Aybars Tuncdogan, King's College London

Henk W. Volberda, University of Amsterdam

Ioana Stefan, Mälardalen University

While innovation creation has received substantial research attention, value capture from innovations remains critically important yet increasingly complex. Digital technologies, AI, data-driven business models, and globally distributed R&D networks have expanded innovation reach but also created new vulnerabilities through rapid copying, disruption, and security threats. Organizations must now navigate both traditional appropriability challenges in collaborative and open innovation contexts, and emerging information security risks that threaten R&D artifacts and intellectual assets.

This special issue brings together two typically separate research conversations: innovation appropriability mechanisms (patents, trade secrecy, licensing, complementary assets, ecosystem governance) and information security protection (technical defenses, organizational safeguards, insider threat management). The issue seeks to understand how firms organize to balance value creation with value capture while managing information security risks in an increasingly digital, data-driven, and open innovation landscape.

Appel publié par R and D Management. Voir l'appel sur le site de l'éditeur. Fiche de l'appel sur kerostig.

Potential topics

• Appropriability mechanisms for digital innovation, including appropriability regimes in platforms, ecosystems, and data-driven markets
• Hybrid protection strategies combining secrecy, security, and openness
• New forms of protection for new forms of competitive advantage (static vs dynamic)
• Profiting from innovation under platform dominance
• Governance of data, IP, and secrecy in university-industry collaborations and open science initiatives
• Governance and lifecycle strategies for protecting data, algorithms, AI models, etc.
• Risks of imitation, leakage, and exfiltration in digital/AI-driven innovation
• Strategies and mechanisms to protect data, algorithms, and AI models
• Protection strategies for innovations that move faster than the ability to protect them
• Value capture in Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing innovations
• Organizational designs and routines for secure collaboration
• Institutional and regulatory conditions shaping innovation security and value capture
• Closing and opening innovation in the digital era
• Insider threats to R&D knowledge
• Security-by-design and privacy-by-design principles in R&D and innovation processes
• Effective zero-trust policies in R&D departments and innovation processes

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Paper development workshop
• February 1, 2027: Submission window opens
• April 30, 2027: Full manuscript submission deadline