International Observatory on Innovation
The international observatory on innovation is an international project involving several universities that aims to investigate the fundamental drivers of innovation success through the collection of primary data.
Current PI
Dr. Laurent Scaringella (Rennes School of Business, France – Kozminski University, Poland)
Vice-PI
Dr. Marco Greco (University of Cassino and Southern Lazio)
Other Members
Dr. Mathias Beck (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
Dr. Yash Chawla (Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland)
Ms. Morgane Loquen (Rennes School of Business – Strasbourg University, France)
History
The consortium originated at the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the first months of 2020, when Yash Chawla triggered an international consortium including colleagues from 14 universities (Aarhus University (Denmark), Chengdu University of Information Technology (China), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), Evora University (Portugal), Federal University of Juiz de Fora (Brazil), IFN (Sweden), Kozminski University (Poland), Polytechnic Institute of Setubal (Portugal), Rennes School of Business (France), Reykjavik University (Iceland), University of California Berkeley (USA), University of Cassino and Southern Lazio (Unicas), Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (Poland), Zittau/Gorlitz University of Applied Sciences (Germany)).
The consortium set up a survey on information and knowledge about COVID-19 in 27 languages, which obtained in just one month (from March 26 to April 20, 2020) 15.552 responses from 126 countries. The resulting study was first presented by Yash Chawla at the Academy of Management meeting in 2021 and then published in the paper titled "Predictors and outcomes of individual knowledge on early-stage pandemic: Social media, information credibility, public opinion, and behaviour in a large-scale global study" Information Processing & Management. The article is indexed in the World Health Organization database on COVID-19 literature (https://search.bvsalud.org/global-literature-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/resource/en/covidwho-1372506)
Author contribution
Y.C. initiated and managed the study. A.R. was instrumental in adding key members to the consortium. Y.C. and A.K.P designed the initial survey. Y.C., A.K.P, A.R., E.A., M.W., E.L.C., P.D.S. reviewed the survey design and conducted the pilot test. All authors contributed to defining the aims and direction of this particular article, led by L.S. and M.G. and supported by Y.C., A.R.., E.L.C., and A.R.. Y.C. setup the questionnaires in different languages, managed the data collection, sorted, cleaned and coded the data for analysis. Q.Y.S. supported in managing the online questionnaire platform. All authors disseminated the questionnaire to collect the data, supported in finalizing the coding of the data set. Q.Y.S. collected the country wise and date wise COVID-19 infection data and link it to the collected data. L.S. led the literature review and theoretical background along with A.R.. M.G. and E.L.C led the data analysis and were supported by Y.C. and A.K.P. All authors wrote a part of the manuscript, with L.S. making key contribution to the structure of the article. Preparing the methodology annex was led by M.G. with contributions from E.L.C. and Y.C.
Subsequently, Laurent Scaringella proposed to focus the research group's efforts on innovation management, absorptive capacity, ambidexterity, and open innovation. Marco Greco (Cassino), Mathias Beck (ETH Zurich), Morgane Loquen (Rennes), and Yash Chawla (Wroclaw ) confirmed their commitment to the research group and started developing a novel survey which was professionally translated in 32 languages and submitted for the first time in 2021 to a large sample of executives worldwide (714,615 ). Rennes Business School covered the expenses for the research project.
Two more survey waves were submitted in 2022 and 2023.
Two reports were issued to describe the data collected during the first and second waves of the survey.
The first outcome of this research project was presented by Marco Greco at the R&D management conference in 2023 and is now being refined.
Work in progress output
"Enhancing innovation: how do ambidexterity and absorptive capacity intertwine?"
Expected author contribution
LS initiated and managed the observatory. All members contributed to the design of the survey. LS coordinated the set-up of the questionnaires in different languages. YC led the submission of the three survey waves via Qualtrics with the support of ML. All authors contributed to defining the aims and direction of this particular article, led by MG and supported by LS. LS and ML led the paper's theoretical background and were supported by MG, MB and YC. MB and MG were responsible for the methods, results and discussion sections. All authors wrote a part of the manuscript.
Acknowledgments
Rennes Business School, France, provided the means and facilities to conduct this research. We extend our appreciation to Dr. Justyna Dabrowska (RMIT University, Australia), Dr. Agnieszka Radziwon (Aarhus University, Denmark and University of California, Berkely), and Dr. Ewa Lazarczyk (Reykjavik University, Iceland) for providing their valuable insights at different stages of the project so far.
Report 1st survey.pdfReport 2n survey.pdf