Innovation in India: A review of past research and future directions

Nexus of digital platforms, innovation capability, and strategic alignment to enhance innovation performance in the Asia Pacific region: a dynamic capability perspective

The direct influence of digital platforms on organizational efficiency, financial performance, and strategy attracts the close attention of researchers. The complex mechanisms and pathways of digital platforms on transformation capacity, however, are still unclear at the global and Asia Pacific levels. Drawing on dynamic capability theory, we empirically explore how digital platforms augment organizational innovation performance. We advance the current literature on digital platforms by finding that digital platform capability boosts an organization’s dynamism and innovation performance. Furthermore, we extend the literature by revealing that, indirectly, innovation capability and strategic alignment have a substantial influence over digital platform capability and innovation performance. Finally, the study formulates a conceptual model from a dynamic capability perspective, rather than from a resource-based view, and test it using the responses collected from 153 Pakistani manufacturing firms.

Overview of the Justicia Genus: Insights into Its Chemical Diversity and Biological Potential

The genus Justicia has more than 600 species distributed in both hemispheres, in the tropics and temperate regions, and it is used in the treatment of numerous pathologies. This study presents a review of the biological activities of plant extracts and isolated chemical constituents of Justicia (ACANTHACEAE), identified in the period from May 2011 to August 2022. We analyzed over 176 articles with various biological activities and chemical compound descriptions present in the 29 species of Justicia. These have a variety of applications, such as antioxidant and antimicrobial, with alkaloids and flavonoids (e.g., naringenin) the most frequently identified secondary metabolites. The most observed species were Justicia gendarussa Burm., Justicia procumbens L., Justicia adhatoda L., Justicia spicigera Schltdl, and Justicia pectoralis Jacq. The frontier molecular orbitals carried out using density functional theory (M062X and basis set 6-311++G(d,p) indicate reactive sites for naringenin compound and a chemical reaction on phytomedicine activity. The energy gap (206.99 kcal/mol) and dimer solid state packing point to chemical stability. Due to the wide variety of pharmacological uses of these species, this review points toward the development of new phytomedicines.

Exploring the Research Regarding Frugal Innovation and Business Sustainability through Bibliometric Analysis

Nowadays, innovation is valued as being of utmost significance when evaluating measures of sustainable development and performance constructs. The current research develops investigations into the field of frugal innovation (FI) and how this process can contribute to business sustainability. This study performs a comprehensive evaluation of scientific production through the quantitative method of bibliometric analysis to facilitate our understanding of the current structure of studies and to highlight future research paths on FI and business sustainability. The paper maps the literature by narrowing its research topics and identifying certain patterns. Using the Web of Science database (WoS) on a sample of 2072 documents, descriptive and performance analyses were conducted. The VOSviewer software was used to perform the science mapping of the conceptual, intellectual, and social structure that provides scholars with a quantified and graphic representation of the FI and business sustainability field. The trend towards the analysis of business sustainability and consumer behaviour in the context of FI is highlighted. Annual scientific production and citation analysis reveal significant growth in international interest and scientific production, indicating an increasing line of inquiry for this topic at the start of the twenty-first century. The prominent scholars in the field are of European origin, while the highly active countries in the subject of FI and business sustainability are the USA, Germany, England, the Netherlands, and India, with major collaborations across the globe. This paper covers the limits identified by previous scholars by detailing the knowledge base and by using science mapping tools to document the structure of the literature; distinguish key journals, articles, and authors; and highlight new emerging topics of research.

Complementarity of capabilities across cultures

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how service firms across two different cultural contexts use their customer involvement capabilities to create competitive advantage. The study further assesses the possible complementarity effect of innovation and involvement capabilities in enhancing firm competitiveness. Lastly, the study draws on the complementarity of capabilities and social institutions to examine whether different cultural contexts explain the use of involvement capability among service firms.

Design/methodology/approach

The study sampled service firms from an emerging economy (India) and high-income economy (The UK), which have different cultural contexts (collectivism/individualist) to assess the hypothesized relationship. Data collection processes were adapted to the contexts to optimize reliability and relevance. Multi-group structural equation modeling was used in analyzing the data.

Findings

The study finds that cultural contexts explain the positive relationship between customer involvement capability and firm competitiveness such that in collectivist cultures, involvement capability is more positively related to competitiveness but negative in individualistic contexts. However, in both contexts, service firms can through capability bundling increase firm competitiveness. The study found that the complementarity effects of innovation and involvement capabilities were found to be positive in both contexts.

Originality/value

This study departs from previous studies by arguing that customer involvement is a complementary capability that helps exploit the potential of innovation capability of service firms. This study further demonstrates that cultural context defines the effectiveness of involvement capability in achieving firm competitiveness.

Knowledge Sources and International Business Activity in a Changing Innovation Ecosystem: A Study of the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry

The Indian pharmaceutical industry has experienced rapid growth, becoming the world's largest provider of generic drugs, based on product and process innovation. The industry has undergone dynamic changes in recent decades, operating in a rapidly evolving environment affected by domestic and global policies; a key example of the latter is the TRIPS agreement. Taking an intellectual property perspective, we describe how changes in the innovation ecosystem have affected companies’ strategies related to international activity and accessing knowledge from both internal and external knowledge sources, during the transitional- and post-TRIPS periods (1995–2004 and 2005–2014, respectively). Combining intellectual property arguments with contextual aspects of the innovation ecosystem, we conjecture that, in the post-TRIPS period, externally-sourced knowledge will be more important than internally-sourced knowledge, for Indian pharmaceutical firms’ international business activity.

Progressive human resource management and firm performance

Purpose

This study aims to examine the adoption and efficacy level of progressive human resource management (HRM) practices in various organizations operating in India.

Design/methodology/approach

Primary data based on 615 respondents from 103 domestic firms and 116 foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) operating in India were gathered and analyzed using statistical techniques like t-test, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

Findings

The results reveal that the adoption of progressive HRM practices in form of self-managed teams, flexibility to work flexible hours, use of online mediums to invite applicants, selection of candidates using assessment center and integrity test, performance based incentives, flexible benefits, facility of e-learning and innovative management development programs is positively related to firm performance in Indian context. Using institutional and cultural perspective, the findings have also demonstrated that their exist differences in adoption of progressive HRM practices between foreign MNCs and domestic firms.

Practical implications

Domestic firms in India are needed to learn some important managerial lessons from the foreign MNCs, especially when their adoption of progressive practices results in more increase in firm performance. These are suggested to implement a broad range of innovative HR practices like MNCs to improve growth potential, instead of focusing on two or three practices.

Originality/value

By exploring the differences between domestic and foreign MNCs, this study has offered some key insights on the extent of adoption and operationalization of progressive HRM in current Indian business environment.

Innovation and entrepreneurship research in India from 2000 to 2018: a bibliometric survey

Purpose

Innovation and entrepreneurship are regarded as the key drivers to steer the engine of economic development in any nation. As a result, to understand the context and process of innovation and entrepreneurship there has been a steady rise in scientific literature and empirical studies. The purpose of this paper is to study the trends and progress of academic research on innovation and entrepreneurship in India by identifying the key articles, journals, authors and institutions.

Design/methodology/approach

Scientometric methods especially bibliometrics is used, for measuring the maturity of this research field in the country. The paper studies the research landscape in innovation and entrepreneurship in India by doing a bibliometric analysis using data from publications indexed in the Scopus database from the year 2000 to 2018. The study takes a multidisciplinary review of the literature in innovation and entrepreneurship research in India and could be used as a reference for future studies in this theme.

Findings

The study finds an increase in the scholarly studies in innovation and entrepreneurship in India in the last decade. It was also found that a large number of publications were joint-authored and collaborations between Indian and foreign universities is happening. The paper also highlights the authorship patterns, top journals and the most cited papers.

Research limitations/implications

A major limitation of this study is that it has considered publications which are indexed in Scopus. This paper has contributed by highlighting the growth of studies in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship in the Indian context. The results can be used by future studies in this area as a starting point to highlight the nature of this research area.

Originality/value

The study attempts to present a trend analysis of published literature on innovation and entrepreneurship in India.

Technological Innovation Research in China and India: A Bibliometric Analysis for the Period 1991–2015

Although a substantial literature on the management of technological innovation exists, several scholars argue that much of this research has been rooted in Western contexts, where key assumptions are very different from those in emerging economies. Building on this viewpoint, we investigate the current state of knowledge on technological innovation in two of the largest and fastest growing emerging economies: China and India. We undertook a bibliometric analysis of author keywords and combined different quantitative approaches – frequency analysis, cluster analysis, and co-word analysis – to review 162 articles on technological innovation published about China and India for the period 1991–2015. From the analyses, the trends in technological innovation research in the two countries and the dominant themes of discussion were identified. These themes were further classified into eight sub-themes. Our key findings indicate a near absence of research on the management of technological innovation based on India, limited volume of research on indigenous aspects of innovation, and a lack of theory-building based on these countries’ contexts. Several suggestions for future research are offered based on the gaps identified.