace Innovation in a Public Organisation · 2026 · DOI

  • While mediation mechanisms are conceptually established in adoption literature, their empirical specification in the wholesale B2B emerging economy context extends existing work in a practically important and understudied domain. For training programs: technical capability development (addressing resource accessibility) must be paired with strategic understanding development (addressing complementarity recognition), recognizing that usefulness demonstrations alone are insufficient to build complementarity perception in low digital maturity contexts (H9).

    Institutional and Resource-Based Drivers of E-Commerce Adoption in Relationship-Embedded Wholesale Markets · 2026 · DOI

  • The primary limitations of this study arise from constraints of time and cost, which restricted the research scope to the city of Istanbul. Expanding future studies to include a nationwide sample across Turkey would enhance the generalizability and robustness of the findings. Additionally, the use of a convenience sampling method constitutes a methodological limitation due to its limited representativeness (Baltacı, 2018). Another limitation of the study is that the research sample consisted solely of R&D employees. Given that innovation efforts should ideally be a priority for all employees in contemporary organizations, including participants from different departments in future research would provide a more comprehensive understanding and strengthen the current findings. Furthermore, incorporating additional variables such as leadership, organizational structure, and organizational culture in subsequent studies would allow for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying innovation generation processes. GENİŞLETİLMİŞ ÖZET Giriş Bu çalışma, çevresel belirsizliğin örgütsel inovasyon üzerindeki etkisini; bilgi yönetimi, örgütsel öğrenme ve değişime açıklık değişkenlerinin aracılık rolleri çerçevesinde incelemektedir. Günümüz iş dünyasında örgütler; hızlı teknolojik gelişmeler, küreselleşme ve artan rekabet gibi faktörlerin şekillendirdiği, belirsizliğin yüksek ve öngörülebilirliğin sınırlı olduğu koşullar altında faaliyet göstermektedir. Bu bağlamda inovasyon, isteğe bağlı bir faaliyet olmaktan çıkmış, stratejik bir zorunluluk haline gelmiştir.

    Linking Environmental Uncertainty to Organizational Innovation: The Mediating Roles of Knowledge Management, Learning, and Openness to Change: Evidence from Turkish Enterprises · 2026 · DOI

  • innovation in some contexts but fail in others, and by translating these insights into actionable governance implications for technology-oriented partnerships. (complementarity, absorptive The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 explains the methodology, outlining the Consensus-assisted literature analysis and the synthesis procedure. Section 3 reviews the conceptual foundations of strategic alliances, including their key characteristics and organisational forms. Section 4 examines the role of strategic alliances as a channel for accessing technology and driving focus on knowledge and technology transfer mechanisms. Section 5 presents selected technology-intensive industries. Section 6 discusses the main risks and challenges associated with technologyoriented strategic alliances. Section 7 considers the findings in relation to existing literature, and Section 8 innovation, with particular illustrative evidence from 53 Zupanc, D., Logožar, K. NAŠE GOSPODARSTVO / OUR ECONOMY 72 (1) 2026 concludes by summarising the main outlining directions for future research.

    Strategic Alliances and Technological Innovation: Conditions and Mechanisms · 2026 · DOI

  • Within the ecosystem of high-tech industrial parks, the productization of scientific and technological achievements mainly involves three types of actors: park management institutions (hereinafter referred to as parks), park technology enterprises, and academic research institutions. Their interactive collaboration directly determines the efficiency with which scientific and technological achievements move from laboratory technologies to market-oriented products, and constitutes the core support for overcoming the “valley of death” in scientific and technological achievements achievement transformation. According to the definition proposed by [41], CPSS is a system composed of informational, physical, and social components. As providers of institutional arrangements and integrators of resources, parks, under the “administrative committee + enterprise” model, establish an all- factor support system that enables organic interaction among the physical, informational, and social components of CPSS, thereby accelerating the productization of scientific and technological achievements. Specifically, the physical component focuses on tangible carriers and hardware support for the productization of scientific and technological achievements. Through financial investment, parks construct pilot test bases and engineering platforms, which bridge the critical gap between “laboratory technologies” and “industrial-level products.” This reduces costs and risks during the enterprise technology validation stage and provides solid physical support for product implementation.

    Research on collaborative game of scientific and technological achievements productization based on “administrative committee + enterprise” mode from the perspective of CPSS · 2026 · DOI

  • Moreover, it addresses a gap in the literature by exploring the application of BSC for measuring financial effectiveness within service sectors, paving the way for its integration in measuring SME success in dynamic environments.

    The influence of prospector and defender strategies on dynamic capabilities, innovation, and financial effectiveness in Vietnamese service SMEs · 2025 · DOI

  • By examining South Korean entertainment firms, this research fills a gap in understanding how firms can balance the tension between exploration and exploitation, especially when responding to the unpredictable challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The Role of Exploration, Exploitation and Dynamic Capabilities: South Korean Entertainment Firms’ Proactive Response Strategies to the COVID-19 Pandemic · 2025 · DOI

  • The collaborative innovation performance in new energy vehicles (NEVs) is significantly affected by such factors as geographical proximity, technological proximity, and organizational proximity among innovation subjects, but the dynamic influence of multidimensional proximity on collaborative innovation performance has been scarcely investigated.

    How Multidimensional Proximity Affects Collaborative Innovation Performance in New Energy Vehicles · 2025 · DOI

  • Although extant research suggests that collaboration may improve acquisition success, relatively little is known about how firms cultivate collaboration during postmerger integration (PMI) of technology acquisitions.

    How Firms Cultivate Collaboration During Postmerger Integration of Technology Acquisitions · 2024 · DOI

  • Research background: Despite the increased interest in business model innovation (BMI) in the last 20 years, the current research landscape still lacks empirical efforts aimed at investigating the underexplored link between BMI and innovation performance.

    Business model innovation elements and product innovation radicalness: Central European lessons for innovation leaders and followers · 2024 · DOI

  • However, compared to the rich body of literature on the innovation capability of manufacturers and industrial organizations, SIC is poorly understood by managers and service researchers and there is no consensus on its definition, antecedents, outcomes, or dimensions.

    Service innovation capability: a systematic literature review and research agenda · 2023 · DOI

  • Since the early pioneering work of scholars such as Felin and Foss, the microfoundations of strategic organization had not been extensively studied until 2010.

    Microfoundations of dynamic capabilities: a systematic review and a multilevel framework · 2023 · DOI

  • RESEARCH AND PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The effects of a supportive environment on business goals’ relationship with network ties were greater when perceptions of a supportive environment decreased, while the effects of a supportive environment on entrepreneurship orientation’s relationship with network ties were greater when perceptions of a supportive environment increased suggesting further study of U.

    Direct and moderation effects on U.S. apparel manufacturers’ engagement in network ties · 2021 · DOI

  • ORIGINALITY AND VALUE: Lack of consensus about theories and conceptualizations in strategic network studies became an inspiration for this research, which allowed for the clarification of the mentioned existing paucity.

    Networks and network strategies: New theorization based upon a systematic literature review · 2021 · DOI

  • Purpose Previous research focused on open innovation (OI) suggests that enterprises benefit from adopting the journey; however, the relationship among OI, marketing journey and knowledge-intensive innovation marketing activities (KIIMA) remains unclear.

    The open innovation journey along heterogeneous modes of knowledge-intensive marketing collaborations: a cross-sectional study of innovative firms in Europe · 2021 · DOI

  • Technological innovation systems (TIS) remain relatively underexplored, but the approach is especially valuable for explaining why and how sustainable and circular innovation develop and spread.

    European automotive technological innovation systems in the age of disruption: The suppliers’ view · 2020 · DOI

  • Originality/value This study advances current knowledge in the field by responding to requests to further explore the dimensions of merger integration that facilitate success and improve shareholder value, contributing new data to inform extant theories regarding merger integration and megaproject management and adding to the limited research on post-merger integration within the A&D industry.

    Five essentials for successful merger integration: what the aerospace and defense industry knows · 2020 · DOI

  • While technology innovation is widely recognized as a key determinant of firm success in this new age, the role of business models (BMs) and business model innovation (BMI) remains understudied, and therefore potentially underestimated in this setting.

    Technology, Business Models and Competitive Advantage in the Age of Industry 4.0 · 2019 · DOI

  • Practical implications More explicit consideration of KIBS in statistical frameworks is still required, and novel approaches to data conceptualisation and production should be explored.

    Knowledge intensive business services: ambiguities and continuities · 2018 · DOI

  • Originality/value Although limited by the specific conditions in this highly globalised, non-competitive industry context, this study is unique in that it finds that cooperative interpersonal and inter-firm relationships embedded in a local horizontal social network, and mediated in part by an institutional support actor, emerge as important levers for a born global’s accelerated acquisition of foreign market knowledge and of global customers.

    Local horizontal network membership for accelerated global market reach · 2018 · DOI

  • Originality/value – By demonstrating the impact of social capital on competitive advantage in the specific context of industrial parks, whose artificial environment encourages and promotes close social interactions among tenants, this paper overcomes previous and contradictory findings regarding the relationship between social capital and competitive advantage.

    The impact of social capital on competitive advantage · 2016 · DOI

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148 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 3,946 Innovation and Knowledge Management papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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