The analysis examines open innovation and dynamic capabilities as complementary approaches to corporate strategy in African emerging markets. Open innovation represents the incorporation of external collaborative activity, while dynamic capabilities concern the capacity to adapt and strengthen internal resources in response to changing conditions. The study emphasizes that firms operating across African markets must balance outside knowledge and relationships with the continued fine-tuning of internal resources.

This balance is particularly demanding because the research describes the region’s business environments as culturally, regulatory and economically varied. In this setting, the analysis argues, open innovation can become an important part of corporate survival and growth rather than an optional activity isolated from the firm’s internal organization. Environmental alertness is the first major element of the proposed framework.

It represents the capacity to remain attentive to shifts and opportunities within the surrounding business environment. Firms also need contact with varied sources of knowledge that may contribute to the pursuit or development of new resources and capabilities. The study identifies a seventh microfoundation in its fuller examination of open-innovation initiatives, although the available summary does not specify its name.

All seven are described as connecting the adoption of open innovation with the evolution of dynamic capabilities and potentially hastening the acquisition of novel resources. The research also emphasizes the difficulties surrounding this process. Open innovation depends on intricate social interactions, and firms must reconcile external resources with established internal capabilities.

Those challenges can be magnified by the cultural, regulatory and economic diversity found across African emerging markets. The authors consequently present vigilance, engagement with diverse knowledge sources, outward-facing capabilities, strong relationships, resource accumulation and fluidity as central considerations for MNCs using open innovation in African emerging markets. The published summary does not report sample size, quantitative effect estimates or controlled causal comparisons, so the framework should be understood as an analytical account of capability creation rather than a quantified demonstration of performance gains.

Subject of Research: Open-innovation microfoundations for capability creation by multinational corporations in African emerging markets

Article Title: The microfoundational view of capability creation and environmental alertness of multinational corporations in emerging markets

Article References: Kofar Naisa, F. U., Zhao, Z., Hussien Emam, N. G., Zaki Abo alazm, M. A., Saleh Abdesalam, F. G., Sani, A. A., Abdullahi, M. S., & Ado, A. B. (2026). The microfoundational view of capability creation and environmental alertness of multinational corporations in emerging markets. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-09475-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-026-09475-z

Keywords: open innovation, dynamic capabilities, multinational corporations, emerging markets, Africa, environmental alertness, knowledge exchange, strategic relationships, resource accumulation, organizational fluidity, microfoundations, microfoundational

The proposed framework addresses an interconnected set of pressures affecting resource-dependent cities: environmental degradation, population loss and out-migration, limited entrepreneurship, weak technological modernization, insufficient economic diversification, infrastructure pressures and institutional vulnerability. Concentration around one industry or a small group of related activities can expose local economies to commodity-price fluctuations, technological change, resource depletion and industrial restructuring. Kazakhstan’s 2024 policy context identified 20 single-industry towns, while an estimated 1.3 million to 1.5 million people were associated with mining and primary processing. The study treats each monotown as an urban-regional system linking public authorities, dominant enterprises, infrastructure, universities, communities and emerging businesses, rather than as an industrial project in isolation.

At the center of the framework is a distinction between technological capability and sustainable transformation. Digital transformation encompasses artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, sensors, cloud platforms, geographic information systems and data analytics, but also changes in decision-making, service delivery, knowledge management, stakeholder engagement and organizational capacity. Urban digital twins and generative artificial intelligence are described as potential tools for simulation, planning and scenario analysis. Connected systems could also support environmental monitoring, predictive infrastructure maintenance, energy and water management, waste services, mobility and digital public services. These are proposed capabilities, not measured outcomes in Kazakhstan’s monotowns, and the authors emphasize that installing technology does not by itself make a city resilient, inclusive or environmentally responsible.

The study connects digital capabilities to ESG-oriented urban governance, interpreting environmental, social and governance principles as a governance lens rather than simply importing a corporate structure into city administration. The environmental dimension includes pollution, emissions, resource efficiency, water, waste and ecological rehabilitation. The social dimension covers employment, skills development, inclusion, public services, community participation and quality of life. The governance dimension emphasizes transparency, accountability, stakeholder engagement, institutional coordination and responsible investment. Digital data can support monitoring and public reporting, while ESG priorities can direct technology and investment toward environmental performance, workforce transition and equitable access. The framework also distinguishes ESG adoption from ESG effectiveness, warning that fragmented standards, weak reporting and ineffective accountability can leave commitments without substantive results.

Open innovation is positioned as the bridge between technological and governance transitions. Drawing on Open Innovation Theory, the framework emphasizes knowledge exchange across organizational boundaries, joint experimentation, technology diffusion and co-creation rather than innovation confined to a dominant company or municipal department. The Quadruple Helix model identifies four participant groups: government contributes planning, regulation, infrastructure and public services; industry supplies investment, technology, employment and industrial capabilities; universities provide research, expertise and skills; and communities contribute local knowledge, participation and social legitimacy. In Kazakhstan, the authors expect this collaboration to be institutionally mediated through controlled data-sharing arrangements, digital participation platforms, pilot projects and partnerships involving firms, educational institutions and communities, rather than through unrestricted local exchange.

Four conditional propositions summarize the proposed relationships. First, digital and smart transformation may support sustainable urban transformation by improving infrastructure, public services, environmental management, resource efficiency, institutional adaptability and resilience, provided adequate institutional and digital capacity exists. Second, ESG-oriented governance may integrate environmental stewardship, social inclusion, stakeholder accountability, responsible investment and institutional capacity into urban and industrial transition where implementation and accountability mechanisms are sufficiently developed. Third, open innovation may connect digital transformation with ESG governance when knowledge exchange, institutional coordination, stakeholder participation and technology diffusion are supported. Fourth, context-sensitive collaboration among government, industry, universities and communities may enable knowledge co-creation, participatory governance, human-capital development, place-sensitive innovation and institutional learning. These propositions are theoretical expectations derived from conceptual synthesis, not causal effects or statistically tested relationships.

Urban-territorial resilience is the framework’s intended transformation outcome and is defined as the capacity of an urban system to anticipate, absorb, adapt, recover from and transform in the face of economic, environmental, technological, social and institutional change. Six related dimensions are identified. Economic resilience depends on diversification and entrepreneurship; infrastructure resilience on modernization and intelligent management; environmental resilience on pollution reduction and resource efficiency; social resilience on jobs, skills, inclusion and community engagement; institutional resilience on adaptive and accountable governance; and innovation resilience on knowledge creation, diffusion and shared learning. This multidimensional account suggests that an industrial strategy, infrastructure upgrade or stand-alone smart-city program would each address only part of the challenge facing a resource-dependent urban region.

The framework also cautions that collaboration does not automatically create shared power. State institutions and city-forming enterprises may retain substantial control over finance, information, infrastructure and employment, while universities, residents and civil-society organizations may have fewer resources and less influence. Concentrated access to information and financing, together with weak civil-society participation, could make an apparently open process largely symbolic. The proposed safeguards include meaningful participation, transparency, information access and accountable institutions. The authors also call for attention to distributional consequences, including differences in connectivity, digital skills, income, employment, age and geographic access. A university presence in every monotown is not required: regional research teams, digital collaboration, satellite hubs, outreach, applied projects and vocational and technical colleges could contribute knowledge and technical capacity.

The framework implies a sequence of policy priorities while leaving their implementation dependent on local conditions. Digital investment should be linked to infrastructure needs, service quality, resource efficiency, environmental monitoring, public-service modernization and diversification rather than treated as a stand-alone technology program. ESG criteria should inform urban planning, infrastructure investment and industrial transition, while open-innovation platforms should support joint diagnosis, experimentation and learning. Diversification should reflect each place’s industrial heritage, environmental pressures, infrastructure, skills and institutional readiness; national policy can establish common digital, sustainability and financing goals, but regional and municipal actors must adapt implementation. Progress should be assessed through service quality, environmental performance, resource efficiency, economic diversification, employment and skills, citizen participation and institutional responsiveness, rather than the number of digital systems installed. The study remains conceptual, so its explanatory power, generalizability and causal effects still require primary-data, longitudinal, multilevel and comparative testing across multiple Kazakhstan monotowns and other resource-dependent cities.

Subject of Research: Conceptual framework for sustainable transformation of Kazakhstan’s resource-dependent monotowns

Article Title: Open innovation for sustainable urban transformation in Kazakhstan's monotowns: integrating digital transformation, ESG governance, and urban-territorial resilience

Article References: Abikayeva, M., Potluri, R. M., Omarkozhayeva, A., Omarkhanova, Z., Tleuzhanova, D., Zholdayakova, G., & Yanovskaya, O. (2026). Open innovation for sustainable urban transformation in Kazakhstan's monotowns: integrating digital transformation, ESG governance, and urban-territorial resilience. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 8, Article 1995961. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsc.2026.1995961

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/frsc.2026.1995961

Keywords: Kazakhstan monotowns, open innovation, digital transformation, ESG governance, urban resilience, smart cities, Quadruple Helix, resource-dependent cities, sustainable cities, economic diversification, Open, innovation

Researchers analyzed structured questionnaires completed by owners, founders and senior managers of SMEs operating in Riyadh. The sample included service, retail, industrial and agricultural firms, alongside both young and more established enterprises. Entrepreneurial orientation was assessed on a five-point Likert scale through proactiveness, willingness to commit resources under uncertainty, employee autonomy and intensity in challenging competitors. The analysis also examined open innovation, represented in practice by externally informed product and process innovation, and sustainable competitive advantage, measured through perceptions of quality, customer value, loyalty, reputation, adaptability, innovation, long-term performance and environmental and social responsibility. Firm size and managerial experience were included as controls in the regression and mediation models.

Overall entrepreneurial orientation had a positive standardized association with sustainable competitive advantage, with a coefficient of 0.724, and with the combined open-innovation measure, for which the coefficient was 0.741. Open innovation, in turn, was positively associated with competitive advantage at 0.845. Product and process innovation each had strong positive associations with the outcome, with standardized coefficients of 0.779 and 0.772, respectively. These figures describe associations among respondents’ ratings rather than measurements of objective profitability, patent activity or productivity. They nevertheless show that firms’ perceived innovative practices and entrepreneurial routines moved together with their perceived competitive capabilities.

The separate dimension-level models showed that proactiveness had the largest standardized association with sustainable competitive advantage, at 0.704, followed by competitive aggressiveness at 0.623 and autonomy at 0.510. Risk-taking was positive but comparatively moderate, at 0.368. Because each dimension was analyzed in a separate model rather than entered simultaneously, the ordering does not demonstrate that one dimension uniquely outperforms the others after controlling for all remaining entrepreneurial behaviors. The pattern offers a descriptive distinction: anticipating opportunities and responding assertively to rivals had stronger associations than general willingness to accept uncertainty in the surveyed firms.

Every entrepreneurial dimension was also positively associated with both product and process innovation. Competitive aggressiveness had the largest reported relationship with product innovation, with a standardized coefficient of 0.642, while proactiveness and competitive aggressiveness were also strongly related to process innovation. Autonomy showed a somewhat stronger association with process than product innovation. The results fit a practical distinction in which market-facing renewal can respond directly to rivals, whereas operational renewal may be initiated by employees who encounter bottlenecks in daily workflows. The evidence does not show that either kind of innovation is universally superior, and the study did not estimate sector-specific differences despite the sample’s diversity.

Bootstrapped mediation analysis provided the study’s central result. The researchers fitted Hayes’ PROCESS Model 4 with 5,000 bootstrap samples to eight separate pathways, combining each entrepreneurial dimension with either product or process innovation. All eight 95% confidence intervals for the indirect effects excluded zero. The estimated indirect association through product innovation ranged from 0.2767 for risk-taking to 0.3459 for competitive aggressiveness, while estimates through process innovation ranged from 0.3062 for risk-taking to 0.3592 for autonomy. In each model, the direct association between the entrepreneurial dimension and sustainable competitive advantage remained positive and significant after the mediator was introduced, indicating partial rather than complete mediation in statistical terms.

The pathway estimates suggested that different entrepreneurial behaviors may be linked with competitive advantage through different forms of renewal. Proactiveness and competitive aggressiveness were prominent in product-oriented pathways, consistent with an association between early market sensing or rivalry and market-facing innovation. Autonomy produced the largest process-innovation indirect estimate, suggesting that employee discretion may be especially relevant to workflow improvement, technology adoption and operational problem-solving. For risk-taking, both indirect estimates exceeded its remaining direct effect. This does not mean that risk-taking is inherently unimportant, nor does it prove that every formal experiment is beneficial; rather, the results are consistent with a value for risk when uncertainty is converted into a defined product or process initiative, prototype or staged learning effort.

The measurement analysis generally supported the internal consistency of the seven focal constructs. Cronbach’s alpha values ranged from 0.893 to 0.932, composite-reliability values ranged from 0.900 to 0.943, and average variance extracted values ranged from 0.598 to 0.666. Most construct pairs also met the study’s conservative discriminant-validity threshold. One exception was product innovation and process innovation, whose heterotrait–monotrait ratio was 0.917, above the stated 0.90 cutoff. That similarity means the two pathways should not be treated as fully independent constructs, and the authors appropriately described comparisons between their indirect-effect estimates as descriptive rather than statistically established. Harman’s single-factor test showed that the first unrotated factor accounted for 45.562% of total variance, below a commonly used 50% benchmark, although this limited diagnostic cannot exclude common-method or social-desirability effects.

The study’s most portable result is therefore not a prescription for copying a particular entrepreneurial style, but evidence that entrepreneurial potential appears closely tied to how SMEs convert initiative into implemented change. Proactive behavior may create value when it leads to earlier customer engagement and product adaptation; autonomy may do so when employees can alter operational routines; risk-taking may do so through disciplined experimentation; and competitive aggressiveness may do so when directed toward quality and differentiation rather than price retaliation alone. The authors also stress that openness must be managed: external knowledge has strategic value only when firms can select, absorb, combine and apply it. For smaller businesses without large internal research departments, collaborations with customers, suppliers, universities and technology providers may offer access to complementary knowledge, but the findings do not show that every partnership succeeds.

Several boundaries constrain what can be concluded. The purposive, single-city sample was concentrated in Riyadh and is not a probability-based representation of all Saudi SMEs or other Gulf economies. The design relied on cross-sectional self-reports from a single knowledgeable informant per firm, making common-method bias, positive managerial self-assessment and reverse causality plausible explanations for part of the observed pattern. Respondents rated entrepreneurial orientation, innovation and competitive advantage highly, so the results describe perceived strengths in this group rather than independently verified business performance. Longitudinal research using multiple informants, objective innovation and financial measures, and probability samples across regions and sectors would be needed to test whether the proposed sequence unfolds over time. Within those limits, the survey identifies a coherent and unusually consistent pattern: for Riyadh SMEs, sustained competitive positioning is statistically linked not to entrepreneurial ambition alone, but to the product and process renewal through which that ambition is implemented.

Subject of Research: Associations among entrepreneurial orientation, open innovation and sustainable competitive advantage in Riyadh SMEs

Article Title: Entrepreneurial orientation and sustainable competitive advantage in Saudi SMEs: exploring product and process innovation pathways

Article References: Almoshaigeh, M., & Omri, A. (2026). Entrepreneurial orientation and sustainable competitive advantage in Saudi SMEs: exploring product and process innovation pathways. Frontiers in Sustainability, 7, 1959718. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsus.2026.1959718

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/frsus.2026.1959718

Keywords: Riyadh SMEs, Saudi Arabia, entrepreneurial orientation, open innovation, product innovation, process innovation, sustainable competitive advantage, mediation analysis, business strategy, cross-sectional survey, Entrepreneurial, orientation

The study’s methodological core is a two-way fixed effects panel design, a workhorse technique in econometrics that controls both for unchanging characteristics of each country and for shocks that affect all countries in a given year. This dual control matters because resource dependency and innovation capacity are shaped by deep structural features, geography, institutions, colonial history, that do not change quickly, and by global forces such as commodity price cycles that hit every economy simultaneously. By absorbing both sources of confounding variation, the authors isolate the association between high-tech innovation and resource rents with more confidence than a simple cross-country comparison would allow. The dataset spans both OECD member states and non-OECD economies, giving the analysis genuine global reach rather than a narrow developed-world focus.

The headline finding is strikingly consistent: high-tech innovation exerts a significant negative impact on natural resource rents in both developed and emerging economies. In plain terms, countries that build capacity to produce and export technology-intensive goods and services progressively reduce their reliance on income from extracting and selling raw materials. The mechanism the authors emphasize is economic diversification. When a nation develops a competitive high-tech sector, whether in electronics, pharmaceuticals, aerospace components or digital services, the structure of its economy shifts away from the extraction of primary commodities. Knowledge-intensive production generates what economists call knowledge rents, returns to intellectual assets and proprietary capabilities, and these can effectively substitute for the resource rents that previously anchored national income.

What elevates the study beyond a simple correlation is its conceptual framing. The authors integrate two research streams that have largely run in parallel: the resource dependency literature, which examines how organizations and economies manage their reliance on external resources, and the open innovation literature, which explores how firms and nations draw on and contribute to external knowledge flows. Their distinctive contribution is to treat outbound innovation, the export of high-technology products, as a distinct external channel of economic transformation. Rather than asking only how countries absorb foreign technology, the paper asks how a country’s ability to sell sophisticated products abroad reshapes its domestic economic structure and reduces the gravitational pull of its own natural resource endowments.

The nuance emerges when the authors split their sample by development status. The dampening effect of high-tech innovation on resource dependency is significantly more pronounced in developed OECD member states than in emerging economies. This asymmetry is not merely a statistical curiosity; it points to what the authors describe as structural constraints and limited absorptive capacity in developing nations. Absorptive capacity refers to the combination of human capital, institutional quality, financial depth and infrastructure that allows an economy to convert innovative activity into broad structural change. Without these complements, high-tech sectors in emerging economies may remain enclaves, small islands of sophistication that coexist with, rather than displace, a dominant extractive base.

This finding reframes a long-running debate. Traditional accounts of the so-called resource curse have tended toward structural determinism, suggesting that countries endowed with abundant natural resources are largely trapped by that endowment, vulnerable to price volatility, rent-seeking and institutional decay. Alkharafi and Alsabah shift the conversation from a structural perspective to a capability-based one. On this view, the decisive question is not how much oil or copper a country possesses, but whether it can build the capabilities needed to generate alternative sources of rent. Economic development itself thus becomes a key boundary condition: the same dose of high-tech innovation produces a much larger reduction in resource dependency in economies that have already crossed certain developmental thresholds.

The policy implications are considerable, particularly for resource-rich states attempting to diversify. Gulf economies, including the authors’ own Kuwait, have invested heavily in visions and programs designed to build post-oil economic structures, and the study’s results offer both encouragement and caution. The encouragement is that the diversification pathway through high-tech exports is empirically real: knowledge rents can substitute for resource rents. The caution is that the transition does not happen automatically. Emerging economies may need to invest in complementary capabilities, education systems, research institutions, intellectual property regimes, venture financing and trade logistics, before innovation can meaningfully erode the dominance of extraction. Simply announcing a technology hub or subsidizing startups, without the surrounding absorptive infrastructure, is unlikely to move the needle on resource dependency.

The study also speaks to the broader sustainability agenda. Reducing natural resource dependency through innovation contributes to sustainable development in two ways highlighted by the authors: economic diversification, which stabilizes national income against commodity shocks, and responsible resource use, which eases the environmental pressures associated with extraction. Natural resource rents, the surplus income generated by selling raw materials, often finance short-term consumption rather than long-term productive investment, and their extraction carries ecological costs from habitat destruction to carbon emissions. An economy that gradually replaces resource rents with knowledge rents can, in principle, decouple prosperity from both the depletion of its natural capital and the volatility of global commodity markets. The 2017 to 2021 window covered by the dataset, which includes the pandemic-era commodity turbulence, gives the results particular relevance for policymakers weighing resilience against extraction-based growth.

As with any panel econometric study, the findings describe associations identified under a particular modeling strategy rather than laboratory-proof causation, and the authors are careful to frame their contribution as evidence within a defined scope. The dataset’s five-year span, while sufficient for fixed effects estimation, cannot capture the multi-decade timescales over which some diversification stories unfold, and the aggregate country-level measures of high-tech innovation and resource rents necessarily smooth over sectoral detail. Yet the study’s originality lies precisely in connecting levels and literatures that rarely meet: it links firm-level concepts of open innovation to nation-scale resource economics, and it demonstrates that the direction of knowledge flows, outward through high-tech exports, matters as much as the inward absorption of foreign technology.

The bigger picture is one of cautious optimism grounded in hard numbers. The global economy is not condemned to a division between resource-dependent suppliers and knowledge-dependent innovators; the evidence shows that innovation demonstrably reduces resource reliance everywhere, even if the effect is stronger where capabilities are already deep. For the emerging economies that dominate the list of resource-dependent states, the message is that the pathway exists but is gated by absorptive capacity, and that building that capacity, in human capital, institutions and innovation systems, is the real frontier of sustainability policy. For developed economies, the results reinforce the case that continued investment in high-technology sectors is not just a growth strategy but a structural hedge against resource dependency. Published open access with support from the Abdullah Al Salem University open access fund, the study invites replication and extension, and its capability-based reframing of the resource dependency debate is likely to shape how economists, and the governments they advise, think about the road from extraction to innovation.

Subject of Research: The effect of high-tech innovation on natural resource dependency across developed and emerging economies

Article Title: Innovation driven sustainability through high-tech innovation and reduced reliance on natural resources

Article References: Alkharafi, N., & Alsabah, M. (2026). Innovation driven sustainability through high-tech innovation and reduced reliance on natural resources. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-04789-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-04789-z

Keywords: high-tech innovation, natural resource rents, resource dependency, economic diversification, open innovation, sustainable development, OECD economies, emerging economies, absorptive capacity, knowledge rents, panel econometrics, resource curse