Sustainability-Oriented Innovation Foresight in International New Technology Based Firms

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Comments

Corrections

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This paper explores the main drivers, factors, and uncertainties affecting sustainability-oriented innovation in international NTBFs. The paper is well organized and presents an interesting and robust empirical part. It is an easy paper to read and captures the “big picture” of the research topic. The literature review, methodology, and results are clearly and purposely stated. Despite the good promises, in the following paragraphs, I will outline some minor suggestions to help you to improve the current version of the manuscript.

Thank you for your insightful remarks. We did our best to add value to the current research by making corrections as per your comments.

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-      Introduction:

 although acknowledging the existence of an avenue that need to be addressed, you should better establish and justify the research gap. Why is your problem statement important? Why is it interesting in theory and practice? What key theoretical perspectives and empirical findings have already informed the topic or question? How does your paper fundamentally change, challenge, or advance scholars’ understanding? Remember: just because there is a gap, that’s not mean that it should be addressed. Maybe the gap exists because no one found it interesting to study. While generally nicely written, the presented introduction offers a bouquet of different ideas yet lacks linking them. It is essential to briefly summarize the theoretical foundation that you have used to establish the basic assumptions that will guide your investigation, by identifying what we already know and what it still needs to be done.

In the introduction part, in accordance with the opinion of the respected reviewer, we tried to address the research gap in more detail, so that both the importance of the current research and its innovation compared to the previous research are determined. The abstract of the study was rewritten to fill the research gap.

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-       Research Methodology: in page 8, you state “out of 50 experts invited, 43 cooperated with the research team”. However, in my opinion, you should better justify the number of experts selected. Why are these 43 experts so unique to understand the phenomena under study? Why did you select these 43 and not another 43? Do they reach the distinctiveness of a talking pig (Siggelkow, 2007)? How and why?

Explanations in this regard were added and highlighted in the methodology part of the research.

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-       Results: in page 9, you contend “(…) the qualitative data were categorized and coded”. How did you perform this codification? Did you use any software to support the data coding? Please clarify this point.

The software used is specified in the paper.

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-       Discussion: in the discussion of the findings, you should try to link more empirical results with the theoretical framework introduced at the beginning of the paper. Do your results confirm or neglect the theory and other empirical analysis? How can they advance our current knowledge on the investigated issues?

The discussion about the findings, the results and its comparison with other researches was added in the conclusion, which is rewritten according to your remarks.

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-       Conclusions: this section is missing in the current version of the manuscript. As you might know, making theoretical and practical contributions is a key criterion when evaluating new papers. Hence, successfully manuscripts need to offer novel theoretical and practical implications. They need to change how readers think about the topic, extending or challenging prior work. Thus, you should briefly summarize the key theoretical and practical implications at the end of the conclusion. Furthermore, since all investigations have some limitations, you should address the main boundaries of your work, by linking them with further avenues for future research.

We added the key and theoretical concepts that are clearly concluded from our research under the title "Management Insight" before the introduction. The conclusion was rewritten as per your remarks. The limitations and future suggestions were added considering the approach you mentioned.

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I wish you all the best for the future development of your study. Congratulations for the work done.

We are very grateful to you for helping us to improve this research.

No.

Comments

Corrections

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The authors provide a Delphi-based analysis on the factors that affect the sustainable oriented innovation on NTBFs. I am afraid I did not understand what NTBFs are and why they are important. No matter how carefully I read both introduction and literature review, the discussion usually took place on a rather high and abstract level that prevented me from appreciating the discussion. One of the key problems is the constant shift of the unit of analysis, as I discuss at a later point of my review.

Thank you for your insightful remarks. We revised the abstract and the introduction accordingly.

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A second problem is the weak focus of the paper. Yes sustainable oriented innovation is important and yes it affects business survivability but it is not clear why and how. My suggestion to the authors is to nail down the unit of analysis (i.e. core competencies) and then focus the literature on the interplay between those factors and the survivability of NTFBs. However, the challenge will be to avoid invalidating their results in the process.

Thank you for this interesting suggestion. We tried to be more precise and remove any controversies.

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A second point is to strengthen the structural validity of their analysis. Currently there not a strong justification of the method of analysis. What more can it provide beyond let’s say a more established method such as “literature review” to assess the importance and impact of those factors.

Thank you for the comment. We revised the methodological sections.

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Finally, clarity is required regarding the critical elements and biased of the methodology and how those affect the validity of their insights.

Thank you for the comment. We revised the methodological sections.

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Please explain early on in Abstract what NTBFs are.

Thank you for the comment. We tried to clarify the issue.  

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135: The authors argue that the literature around Sustainable Oriented innovation revolve around […] but they provide only one citation. I suggest expanding the literature or rewrite the sentence.

We added more literature, and also cited some relevant references.

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150 The authors ignore the process based innovation Ettlie, J. E., & Reza, E. M. (1992). Organizational integration and process innovation. Academy of management journal, 35(4), 795-827.

We mentioned the suggested approach. Thank you for this precise suggestion.

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254 The authors refer to capabilities as a theoretical construct but unfortunately they did not explain very clearly the concept within the literature review. Moreover, the issue becomes even more confusing due to the lack of clarity on the unit of analysis. It is not clear on what level the discussion takes place as it moves continuously among: industry, business, capabilities and products. I suggest the authors clarify this early one and maintain consistency throughout the manuscript.

We clarified the level of analysis throughout the text.

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When the authors refer to capabilities do they mean core competencies? See Prahalad, C. K. (1993). The role of core competencies in the corporation. Research-Technology Management, 36(6), 40-47.

We are mostly focused on capabilities. The ones mentioned by authors such as Teece.

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268 Please be more specific on how you performed the content analysis. Inductive vs deductive etc.

Thank you for the precise comment. We added our approach toward content analysis.

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296 Snowball sampling is a convenience sampling with issues related to selection bias. Streeton, R., Cooke, M., & Campbell, J. (2004). Researching the researchers: using a snowballing technique. Nurse researcher, 12(1), 35-47.

We added this point in the research.

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256 – 306 I think that the discussion should include some critical issues related to the method of data collection and analysis in terms of potential bias. Currently it is descriptive and does not allow the reader to assess the validity of the result.

We considered this point in the discussion.

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330 Terminology not sufficiently explained. For instance: what is the difference between factor and main driver? Why did you use the additional indicator?

We tried to revise the terminology in the whole text. Thank you for the suggestion.

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337 What is the point of averaging Likert scale numbers? What does 4.7 in Likert scale mean? Please provide additional clarity on how to read the table

We used average as a criterion to show the general views. This is generally used in similar studies.

No.

Comments

Corrections

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1.       There are several important findings in the literature in this direction. Therefore, it is important to obtain the novel findings of this research. There must be a comparative study with the following articles (A sustainable flexible manufacturing–remanufacturing model with improved service and green investment under variable demand; Economic assessment of a serial production system with random imperfection and shortages: A step towards sustainability; Environmental and economic sustainability through innovative green products by remanufacturing) to show the major contributions and findings.

The amendments in the introduction were made by reviewing the following papers to specify which part of our research is aligned with them and which parts are distinctive. This highlights the importance of the research problem and makes it more appealing to the readers.

The papers we used for comparative analysis are as follows:

1-     A sustainable flexible manufacturing–remanufacturing model with improved service and green investment under variable demand

2-     Economic assessment of a serial production system with random imperfection and shortages: A step towards sustainability

3-     Environmental and economic sustainability through innovative green products by remanufacturing

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2.       Keywords should be perfect. The abstract should contain the details of the study and the findings in a very constructive way.

We undertook a thorough revision of the abstract, and some keywords were added.

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3.       The introduction should be based on the exact research gap, and the literature review should be based on the specific keywords-based review; and finally, make an author's contribution table to show the novelty and effectiveness of the study. Show all referenced papers in the table to show the contribution of this study.

The research gap was discussed in the introduction after the comparative analysis and was highlighted in green.

The comparison table was also added at the end of the introduction.

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4.       Please write the significant findings in conclusions. Do not mention all assumptions which have been indicated within the model.

The conclusion was rewritten with the approach mentioned in your remarks.

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5.       Conclusions should be updated with more findings, limitations, and future extensions.

Findings, limitations and future plans are added to the conclusion.

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6.       The applicability of the model should be explained. A real case study is required to prove the applicability of the study.

We argued the applicability of the used model in part 2-4 titled "factors and trends affecting innovation based on sustainability in International NTBFs" which is highlighted in green. Considering that our discussion concerned NTBFs, the title "management insight" was added before the conclusion. The conclusion is raised based on the coding performed by the expert panel to prove its applicability.

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7.       A professional proofreading service is highly recommendable for English corrections.

We tried to use a professional proofreading service and some changes were made in the paper.

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8.       Write proper managerial insights to show the industry managers' benefit from this research and compare this study with “A sustainable online-to-offline (O2O) retailing strategy for a supply chain management under controllable lead time and variable demand” theoretically and methodologically to show the applicability of the proposed research.

To prove the applicability of the research, a comparison was made with the o2o structure. For this comparison, we reviewed the following papers.

1-     Choi, S. B., Dey, B. K., Kim, S. J., & Sarkar, B. (2022). Intelligent servicing strategy for an online-to-offline (O2O) supply chain under demand variability and controllable lead time. RAIRO-Operations Research, 56(3), 1623-1653.

2-     Sarkar, B., Dey, B. K., Sarkar, M., & AlArjani, A. (2021). A sustainable online-to-offline (O2O) retailing strategy for a supply chain management under controllable lead time and variable demand. Sustainability, 13(4), 1756.

3-     Sett, B. K., Dey, B. K., & Sarkar, B. (2020). The effect of O2O retail service quality in supply chain management. Mathematics, 8(10), 1743.