Eric Viardot

Key features and importance of professional information technology-based services

Professional information technology (IT)-based services are growing rapidly and successfully. However, the academic literature virtually ignores them. This article defines and describes key features of professional IT-based services, focuses on their specific business rules, and pinpoints key success factors and the strategic trade-off necessary for maximum results.

Adoption of Innovation: Balancing Internal and External Stakeholders in the Marketing of Innovation

In recent years, innovation management has shown to be a very important topic for academics and professionals. However, the emphasis has mostly been on the upstream activities of the innovation management process and specifically about how to obtain as well as to integrate new sources of innovation beyond the traditional and internal R&D function. Conversely, the downstream activities of the innovation process, specifically marketing and commercialization, have attracted little research. But the situation is changing now due to governments and companies that have realized that in order for an innovation to be successful, it is not enough to have good new ideas: it must foremost be adopted by the market. As a consequence, there is currently a shift in priorities and a renewed interest in the marketing of innovation and especially in the adoption of original products or services, because one important function of marketing is to contribute to the adoption of innovative solutions by potential customers. This book aims to contribute to this advancement and to provide fresh conceptual insights and thinking about the manners to stimulate and to facilitate the adoption of every kind of innovation. This will be managed by a very diverse contributions exploring the role and the balancing of internal and external stakeholders in the marketing of innovation.

Achieving Market Leadership for Innovation Through Communication

It is difficult to sell innovations successfully because they are fraught with uncertainties as, very often, their impact relies on complementary inventions which development time can fluctuate very significantly. Still, some companies have achieved significant market success with innovative products and services. An in-depth analysis shows that they rely less on technology than on their willingness to communicate with all the market players in order to expand opportunities for other participants. This chapter details the five different methods of communications they are using. The first way is to adopt a “push” communication strategy towards the market participants by offering compatibility and/or open access. The second approach is to implement a “pull” communication strategy to attract new partners by creating and managing a supportive network. The third way is a combination of the “push” and “pull” communications. The fourth technique is to actively publicize the innovation through an aggressive branding. Finally, the fifth avenue is to communicate with the world by going global in order to reach the maximum volume of users of the innovation.

Human resources management in large information-based services companies: towards a common framework?

Professional information based services are the fastest growing activities in the high technology information sector. But the management of those companies is a largely unexplored area of strategic management. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory survey of the ten largest international companies in this field about their models and practice of people management. The paper underlines the strategic importance of HR management for those companies whose people are their most important assets and who have recently experienced meteoric growth in the number of their employees. Findings suggest that there is a common framework of practices which can be divided in seven different components. These include a vision of the role of the employees, as well as their recruitment, training, evolution, management, communication, and remuneration. The paper presents and discusses the impact of the service technology on each of those components.

Redefining Collaborative Innovation in the Digital Economy

The continuous growth of the digital economy is redefining the way innovative companies are collaborating with external partners. We analyze the case of the technology driven companies which are at the forefront of this evolution that impact both the inbound phase of the collaborative innovation, to get new ideas, knowledge as well as technology, and the outbound phase of commercialization and adoption of innovative products and services.

Branding in B2B: the value of consumer goods brands in industrial markets

Purpose This paper aims to explore whether consumer goods brands (CGBs) have more brand equity than exclusively professional brands (EPBs) do in the context of the industrial detergents market. Design/methodology/approach The author conducted direct customer interviews at the outlets of two large wholesale distribution retail chains. The sample included 211 respondents. Findings The study shows that CGBs do have brand equity in business-to-business (B2B) market. First, they enjoy a greater top-of-mind awareness than do EPBs. Second, they have a distinctive brand image, as they are perceived as being more efficient and more expensive than are EPBs. Research limitations/implications There are three main limitations. First, the results may reflect industry-specific factors that are not representative of all professional markets. Second, the products studied are relatively low in price compared to other categories of professional products. Third, the sample market is a mature market characterized by a modest growth rate and limited development in related markets. However, these limitations do not discredit the results of the study. Conversely, they invite further research on the subject of CGBs extending into professional markets. Future research could examine other product categories as well as the use of an experimental approach to validate and generalize the primary results. Practical implications This research has implications for business-to-consumer marketing professionals looking to leverage the equity of their CGBs in the B2B space. In addition, this work can help B2B marketing professionals better defend their market share in the face of well-known CGB entering their market. Originality/value This study represents an exploratory analysis, as the author has not any found prior work on this topic. In addition to these original results, the paper contributes to a better understanding of the concept of brand equity in B2B for academics and provides new insights for industrial marketers regarding branding in B2B.

Trust and Standardization in the Adoption of Innovation

This tutorial article analyzes how standards can promote trust, which is an essential factor to drive the market acceptance of an innovation, including for the computer and communication industry. The nature of the trust in an innovation evolves significantly among the phases of the adoption as distinctive categories of adopters place different priorities on the three main elements of trust, which are the credibility, the integrity, and the benevolence of the innovation provider. The article explains how standardization effectively contributes to generate trust in an innovation in different manners along the various phases of the adoption cycle. We show how different types of standards, i.e. anticipatory, enabling, and responsive, help shape the relevant elements of trust for each category of innovation adopters. In conclusion, we discuss future avenues for the standardization of trust in order to manage it more effectively for the successful adoption of technology innovation.

Entrepreneurial Orientation Scale: Adaptation to Spanish.

Entrepreneurship is linked to the perception of opportunities, to orientation, to attitudes, to the fear of failure and to entrepreneurial motivations. Entrepreneurial orientation is a fundamental construct for understanding the phenomenon of entrepreneurship. What is more, it is multidimensional and has attracted considerable attention from researchers in recent years. The objective of this study was to adapt the original 12-item English scale to Spanish and to analyze its psychometric properties. The participants in the present study were 925 Spanish employees (48.2% men, 51.5% women, M age = 42.49 years, SD age = 11.25) from the Autonomous Communities of Catalonia and Castilla-León. After applying an ESEM (RMSEA = .06; CFI = .97 and TLI = .95) a structure was determined made up of four factors which corroborated the structure of the original scale: Autonomy (α = .71 and CI = .68 - .73), Innovativeness (α = .70 and CI = .67 - .73), Risk Taking (α = .72 and CI = .68 - .74) and Competitive Aggressiveness (α = .70 and CI = .67 - .73). The four factors displayed suitable reliability. The study also found evidences of validity in relation to a series of external correlates and various scales which refer to workaholism, irritation and burnout. The scale presented here may prove useful for satisfactorily identifying, in Spanish, the entrepreneurial orientation of the working population.

Revolution of Innovation Management: The Digital Breakthrough

Why another book on innovation, and why use the big word “revolution”? The simple answer to this question is the fact that we believe the time is right to explore what could be the next phase of innovation management not only in corporate practice, but also in the academic field.

Revolution of Innovation Management: Internationalization and Business Models

What a change in the last three years in the realm of innovation Management! Three years ago, we concluded our book about “Evolution of Innovation Management” (Brem and Viardot 2013) by underlining some essential trends in the management of innovation. Most specifically, we stressed the importance of ambidexterity, which we defined as the ability of companies to realize exploration and exploitation simultaneously in their innovation management process. Some contributions in the book also emphasized the necessity to adopt a more collaborative process with external stakeholders and to move to more “open innovation” (Brau et al. 2013). Other authors underscored the burgeoning importance of platforms (Gawer 2014) and the nurturing of an innovation ecosystem (Thomas and Wind 2013) that federates and coordinates constitutive agents who can innovate and compete. The book had also singled out some key capabilities that innovative companies had to develop in order to be more successful, including the role of communication, culture, leadership, structure, and key performance indicators.