Postgraduate research projects - How do firms produce, transform and exploit supply chain knowledge to achieve process innovation?

Description

Nasia Nalmpanti

Today’s companies are under pressure to innovate in their supply chain processes by acquiring useful knowledge from their supply chain partners to leverage, transform and exploit it. However, it is unclear how firms can source and produce the knowledge within their supply chains for this to be transformed through different innovation processes (ie open, closed and collaborative innovation), and subsequently exploited to generate added value.

This study aims to develop and test a conceptual model that explains how firms produce, transform, and exploit knowledge within their supply chain. Drawing on absorptive capacity theory, the model focuses on how acquiring and assimilating supply chain knowledge (SCK) can help firms transform and exploit it through open, closed and collaborative process innovation.

The findings of this study will have important implications for theory and will provide valuable guidance to practitioners on managing the tensions created between allocating resources to externally explore new, or internally exploiting existing knowledge processes for innovation success.