Jeffrey Y. Kim

Customer-Driven Innovation

OVERVIEW: Involving customers in the innovation process entails a host of new concerns, concepts and managerial decisions. Transitioning from older models of no or low customer involvement requires attention to the different types of customer innovation, organizational mission and organizational structure. This article provides a typology for customer innovation, describes how to involve customers in the innovation process, and offers guidelines for shifting organizational structure and emphasis toward customer-driven innovation in order to enable continual, sustainable innovation.

Alternate reality gaming

Millions update the state of the game on the way to a common conclusion, in one case to help the Operator regain control of a spaceship and bring her crew back to the future.

Information-Communication Technologies Open Up Innovation

OVERVIEW: Information–Communication Technologies (ICTs) are no longer just for internal use. Rather, in the era of open and distributed innovation, they must be leveraged by businesses and organizations to reach, record and review ideas from internal and external sources ranging from vendors, suppliers and customers to employees. ICTs enable the entire innovation process, from idea generation and development to experimenting and testing, and, finally, to commercialization of ideas.

Crafting Organizational Innovation Processes

Abstract Innovation is a crucial component of business strategy, but the process of innovation may seem dif ficult to manage. To plan organizational initiatives around innovation or to bolster innovation requires a firm grasp of the innovation process. Few organizations have transparently defined such a process. Based on the findings of an exploratory study of over 30 US and European companies that have robust innovation processes, this paper breaks down the innovation process into discrete stages: idea generation and mobilization, screening and advocacy, experimentation, commercialization, and diffusion and implementation. For each stage, context, outputs and critical ingredients are discussed. There are several common tensions and concerns at each stage, which are enumerated; industry examples are also given. Finally, strategies for and indicators of organizational success around innovation are discussed for each stage. Successful organizations will use an outlined innovation process to create a common framework for discussion and initiatives around the innovation process, and to establish metrics and goals for each stage of the innovation process.

Managing knowledge work: specialization and collaboration of engineering problem‐solving

In this paper we investigate the exploratory nature of knowledge creation and sharing practice in high‐technology industry. Traditional approaches in knowledge management focus on the storage and retrieval of knowledge, but they do not address the tacit dimension of knowledge process. Using data gathered at three semiconductor manufacturers in Japan and Korea, we examine the social processes by which expert teams cooperate across team boundaries despite differing points of view resulting from increasing team specialization. Three engineering teams are studied: design, process, and process integration. They are responsible for trouble management in the production of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), a class of integrated circuit semiconductor devices. Trouble management is the handling of problems that require exploratory, yet routine problem‐solving practice. The findings suggest that the crucial challenge in achieving effective control of the knowledge management process rests not in strategies for collecting and classifying relevant problem/solution information. Rather, it is in the management of “problematization”, a political process involving the articulation behaviors of different teams of engineers.

IT and the video game industry: tensions and mutual shaping

This paper examines the influence of information technology (IT) on a distinct but closely related industry, the video game industry. We conceptualize the effects of IT as a process of translating three related dimensions of a technological frame – technology performance, industry practices, and use vision – from one industry to another. Through historical examples, we argue that the impact of IT on the video game industry is shaped and limited by this translation process, particularly when tensions between the two industries lead to the development of new complementary or replacement technologies, practices, or visions. Although heavily dependent on IT, the video game industry has had to ignore, postpone, or substantially modify important IT software tools, processors, storage media, graphics, and networking technologies because of these industry contradictions.

Telling the story in big data

opinion, and many other areas. Yet conclusions are still sparse. When researchers consider ocean acidification, or the changing pH of the ocean induced by human effects, data extends almost as far back as the earth. Ocean pH data is inferred for some samples, directly measured in others, and differs depending on geography, time, and local effects. There is no single pH of the ocean, and scientists do not measure every part of the ocean. However, despite the lack of completeness of data, an overwhelming quantity of data still exists. In many ways, ocean data epitomizes the challenges of big data for all researchers: Data is incomplete and evolving, quality varies, and metadata is often non-standard. Yet this continually growing stream of data can inform some of the biggest policy, business, and scientific decisions and discoveries. Current big data is just the tip of the iceberg. New technologies and increased accessibility are creating yet another wave of big data input: user-generated and sensor-created transient data. Transient data provides bursts of new data—lots and lots of bursts of data. Rather than being exponential in a single data stream (like blogs), it will provide temporally localized, short-term, specific data. Examples include personal health data from applications like FitBit or cardiac defibrillators, as well as new potential data sources from dissolving, temporary datacollection units [2] and online game players’ data [3]. Sensors in carpets that detect gait, CCTV footage, constant heart-rate monitors, localized temperature measurements, and other continuous data-collection methods are becoming common.

Exploring infrastructure assemblage in volunteer virtual organizations

This ongoing research project investigates ad-hoc infrastructure development in volunteer virtual organizations (VVOs). A comparative analysis of the tool appropriation of VVO activity among alternate reality game (ARG) players in three cities yielded insight for future research into underlying principles of infrastructure assemblage, types of ad-hoc resource provisioning, and potential means of design support.

Boundary instances insheterogeneous engineering teams Trouble management in the dram manufacturing process

High-technology production requires both increasing specialization in expert teams, and increasing cross-functional cooperation across team boundaries. These objectives can be in conflict. This chapter examines the social processes by which expert teams cooperate, despite the heterogeneous views and opinions arising from their specializations. The focus is on the dynamics of cooperation among expert teams of engineers responsible for trouble management in production of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), a class of integrated circuit semiconductor devices. Trouble management is the handling of routine problems that defy simple classification and solution due to their origins at the margins of scientific and engineering knowledge. Three DRAM engineering teams are studied: design, process, and process integration. The findings suggest that the crucial challenge in achieving cooperation among these teams rests not in strategies for collecting and classifying relevant problem/solution information. Rather, it is in the management of a political process of “problematization” that assigns “problem spaces” to “solution spaces” corresponding to the biases of each team. This process is triggered by the rise of “boundary instances” of trouble that require action across team boundaries. Resolution depends on successful use of “boundary objects” to articulate the work of problem solving among the teams.

Managing radical software engineering: leverage order and chaos

Innovations in software engineering organisations frequently emerge from risky behaviour. Most often, these risks are taken by only a small percentage of the software engineers practising radical engineering (REs). They go against the status quo, experiment with new methods or technologies, and have the burden of bringing the innovations into the mainstream of the organisation. Most organisations however, do a poor job of adequately and effectively managing radical engineers. In this paper, we analyse the relationship between innovation regimes and radical engineering practice. We find that REs can be practised at either end of the order-chaos continuum. Successful software organisations are those that are able to balance between the extremes and manage REs effectively, and also those that follow a series of innovation stages in sensible ways. In this paper, we discuss lessons learned in managing REs found in software organisations and propose organisational actions for effective innovation management.