Research portrait: Holmer Kok

Innovation is not a black box

Innovation is often described as unpredictable: the right idea appearing at the right moment, followed by a combination of creativity, timing, and luck.

Holmer Kok’s research starts from a different premise.

“Innovation is not just random,” he says. “There are patterns, mechanisms, and conditions that shape why some ideas emerge, why some firms are more successful than others, and how innovation can be supported more effectively.”

Kok, Associate Professor at the Department of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology (House of Innovation) and the Center for Security and Resilience (CfSR) at the Stockholm School of Economics, studies why some firms are better able to innovate than others - whether measured through the novelty and quality of their innovations or the performance benefits those innovations ultimately generate.

His research spans two closely connected areas. The first examines how firms learn, both internally and through collaboration with external partners, and how that knowledge contributes to innovation. The second looks outward, examining how the institutional environment surrounding firms - including regulation, policy, and geopolitical tensions - shapes their capacity to innovate.

Together, they address a deceptively simple question: What makes innovation work?

From knowledge to innovation

Kok’s interest in innovation began with curiosity about where new ideas actually come from.

Many managers, he says, still view innovation as something of a black box. What attracted him to innovation research was discovering that researchers had developed theories and empirical approaches that could explain processes that might otherwise appear serendipitous.

That interest has led him to examine how firms create and use knowledge, including through strategic alliances and other forms of external collaboration.

His research has explored what happens when organizations recombine existing knowledge in new ways, how firms benefit from inventions, and how public research funding can influence innovation. His work has been published in journals including Journal of Management, Research Policy, Journal of Business Research, and Technovation.

One recurring insight is that creating an invention is only part of the challenge. Firms also need to understand how knowledge can be developed, combined, integrated, and ultimately translated into something that creates value.

When the rules around innovation change

A second strand of Kok’s research grew from his work on renewable energy. Over time, he became increasingly interested in a broader realization: technologies cannot be understood independently of the institutional and geopolitical environments in which they are developed.

Renewable energy makes this particularly visible. Regulation shapes incentives. Geography affects markets and resources. Political decisions influence investment. And geopolitical tensions can alter where technologies, components, and knowledge can move.

“I’m very interested in how the markets firms operate in, and the tensions between those markets, shape their ability to compete and innovate,” Kok says.

This question has become increasingly important as technological flows become more fragmented across borders. For firms, access to critical technologies can determine competitiveness. For countries, the same issue can affect resilience and the ability to maintain strategically important capabilities.

For an economy such as Sweden’s, innovation therefore becomes more than a question of firm performance. It is also connected to the ability to preserve technological capabilities and remain competitive when the external environment changes.

Innovation under pressure

This is where Kok’s research connects directly to the work of the Center for Security and Resilience.

He is increasingly interested in how firms continue functioning and maintain competitive advantage when confronted with radical external shocks – particularly disruptions that emerge rapidly and outside their control.

Institutional environments have always changed. But recent years have brought shifts that are more sudden, more pronounced, and often more difficult for organizations to anticipate.

“That matters a great deal for Swedish competitiveness and total defense, because both ultimately depend on firms being able to adapt quickly, maintain critical capabilities, and continue operating under pressure,” Kok says.

Preparedness, from this perspective, is partly an innovation challenge. Organizations need not only plans for known risks, but the ability to adapt when technologies, markets, regulations, or geopolitical conditions change unexpectedly.

That places innovation capability at the center of resilience.

Regulation can constrain - but it can also enable

Kok’s work also raises questions about the relationship between businesses and policymakers.

Institutional frameworks are often designed around relatively short-term conditions, he argues. Political cycles can contribute to frequent changes in priorities and regulation, while companies make investments and develop technologies over much longer time horizons.

In his conversations with practitioners, Kok has repeatedly encountered frustration that firms are not sufficiently involved in discussions about how these frameworks are designed. Businesses may experience regulation primarily as something intended to constrain behavior rather than as a framework that can also enable productive adaptation and innovation.

The distinction matters particularly when the companies affected provide critical technologies, infrastructure, or capabilities on which society depends.

In the long term, Kok hopes his research can contribute to better decisions on both sides: helping firms understand the processes and capabilities that support innovation, while helping policymakers design institutional frameworks that combine necessary constraints with conditions for long-term innovation, resilience, and societal value.

When products never stop evolving

Another emerging part of Kok’s research focuses on digital technologies and what they mean for the innovation process itself.

Products are increasingly dynamic. Software-based products can change continuously after launch, while physical products increasingly contain digital layers that can be updated and adapted over time.

That challenges the traditional idea that innovation culminates when a finished product reaches the market.

Instead, products can continue evolving in response to users, new information, and changing conditions. For researchers and companies, this creates new questions about how innovation should be managed after launch and how users and other stakeholders can become part of the development process.

For resilience, the implications extend further. Many critical technologies now have this dynamic, updateable character. Understanding how to build systems that can evolve without losing their core functionality therefore becomes part of preparedness itself.

As Kok puts it, innovation capability becomes part of preparedness.

Research that moves between academia and practice

For Kok, one of the attractions of working at SSE is precisely this movement between research, teaching, and practice.

“What I find especially rewarding about being faculty at SSE is that it allows me to do both things a university should ideally be about: generating new knowledge and sharing it with students and practitioners,” he says.

Research questions can emerge from academic theory, but also from news, industry reports, or conversations with practitioners. Those questions can then be investigated systematically, discussed with researchers internationally, and eventually brought back into the classroom or conversations with organizations.

Teaching plays an important role in that process. Kok describes SSE students as demanding in a positive sense: their questions require faculty to remain current, understand emerging developments, and connect theory to what firms are actually doing.

The exchange works in both directions. Teaching becomes another opportunity to learn.

Why this matters now

Competition is accelerating. New entrants can challenge established firms more quickly, technological development is moving faster, and the conditions surrounding innovation are increasingly influenced by regulation and geopolitics.

At the same time, access to critical technologies is becoming a question not only of commercial advantage but of resilience.

For Sweden, this creates a dual challenge. Firms need to remain innovative enough to compete internationally, while society needs to retain access to the technologies and capabilities required to function under more uncertain conditions.

Kok’s research suggests that these goals cannot be separated. Innovation depends on how firms learn and collaborate, but also on the wider systems in which they operate. Regulation, research funding, technological dependencies, and geopolitical relationships can all shape what firms are able to develop and whether those innovations ultimately create value.

Understanding those mechanisms can help firms become more innovative. Increasingly, it can also help societies become more resilient.

A simple insight with complex implications

If Kok had to leave the general public with one message about his research, it would be straightforward:

“Innovation is not just random. There are patterns, mechanisms, and conditions that shape why some ideas emerge, why some firms are more successful than others, and how innovation can be supported more effectively.”

Understanding those conditions becomes particularly important when societies need innovation not only to create growth, but also to maintain critical capabilities through periods of disruption and change.

Want to learn more?

For more information about research at the Center for Security and Resilience, please contact Executive Director Staffan Holmberg at staffan.holmberg@hhs.se.

You can explore Holmer Kok’s research profile at the Stockholm School of Economics or contact him directly by email.

Selected publications

From green inventions to products: The role of firm and policy alignment in product integration
Holmer Kok and M. Hanson, Technovation, 2026.

Trajectory integration and the impact of inventions
Holmer Kok, J. Monroe, and P. Kappen, Journal of Business Research, 2025.

Pork barrel or barrel of gold? Examining the performance implications of earmarking in public R&D grants
Holmer Kok, D. Faems, and P. de Faria, Research Policy, 2022.

Ties that matter: The impact of alliance partner knowledge recombination novelty on knowledge utilization in R&D alliances
Holmer Kok, D. Faems, and P. de Faria, Research Policy, 2020.

Dusting off the knowledge shelves: Recombinant lag and the technological value of inventions
Holmer Kok, D. Faems, and P. de Faria, Journal of Management, 2019.