Welcome to the November issue of the Technology Innovation Management Review. This issue consists of a mixture of “Insights” into artificial intelligence, innovation management, AI innovation and maturity, living labs, stakeholder participation, situated practice, health technology, multidisciplinarity, digitally enhanced teamwork, sustainability, trade secrets, confidential information, criminal law, economic espionage, small and medium-sized enterprises, entrepreneurship, transnationals, immigrants, migration, and diaspora entrepreneurs.

The issue starts like “The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship” with a collaborative effort by Nina Bozic Yams, Valerie Richardson, Galina Esther Shubina, Sandor Albrecht & Daniel Gillblad on “Integrated AI and Innovation Management”. The paper draws attention to the incoming and near future transformative and innovative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, specifically as they relate to managing innovation. It explores transition in how to integrate AI into current workplace systems, and how to guide specifically the AI transition process in a way that aims to enable optimisation and incremental innovation, then potentially forward-looking radical business innovation. The authors present an AI innovation maturity index and model according to the ISO 56002 international standard of innovation management systems. They intend the index “to be used as a compass, map, and tool”, in a way that “enables joint sense-making around best practices needed to holistically integrate AI into organisations, thereby enabling and accelerating innovation” (pg. 15).

Next up, Samuel Schrevel, Meralda Slager & Erwin de Vlugt describe  a first-person direct participation and team interpretation effort, in their “‘I Stood By and Watched’: An Autoethnography of Stakeholder Participation in a Living Lab”. Their encounter with situated practice in a psychogeriatric care experiment with health-related technology covers a range of broad and specific issues. One question they raise regards “how to facilitate the meaningful participation of stakeholders in science and technology?” (pg. 19). The author’s experience in a “living lab” environment together with employees and university students who were recruited as part of a project to deal with dementia patients in a nursing home, provides insights on the “dos and don’ts” of stakeholder participation and engagement. The project’s teaching lessons reflect both the time pressure and expectation for results, as well as how shifting the responsibility of participants mid-project can impact outcomes. The paper documents an exercise in how to facilitate meaningful innovation in a way that ensures motivated stakeholder participants. The authors note that while the technological solution reached was unsatisfactory, that nevertheless they “created a culture where stakeholder participation became a topic of interest and importance” (pg. 27).

Following that, Essi Ryymin, Laura Lamberg & Annukka Pakarinen show “How to Digitally Enhance Collaboration: Multidisciplinary Research Team Ideation for Technology Innovation”. While ultimately recommending that they be “paired with face to face discussion and non-digital interaction”, the authors promote collaboration and digitally enhanced teamwork through “digital platforms [that] may offer impactful, process accelerating support during the kick-off phase of multidisciplinary technological innovations” (pg. 31). As background for the paper, the authors conducted eleven one-on-one semi-structured interviews with researchers involved in a smart and sustainable bioeconomy development project in Finland, as well as holding a collaborative ideation workshop with researchers working in the field of smart vertical farming and sustainability. Their conclusions include a view of “relational agency” in multidisciplinary collaborative practices, as a way of “working individually while also synchronously on idea prioritisation” (pg. 37), and that also “encourages not only the development of new technology, but broader socio-technical transitions and better management of the contextualisation and implementation of technological innovation” (ibid).

Matt Malone addresses security risks and challenges that especially high-tech companies face, in the subsequent paper reporting on “Criminal Enforcement of Trade Secret Theft: Strategic Considerations for Canadian SMEs”. The paper provides targeted consideration of regulations to protect the trade secrets and confidential information of small and medium-sized enterprises in Canada from economic espionage. With a background in criminal law, enforcement, the author highlights “passage of a recent criminal law by the Canadian federal government, section 391 of the Criminal Code, [which] creates a powerful new tool for innovative SMEs to report, investigate, and prosecute theft of trade secrets” (pg. 40). The paper elaborates on the protections and uses of this law, and “explores strategies for SMEs in Canada to use section 391 to protect their trade secrets, navigate the legal environment during theft of a trade secret, and remediate such theft” (pg. 40). The author notes that “Section 391 is a powerful instrument for SMEs in Canada to protect their IP” (pg. 45).

The issue closes with Supriya Singh, Punit Saurabh & Nityesh Bhatt “Demystifiying the Meaning of Transnational Entrepreneurship”. Their specific focus is on “Indian transnational entrepreneurs in comparative perspective”, wherein entrepreneurship functions as a phenomenon associated with migrating and immigrating entrepreneurs. The paper ultimately points to the Indian entrepreneurial diaspora as an example use case. The authors aim to refine prior definitions of “transnational entrepreneurship” through a study of secondary literature that considers different mobility types. They distinguish between a “home country” and a “host country” and define their terms according to how entrepreneurs act as “go-betweens”, thereby enhancing economic development in more than one jurisdiction at the same time. Their contribution of a basic “framework” may help in the classification process of distinguishing between “transnational entrepreneurs” and “international entrepreneurs”.

The TIM Review currently has Calls for Papers on the website for Upcoming Themes with special editions on "Digital Innovations in the Bioeconomy" (February 2021) and “Aligning Multiple Stakeholder Value Propositions” (April 2021). For future issues, we invite general submissions of articles on technology entrepreneurship, innovation management, and other topics relevant to launching and scaling technology companies, and for solving business practical problems in emerging domains such as artificial intelligence and blockchain applications in business. Please contact us with potential article ideas and submissions, or proposals for future special issues.