The purpose of this paper is to define and discuss the core-customer concept. This concept examines how a company develops its operations around a single or only a few customers. The customer steers what products and services the supplier develops, which means that it is the customer that...

Researchers and society devote increasing interest to environmental impact assessments. The study here discusses and questions current assessment models by relating them to inter-organizational network analyses, and demonstrates that single entities as the basis for environmental impact...

The purpose of this article is to compare within-family successions and external-party takeovers in family-owned manufacturing SMEs to determine potential differences in how they are perceived and managed. This paper focuses on two long-term aspects of family businesses – their succession and...

This paper describes and discusses learning in repeated acquisitions of innovative firms. Researchers have pointed to how companies may improve performance through conducting repeated acquisitions, while they have not previously focused on repeated acquisitions of innovative firms. Findings of...

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and classify the roles of customers in innovations. In literature on innovations, customers have been increasingly emphasised as a source for innovations and also in how they help develop ideas in their early phases. This paper exemplifies various customer...

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into how the successors of family-owned manufacturing SMEs view and manage innovativeness. Research into company takeovers mainly focuses on large companies and little is known about innovativeness in research on family-owned businesses, often...

The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss challenges and opportunities related to the development of innovative firms' networks. The paper utilises four case studies based on interviews with representatives of young innovative firms and their present and previous network partners. The...