Fiona Schweitzer

Open Innovation And Its Effectiveness To Embrace Turbulent Environments

The paper focuses on the challenges of integrating external sources in the innovation process and investigates the role of environmental turbulence in this context. Building on the resources-based view and the dynamic capabilities perspective the authors propose that open innovation strategies assist companies in navigating through turbulent times. Empirical testing of this assumption in a sample of 101 manufacturing firms indicates that open innovation activities are more important in turbulent than in non-turbulent markets and that supplier integration is vital when technological turbulence is high, whilst customer integration is critical in environments characterized by high market turbulence. From a practical point of view, these findings highlight the importance of stakeholder integration in the innovation process and provide details on the successful implementation of this strategy under different environmental settings.

ACTION AT THE FRONT END OF INNOVATION

In recent years, the front end of innovation has drawn a great deal of attention as an important driver of new product development (NPD) success. In this study, we analyze the impact of knowledge gathering, project planning, interfunctional collaboration and formalization on the ability to reduce technical and market uncertainties, creativity, and the efficiency of the early stages. 352 Austrian B2B-companies from technology-intensive sectors participated in the study. The results indicate that collaboration quality, formalization of the different phases of the front end and identification of customer-needs are fundamental for front-end performance, while collaboration quantity is less important. Moreover, planning was found to be central for efficiency and did not have a negative impact on creativity. Managerial recommendations from the study include scrutinizing the way in which interfunctional collaboration takes place, increasing customer integration and formalizing the early phases.

Managing the Unmanageable: The Fuzzy Front End of Innovation

Innovation is apparently considered as vital, since it is one of the highest priorities of top management according to a recent CEO survey. Most managers work on the late innovation process, which is characterized by defined processes, clear procedures, and documented responsibilities and roles, despite knowing that the real leverage in generating new ideas and improving the competitiveness of innovation lies in the early stages, the so-called ‘fuzzy front end of innovation’ (FFEI). Rather than relying on long decision times before a project really starts, a company has to take the decision which opportunities and ideas to select and to pursue fast, even if this is associated with uncertainty and risk. The right mix of methods and processes to gather and analyze information can help to identify drivers of risk, reduce uncertainties, and thus take some fuzziness out of the front end of innovation, while at the same time entrepreneurial spirit that accepts risk and welcomes risk-taking is needed. Process leadership is not unimportant either, but the key capability is being good at managing people, i.e., finding the right people, setting up a good network, coaching the teams, identifying the creative potential of individuals, and providing them with a strong vision and direction. For these reasons, effectively managing the fuzzy front end of innovation is one of the most important, and simultaneously challenging, activities of innovation managers.

To Be or Not to Be in Thrall to the March of Smart Products

ABSTRACT This article explores how perceived disempowerment impacts the intention to adopt smart autonomous products. Empirically, the paper builds on three studies to show this impact. Study 1 explores the relevance of the perceived disempowerment in respect of smart autonomous products. Study 2 manipulates autonomy of smart products and finds that perceived disempowerment mediates the link between smart products’ autonomy and adoption intention. Study 3 indicates that an intervention design―that is, a product design that allows consumers to intervene in the actions of an autonomous smart product―can reduce their perceived disempowerment in respect of autonomous smart products. Further, Study 3 reveals that personal innovativeness moderates the role that an intervention design plays in product adoption: an intervention design shows a positive effect on adoption intention for individuals with low personal innovativeness, but for those with high personal innovativeness no effect of an intervention design is present on adoption intention. The authors suggest that managers consider consumers’ perceived disempowerment when designing autonomous smart products, because (1) perceived disempowerment reduces adoption and (2) when targeted at consumers with low personal innovativeness, an intervention design reduces their perceived disempowerment.

Integrating Customers at the Front End of Innovation

The trend towards open innovation and crowdsourcing inspires new ways of thinking about customers’ involvement in the innovation process, which encourages companies to open up their innovation processes and gain customer insights from people and institutions outside the firm. In order to drive a product successfully from the front end to the next innovation stage, managers need information, which can be either solution information or needs information, that helps them reduce technical and market uncertainties. The customer’s role in the process of gathering information differs according to whether the indirect, and more traditional, approach of integrating the customer (manufacturer active paradigm) or the approach of direct customer integration is chosen, where the creative potential and the tacit knowledge of the user are directly used as innovation input (customer active paradigm). The targets for customer integration have to be set accordingly, and the most suitable market research tool has to be selected, which either can belong to the group of needs-focused research methods or of solution-focused research techniques. This chapter also discusses the issue of how to find the appropriate participants and to encourage them to get involved in the process and how the findings can best be implemented in the company.

Drivers and Consequences of Narrative Transportation: Understanding the Role of Stories and Domain‐Specific Skills in Improving Radically New Products

This article investigates the role of transportation in concept tests (i.e., a vivid mental image of a new product concept and the way of using it) for radically new products. Based on transportation literature, the article proposes that concept descriptions in a story format can stimulate transportation. Further, the article builds on the literature on domain‐specific skills to propose that technological reflectiveness (i.e., the ability to think about the impact of a technological product on its users and society in general) and product expertise increase transportation. The article explores the effect that transportation has on the ability of consumers to enumerate the advantages and disadvantages of a radically new product and on their ability to provide valuable concept improvement ideas (i.e., ideas that are highly novel, feasible, and beneficial for consumers). A quasi‐experiment with 253 participants demonstrates that a story format, product experience with related product categories, and technological reflectiveness increased transportation with regard to radically new products. The empirical research also showed that transportation facilitates the enumeration of the advantages and the disadvantages of a concept, resulting in more valuable concept improvement ideas. These findings suggest that innovation managers should strive to evoke transportation in concept tests for radically new products, as transportation allows consumers to provide more valuable input.

Produkt- und Markttestverfahren für Industriegüter

Die Einfuhrung von Produktinnovationen erfordert nicht nur entsprechende FE je nach Branche und Messmethode scheitern bis zu 90 % der Produktneueinfuhrungen (Holger 2007, S. 423; Esch 2007, S. 27). Vor diesem Hintergrund sollten bereits vor der Markteinfuhrung neuer Produkte spezielle Testverfahren der Marktforschung angewendet werden, um die Akzeptanz neuer Produkte seitens der Kunden fruhzeitig zu messen und damit den voraussichtlichen Markterfolg abschatzen zu konnen (Kottkamp 1998, S. 166ff.; Holger 2007, S. 424ff.).

A long way home: How an intra-organizational innovation network overcomes its political boundaries

This article focuses on the still understudied link among political boundaries and innovation practices and its inherent boundary-crossing mechanisms in intra-organizational innovation networks. Our single case study at the sports company adidas derives two particular combinations of boundaries and boundary-crossing mechanisms to overcome political boundaries in intra-organizational innovation networks. These are the ‘open-closed (minded) boundaries’ and ‘everybody-is-an-innovator boundaries’. They have been addressed with distinct innovation practices that comprise the boundary-crossing mechanisms ‘reframe interests’ and ‘negotiate interests’. We find that these boundary-crossing mechanisms to be crucial in the process of managing the intra-organizational innovation network. Our findings have implications for the organizational anchoring of innovation practices given its importance as enabler or barrier to overcome political boundaries in intra-organizational innovation networks.

Open Service Prototyping

Service prototyping on one hand and the integration of co-creating customers or further stakeholders on the other hand, have proven to be highly beneficial for the quality, the speed-to-market, and the success of new service offerings. Prototypes support stakeholders to articulate their latent needs and thus support them to provide vital input for new service development. Service prototyping is not limited to real world simulations any more. Recent advances in IT opened up new possibilities of enhancing service development. The given cases show which potential benefits IT-enabled prototypes as well as virtual prototypes can offer companies in the tourism industries that are striving to open up their service development approaches. In particular, we distinguish between three types of prototypes that enable open service innovation: (1) real world prototypes, (2) IT-supported prototypes, and (3) virtual reality prototypes. The presented approaches for open service prototyping are valuable ways to develop, try, and test out services together with team members, customers or an unknown crowd. Their use is demonstrated through an analysis of three cases within the tourism industry.

Voestalpine Anarbeitung: Commercialization Framework for Technology Development Projects

voestalpine Anarbeitung GmbH developed a framework for commercializing technology development (TD) projects in the automotive supply industry, which demonstrates how a commercialization process can be structured and which tools and methods should be applied in the particular process steps to turn technological ideas and inventions into effective action. Qualitative exploratory research as well as a quantitative study revealed successful process structures and appropriate management tools for activities of commercializing TD. The established framework integrates specific commercialization activities into every stage of the TD process and includes a manageable number of phase-specific practicable management tools that assist in increasing the effectiveness of technology development. Furthermore, the implementation of the framework enhances the efficiency of the TD activities due to the strategy-orientated and systematic procedure, resulting in reduced time to market and a higher return on TD activities. A project-specific validation showed that the model complements the existing TD process with a valuable market-pull perspective.