Erwin Hofman

Variation in Housing Design: Identifying Customer Preferences

House builders in different countries are exploring ways to deliver higher levels of customisation in housing design. To create such variety at acceptable cost, it is important to know how potential buyers of new houses prioritise the different elements such as bathroom, kitchen and roof type of a house design. For parts with a great variety, several alternative solutions could be created in advance while parts with a low variety can be produced as standard solutions for all homes, thereby taking advantage of economies of scale. This paper presents the findings of a vignette-based survey about the requirements for customisation among potential buyers of new houses in the Netherlands. Based on the survey, a list of priority housing attributes is derived. This priority listing is of great importance for building developers who offer (or are considering offering) customised housing. Although people generally prefer to have the opportunity to select from options, they will be less inclined to do so if this option also means a considerable increase in price. Therefore, this study also examines the trade-off relationship between the value customers place on variety and the maximum price that can be asked for a customised housing proposition. The paper concludes with implications of the studys findings for evaluating trade-off decisions between standardisation and customisation.

Platform thinking for services: the case of human resources

This paper tests the utility of platform thinking, a design principle that has so far been applied to product development yet under-researched in service settings, for improving the value of services. A key principle of platform thinking is to balance the reuse of service components with the heterogeneity in user needs. Tuning services to specific user needs is valuable, but differentiating services when user needs are homogeneous may decrease service quality and increase cost. Using data from 676 human resource management services, this study finds that the service value is highest when the service provision is matched with the commonality potential of the services. The results indicate that using the wrong delivery channel decreases the service value which eventually could decrease the service value for an organizations external customers. These empirical findings demonstrate the relevance of platform thinking for service design and challenges conventional design criteria used for optimizing service delivery.

Modular and architectural innovation in loosely coupled networks : matching customer requirements, product architecture, and supplier networks

Collaborative innovation projects that involve suppliers, customers, and sometimes even competitors can be a challenging undertaking. Nonetheless, specialization and organizational loose coupling makes companies increasingly dependent upon resources that are only externally available. This study focuses on how companies can improve the success of collaborative product innovation projects of a modular or architectural nature. An in-depth case study and a survey study on 664 collaborative innovation networks from four different industries in the U.S. are used to examine the problems and challenges that companies encounter in collaborative innovation. Furthermore these studies show what strategies can be used to solve these issues. The empirical findings reveal that the degree of organizational coupling among innovation network members together with the availability of product design rules are good predictors of the commercial success of architectural and modular product innovations. These findings are summarized in a new innovation typology that provides several counterintuitive, but practical implications for companies who are in the process of developing modular products or services.

IDENTIFYING THE ‘RIGHT’ SUPPLIER FOR MODULE DEVELOPMENTS — A CROSS-INDUSTRIAL CASE ANALYSIS

Relational view argues that buying companies should integrate supplier resources in new product development (NPD) projects to realise competitive advantages. Due to decoupling of modules and the associated opportunity to allocate development activities to upstream suppliers, modular product architectures are considered to be a driving factor for the integration of supplier resources. Module developments are associated with substantial investments, long-term orientation and risks across product families for the buying firm. Therefore, supplier integration for module development is highly critical. Regardless of the relevance, research has not yet analysed, which supplier competence are considered as antecedents for successful module developments with suppliers. To close the identified gap, this paper analysed case companies from the automotive, agriculture equipment and rail vehicle industry. Technical, organisational and relationship aspects are identified as critical success factors. The results contribute to theory by adding to relational view the finding that competences for successful collaborations differ in accordance to the level of interaction between suppliers and buying firms. Moreover, this study provides a model and an evaluation scheme that helps practitioners to allocate the best suitable development role to suppliers within module developments.

A bibliometric review of the innovation adoption literature

Innovation adoption is of utmost importance for company survival. That is why it is important to develop a thorough understanding of this research domain and the themes it encapsulates. Since the early work of Everett Rogers, the adoption of innovation literature has attracted considerable attention and has continued to grow rapidly, resulting in a large but fragmented body of literature. The goal of this study is to provide a coherent overview of the theoretical cornerstones as well as recent research trends in the innovation adoption literature. To this end, we conducted a bibliometric review and performed bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis. First, based on co-citation analysis, we illustrate that innovation adoption research is built on four theoretical cornerstones including: institutional theory; theory of reasoned action; theory concerning the determinants of adoption, and; diffusion theory. Second, bibliographic coupling was used to assess the current research trends. This review is the first to identify thematic areas in an exhaustive manner revealing five clusters of thematic related publications or “research trends”: determinants of IT adoption; adoption of technological standards; organizational rationales associated with adoption; modelling diffusion, and; adoption of agricultural innovations. We conclude this review with the limitations and future research orientations in the field of innovation adoption.

An assessment method for system innovation and transition (AMSIT)

To address comprehensive system innovations that may occur in a future transition, a suitable ex ante assessment method is required. The technological innovation system approach is useful for the retrospective study of the conditions for success or failure of innovation trajectories, and the multilevel framework helps to understand transition dynamics. Drawing on these concepts and on the hypercube of innovation, we suggest, as an ex ante approach, the assessment method for system innovation and transition (AMSIT). This method not only helps to anticipate the requirements for a system innovation and transition, but it also provides an indication if these requirements are being met. The method helps to assess innovation system initiatives that not only face technological challenges in the niche in which it operates, but also challenging factors related to the sociotechnical regime and the political and societal landscape in which the niche is located. This paper describes the construction of the anticipatory AMSIT and illustrates its application in a case linked to the Dutch railway network involving a transition to a system operating at an increased voltage.

Network contingencies in the relation between design rules and architectural innovation performance

Architectural innovation is fundamental to the renewal of technological systems. However, it can be a real challenge to organize architectural innovation, all the more so when success hinges upon close collaboration with other firms that are responsible for different subsystems of the end product. This study examines the impact of product design rules and the degree of organizational coupling among innovation network partners on the performance of architectural innovation projects. Using data from 270 collaborative innovation networks in the United States, we found that the presence of design rules initially improves performance, reaching a point after which dominant design rules have a net negative impact on the performance of collaborative architectural innovation projects. At the same time, our findings reveal that lead firms can alleviate this negative effect by selecting loosely coupled innovation partners. Thus, our findings suggest that the presence of design rules and the extent of partner couplin...