Analysing customer-supplier relationships in the process of innovation: An innovation systems approach

Phillips, Wendy; Lamming, Richard; Caldwell, Nigel

Abstract

Adopting an innovation systems approach, this paper addresses how institutions in supply markets, in the institutional economics sense of informal constraints and formal rules, influence the innovation process between firms. Within an innovation system, institutions may contain the ability not only to support but also to restrain the co-ordination of knowledge and skills in inter-organisational relationships. Drawing on the research findings of an EPSRC IMRC funded project action research project investigating the sharing of information and knowledge for the purpose of innovation in industrial customer-supplier relationships, we consider how existing institutions (such as open-book negotiation) have failed to adapt to the changing nature of product and process technologies and the innovation required to address them.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: innovation systems, customer-supplier relationships, institutions
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/966451