Managing Innovation and Knowledge

This chapter reviews the role of strategic, governance, and execution issues to manage innovation and knowledge for enhanced firm performance. It provides a brief overview of some studies that I have conducted with my collaborators at individual, firm, country, software products, and platform level and the implications of the findings. These studies elucidate the critical role of investments in information technology (IT), and digital capabilities to fuel innovation in large corporations with culturally and globally dispersed operations to become nimble and engage in exploratory innovations. In addition, the chapter covers studies of digital platforms and firms where innovation in software products is central to articulate the role of knowledge seeding, complementors’ innovation, the right mix of on-shore and off-shore staffing, and the involvement of business managers in technical decisions in innovation. Finally, the chapter discusses “disciplined autonomy” as an overarching framework for innovation with an illustration from the Tata Group that leveraged this framework to organize innovation efforts across its companies to transform itself. The framework is generally applicable across different types of companies to enable autonomy for innovation while providing a guiding discipline. Overall, the chapter provides implications for managers and policymakers as they confront challenges and opportunities created by digitization and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence to confront trade-offs related to innovation.