Establishing Relationships with New Suppliers Having Distant Knowledge to Target Discontinuous Innovation

Sihem Ben Mahmoud Jouini () and Florence Charue-Duboc ()

No 1087, HEC Research Papers Series from HEC Paris

Abstract: A discrepancy exists in the literature regarding the type of suppliers to consider when targeting discontinuous innovation (DI). Some authors suggest that DI require leveraging knowledge from a selection of familiar and trustful suppliers, whereas others claim that DI requires leveraging distant knowledge from new suppliers. The authors argue that establishing relationships with a new supplier mastering knowledge distant from the firm’s one, requires a specific process. Based on a longitudinal study in a firm that developed such relationships and succeeded in enhancing DI, they underline three characteristics of the approach adopted: (i) proposing an open enough formulation to give the suppliers the opportunity to value their competencies but well documented, (ii) having a structured and transparent process, supporting a mutual progressive commitment and (iii) dedicating a specific entity with access to the top management and technical specialists, with a global vision of the questions to be tackled.

Keywords: Discontinuous innovation; early supplier involvement; leveraging external knowledge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2014-01-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ino and nep-knm
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2576121 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebg:heccah:1087

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HEC Research Papers Series from HEC Paris HEC Paris, 78351 Jouy-en-Josas cedex, France. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Antoine Haldemann ().