A platform-based approach to ambidexterity for innovation: An empirical investigation in the public sector

2023 | International Journal of Information Management | Citations: 0

Authors: Cao, Lan; West, Barry; Ramesh, Balasubramaniam; Mohan, Kannan; Sarkar, Sumantra

Abstract: Innovation in the public sector plays an important role in improving the quality ... Expand

Abstract: Innovation in the public sector plays an important role in improving the quality of public services and addressing economic and societal challenges. Most of the previous research on innovations has focused on the private sector. How organizations may achieve ambidexterity for innovations in the public sector characterized by unique constraints has been largely underexplored. Platforms have emerged as key components in organizations’ ap­ proaches to innovation. Using an empirical study in a public sector organization, this study identifies a platformbased approach that can be used to achieve ambidexterity in balancing exploitative and exploratory innovations in the public sector. Organizations facing constraints pertaining to structure, risk, and value may benefit from considering their product/service development, process management, and value formulation through this approach. This study also identifies practices in platform development, appropriation, and control that contributed to the success of the platform-based approach. Collapse

Topics: innovation management organization structure business process innovation organizational culture new product development

Methods: qualitative interview case study triangulation personal interview literature study

Theories: ambidexterity theory

Value co-creation for digital innovation: An interorganizational boundary-spanning perspective

2023 | Information & Management | Citations: 0

Authors: Shi, Yunfei; Cui, Tingru; Kurnia, Sherah

Abstract: Despite the enthusiasm for engaging in interorganizational collaboration to enab ... Expand

Abstract: Despite the enthusiasm for engaging in interorganizational collaboration to enable digital product innovation, firms often face challenges in integrating knowledge across organizational boundaries. Our research examines how collaborating firms use Interorganizational Systems (IOS) tools and project coordinators to overcome knowledge boundaries in different types of ideation tasks. Drawing on boundary-spanning theory, we concep­ tualize IOS tools as boundary objects, project coordinators as boundary spanners, and the interdependence of ideation tasks as moderators of the impacts of boundary objects and spanners on knowledge integration. Our findings suggest that IOS tools help overcome syntax and semantic knowledge boundaries by transferring and sharing information when the interdependence of idea implementation tasks is high, and project coordinators help overcome pragmatic knowledge boundaries by building reciprocity of innovation participants when the interdependence of idea generation tasks is high. Our research contributes to value co-creation literature by developing a boundary-spanning mechanism to explain the roles of boundary objects and boundary spanners in overcoming different knowledge boundaries to enable digital product innovation at the inter-firm level. Collapse

Topics: innovation management digital innovation task interdependence idea generation boundary spanning

Methods: survey design methodology qualitative interview survey design post-hoc analysis

Theories: boundary objects theory

From Personal Data to Service Innovation – Guiding the Design of New Service Opportunities

2022 | HICSS | Citations: 0

Authors: Bloecher, Katharina; Hunke, Fabian; Alt, Rainer; Satzger, Gerhard

Abstract: Stimulated by an ongoing digital transformation, companies obtain a new source f ... Expand

Abstract: Stimulated by an ongoing digital transformation, companies obtain a new source for digital service innovation: The use of personal data has the potential to build deeper customer relationships and to develop individualized services. However, methodological support for the systematic application of personal data in innovation processes is still scarce. This paper suggests a comprehensive approach for service design tools that enable collaborative design activities by participants with different data skills to identify new service opportunities. This approach includes the systematic development of customer understanding as well as a process to match customer needs to existing personal data resources. Following a design science research approach, we develop design principles for service design tools and build and evaluate a service opportunity canvas as a first instantiation. Collapse

Topics: knowledge representation innovation management business process innovation data security privacy

Methods: archival research qualitative interview design artifact ontological modelling design science

Institutions and Maker Entrepreneurship

2022 | HICSS | Citations: 0

Authors: Li, Zhouxuan (Fanny); Eberhart, Robert; Eesley, Charles

Abstract: The nascent research on the maker movement highlights the implicit assumptions e ... Expand

Abstract: The nascent research on the maker movement highlights the implicit assumptions embedded in the literature on entrepreneurship and innovation based on a model of closed traditional product development. Instead, the maker culture emphasizes inclusiveness, openness, sharing, and collaboration. To date, we know little about how institutional-level factors impact the probability of a maker hobbyist becoming an entrepreneur. Via a leading maker community, Hackster IO, we collected data from surveying 3,139 global makers from 99 countries during 2016, providing the first quantitative evidence about the maker movement’s impact on firm creation. Our results suggest that having access to makerspaces positively correlates with the likelihood of being a maker entrepreneur. This paper provides the first large quantitative evidence on the wide existence of maker entrepreneurship across the world and how intuitional factors impact the creation of makerfounded firms. Collapse

Topics: entrepreneurship computer hardware Google+ intellectual property application programming interface

Methods: survey F-test descriptive statistic cross sectional research regression analysis method

Theories: resource based view of the firm

Invite everyone to the table, but not to every course

2022 | Electronic Markets | Citations: 1

Authors: Oschinsky, Frederike Marie; Klein, Hans Christian; Niehaves, Bjoern

Abstract: Innovative collaboration strategies are a promising tool for fostering the gover ... Expand

Abstract: Innovative collaboration strategies are a promising tool for fostering the governance of smart cities while acknowledging citizen centricity. During implementation, however, determining the number and background of the involved actors is challenging. The Design-Thinking (DT) approach appears suitable for addressing this issue as it offers a concrete and adaptable course of action. The present contribution involves a study on implementing DT principles in a German health resort and identifies three critical components: (1) team, (2) process, and (3) workspace. Our use case is an adaptable project- and workshop plan that encourages the implementation of DT collaboration in smart cities when designing digital services. Our results provide initial guidelines on how to involve diverse actors, when to integrate trained DT coaches, and how to design collaborative innovation in a digital way. The practice-oriented insights gained in the study can be applied, adapted, and discussed in other smart cities and citizen-centered projects. Collapse

Topics: smart city collaborative innovation digital service innovation management information system use

Methods: literature study design artifact qualitative interview design process theoretical contribution

Iterative uncertainty reduction in multi-actor smart service innovation

2022 | Electronic Markets | Citations: 0

Authors: Poeppelbuss, Jens; Ebel, Martin; Anke, Jürgen

Abstract: Smart service innovation is the process of reconfiguring resources, structures, ... Expand

Abstract: Smart service innovation is the process of reconfiguring resources, structures, and value co-creation processes in service systems that result in novel data-driven service offerings. The nature of such offerings requires the involvement of multiple actors, which has been investigated by a few studies only. In particular, little is known about the multiple actors’ efforts to manage uncertainty in the process of establishing smart service systems. Empirically grounded in data from 25 interviews with industry experts, we explore how organizations act and interact in smart service innovation processes. For our data analysis, we adopt a microfoundational view to derive a theoretical model that conceptualizes actor engagement as a microfoundation for iterative uncertainty reduction in the actor-to-actor network of the smart service system. Our study contributes to information systems research on service systems engineering and digital transformation by explaining smart service innovation from both a multi-actor and a multi-level perspective, drawing on service-dominant (S-D) logic and microfoundations as well-established theoretical lenses. Collapse

Topics: innovation management business process innovation digital transformation participatory design value creation

Methods: qualitative interview design methodology theory development design science design artifact

Theories: service-dominant logic socio technical theory evidence-based design

Living It Up at the Hotel California: Employee Mobility Barriers and Collaborativeness in Firms’ Innovation

2022 | Organization Science | Citations: 0

Authors: Seo, Eunkwang; Somaya, Deepak

Abstract: Research has long recognized the importance of collaboration for innovation, but ... Expand

Abstract: Research has long recognized the importance of collaboration for innovation, but relatively little is known about the strategic drivers of collaborative innovation in firms. We posit that robust collaboration within firms can increase the interfirm mobility of inventors and increase spillovers of innovative knowledge to competitors by mobile inventors. Therefore, by mitigating these value capture hazards associated with collaboration, barriers to employee mobility may induce firms to increase collaborativeness in innovation. Additionally, consistent with the mechanism underlying this proposition, we hypothesize that firms whose innovation entails more complex knowledge, which is known to impede interfirm knowledge spillovers, will increase collaboration less when employee mobility increases. We test these hypotheses by leveraging quasi-exogenous changes in two legal mobility barriers for inventors across U.S. states and find that higher-mobility barriers are associated with greater inventor collaboration (as observed in patented innovation), and this effect is weaker for firms possessing more complex knowledge. These findings deepen our understanding of the strategic tradeoffs between value creation and value capture entailed in collaborative innovation within firms and of human capital strategies that help to manage these tradeoffs. Collapse

Topics: innovation management knowledge spillover collaborative innovation research and development human resource management

Methods: regression analysis method qualitative interview difference in differences robustness check longitudinal research

Theories: human capital theory

Innovation Outcomes of Digitally Enabled Collaborative Problemistic Search Capability

2021 | Management Information Systems Quarterly | Citations: 33

Authors: Karhade, Prasanna; Dong, John Qi

Abstract: A firm's use of boundary-spanning information systems (BSIS) can be beneficial ... Expand

Abstract: A firm's use of boundary-spanning information systems (BSIS) can be beneficial for innovation by providing access to market-facing information. At the same time, BSIS use can give rise to information overload, making it difficult for firms to leverage the most pertinent information for innovation. Although there has been progress in developing the understanding of the role of IS in innovation, it is unclear what capabilities firms need to develop to facilitate innovation in the presence of information overload from BSIS (IO-BSIS). We maintain that firms are increasingly experiencing IO-BSIS and therefore a thorough investigation of firm-level capabilities to facilitate innovation while coping with IO-BSIS is needed. To address this important gap, we broaden the theory of problemistic search for innovation by proposing a digitally enabled collaborative problemistic search (CPS) capability. We propose that a cross-stream CPS effect-the interaction of CPS with customers (CPS-C) and CPS with suppliers (CPS-S)-can enable firms to reinvigorate their internal knowledge for innovation by engaging customers and suppliers in filtering and interpreting market-facing information. Further, we theorize that the presence or absence of IO-BSIS is a contingency factor that affects whether the cross-stream CPS effect is likely to be beneficial or detrimental to innovation. Based on the analysis of data collected from 227 firms, we find that the crossstream CPS effect is beneficial for innovation when firms face IO-BSIS and detrimental to innovation when firms do not experience IO-BSIS. We thus open the black box of the digitally enabled innovation activity by shedding light on specific collaborative activities that advance innovation while enabling firms to cope with information overload.[The] real design problem is not to provide more information to people but to allocate the time they have available for receiving information so that they will get only the information that is most important and relevant to the decisions they will make. The task is not to design information-distributing systems, but intelligent information-filtering systems (Simon 1996, p. 144, discussing the importance of filtering information).What is left unspecified are ... how interpretations and meanings ... were made more explicit, as a result of concrete activities (Weick 1995, p. 8, discussing the importance of interpreting information). Collapse

Topics: innovation management information overload information system use research and development boundary spanning

Methods: survey descriptive statistic theory development Q methodology survey design

Theories: theory of bounded rationality

Industry Norms as Predictors of IT Outsourcing Behaviors

2021 | International Journal of Information Management | Citations: 0

Authors: Prawesh, Shankar; Chari, Kaushal; Agrawal, Manish

Abstract: How do firm-specific factors impact strategic IT decisions such as IT outsourcin ... Expand

Abstract: How do firm-specific factors impact strategic IT decisions such as IT outsourcing? Do non-financial factors in­ fluence these decisions? Whereas prior IT outsourcing research has focused primarily on normative, economic drivers of IT outsourcing, we find evidence of firm-specific non-financial factors influencing IT outsourcing decisions. We focus on the social influence perspective and use IT outsourcing decisions as exemplars of strategic IT decisions. Using a data sample of 77 outsourcing contracts from the automotive industry from 1995 to 2010, we find that even after controlling for financial factors, industry average levels of outsourcing can be used to distinguish strategic outsourcing behaviors of firms for IT enabled services. Firms with above-average levels of IT outsourcing tended to further increase outsourcing, a behavior consistent with perceived Red Queen competitive pressures. Firms with below-average levels of IT outsourcing showed no measurable trends of either increasing or decreasing outsourcing levels. This suggests that firm-specific factors influence IT outsourcing decisions and deviations from non-financial industry norms can indicate how firms make strategic IT decisions. Collapse

Topics: outsourcing social influence database system information technology capability accounting

Methods: regression analysis method robust regression nonparametric test descriptive statistic LexisNexis

Theories: resource based view of the firm

Collaborative Innovation (or Not?!) When Product Performance Is Critical

2021 | HICSS | Citations: 0

Authors: Weber, Thomas A

Abstract: Research and development (R&D) collaborations are horizontal agreements among fir ... Expand

Abstract: Research and development (R&D) collaborations are horizontal agreements among firms to join forces in their inventive activities. As in the context of the recent COVID-19 global pandemic, such collaborations are often promoted with an argument of increased R&D productivity. In numerous contexts, especially when marginal production costs are low, such as for medications or for software, the consumers’ surplus depends critically on the best-performing product available on the market, for—all else equal—this product will tend to take a dominant position. Using a simple two-stage model of innovation and subsequent product commercialization on a market with heterogeneous consumers, we show that a noncollaborative patent race with patent protection (for the best product) provides strong innovation incentives, leading to better performing products than a regime of noncollaborative research without patent protection or of collaborative research (with profit sharing). Collapse

Topics: innovation management price management research and development IS economics economic surplus

Methods: experiment

Theories: prisoner's dilemma