Kathrin M. Möslein

Overcoming Mass Confusion: Collaborative Customer Co-Design in Online Communities

The idea of integrating users into a co-design process as part of a mass customization strategy is a promising approach for companies being forced to react to the growing individualization of demand. Compared to the rather huge amount of literature on manufacturing and information systems for mass customization, only little research discusses the role of the customer within the co-design process. Customers face new uncertainties and risks, coined “mass confusion” in this paper, when acting as co-designers. Building on a construction strategy of empirical management research in the form of six case studies, we propose the use of online communities for collaborative customer co-design in order to reduce the mass confusion phenomenon. In doing so, the paper challenges the assumption made by most mass customization researchers that offering customized products requires an individual (one-to-one) relationship between customer and supplier. The objective of the paper is to build and explore the idea of communities for customer co-design and transfer established knowledge on community support to this new area of application.

Innovation Contests: A Review, Classification and Outlook

Innovation contests as a means to realize innovative product or service solutions are growing in popularity among practitioners and researchers. An increasing number of organizations worldwide have adopted innovation contests, not only for innovation purposes, but also for other reasons such as promoting sustainability. At the same time, innovation contests represent a growing research field to scholars from different backgrounds, e.g., economics or information systems. In this article, first, the growing body of literature on innovation contests is reviewed and classified into five research categories: economic perspective, management perspective, education focus, innovation focus and sustainability focus. Second, some design elements of innovation contests that are central for the understanding, design and management of innovation contests are presented based on the current body of literature. Finally, current research gaps are presented and some of the research questions are developed that could be explored to contribute to the body of literature.

Service Systems Engineering: A Field for Future Information Systems Research

Service systems engineering (SSE) focuses on the systematic design and development of service systems. Guided by a value proposition, service systems enable value co-creation through a configuration of actors and resources (often including a service architecture, technology, information, and physical artifacts), therefore constituting complex socio-technical systems. IS research can play a leading role in understanding and developing service systems. SSE calls for research leading to actionable design theories, methods and approaches for systematically designing, developing and piloting service systems, based upon understanding the underlying principles of service systems. Three major challenges have been identified: engineering service architectures, engineering service systems interactions, and engineering resource mobilization, i.e. extending the access to and use of resources by means of IT. Researching SSE is challenging. Assessing the models, methods, or artifacts of SSE often requires embedded research within existing or even novel service systems. Consequently, approaches such as piloting IT-based innovations, design research or action research are the most promising for SSE research. As an integrative discipline, IS is in a unique position to spearhead the efforts in advancing the architecture, interaction, and resource base of service systems with evidence-based design.

Leading Open Innovation

In today’s competitive globalized market, firms are increasingly reaching beyond conventional internal methods of research and development to use ideas developed through processes of open innovation (OI). Organizations including Siemens, Nokia, Wikipedia, Hyve, and innosabi may launch elaborate OI initiatives, actively seeking partners to help them innovate in specific areas. Individuals affiliated by common interests rather than institutional ties use OI to develop new products, services, and solutions to meet unmet needs. This volume describes the ways that OI expands the space for innovation, describing a range of OI practices, participants, and trends. The contributors come from practice and academe, and reflect international, cross-sector, and transdisciplinary perspectives. They report on a variety of OI initiatives, offer theoretical frameworks, and consider new arenas for OI from manufacturing to education.

Product Service Systems As A Driver For Business Model Innovation: Lessons Learned From The Manufacturing Industry

Firms increasingly rely on business model innovation as a means to face challenges of a world in transition. We identify the conscious integration of products and services, i.e., product service systems, as a valuable strategy to radically innovate product-focused business models. Applying an exploratory multiple case study approach, we uncover five distinct kinds of services that specifically help firms to innovate their business model. These are (1) business consulting, (2) comprehensive services, (3) educational services, (4) financing services, and (5) information management services. The influence of these services on three components of business model innovation (value propositions, value chain architectures, and revenue streams) is discussed. In total, our study emphasizes that integrating specific services with products is an important driver for business model innovations.

Identities Management for E-Commerce and Collaboration Applications

The development of the Internet assumed that users would remain anonymous, but more and more services now need to identify users in order to provide personalized services or introduce users to other users. As in real life, users interact with services hosted by different providers and thus have to provide and update their personal information for each service separately, resulting in cold-start problems for new services and inconvenience for users. This paper argues the need for user-centric global identities management in future e-commerce and collaboration applications. It reviews the state of the art in this area, discusses needs and possibilities for future development, and proposes a novel solution for identity management.

Innovation Contests: An IT-Based Tool for Innovation Management

2,232, 4,298, 26,617, 8,582 . . . these are key figures of a recent IT-based innovation contest conducted by Bombardier (http://yourail-design.bombardier.com). This initiative aimed at identifying “new and innovative interior designs for trains”. The numbers mentioned at the beginning of this article hence spell out in the following manner: During a ten weeks period, 2,232 persons participated in the innovation contest by submitting 4,298 designs, immense 26,617 ratings, and 8,582 comments on competing submissions. Thus, by an IT-based innovation management tool, even a B2B company like Bombardier can get in touch with end users and other outside experts (e.g., designers). Bombardier took advantage of the worldwide innovative potential (by calling for submissions), to gather firsthand customer insights (by evaluation of submissions, ratings, and comments), and, even more, it spread the word about the company as participants voluntarily acted as word of mouth marketers. While an organizational innovation to Bombardier, the principle of innovation contests is tried and tested. Early examples date back more than 450 years, when the king of Spain initiated the Spanish Longitude Prize to discover a method to find longitude at sea (Masters and Delbecq 2008). In the course of time, innovation contests have first been applied by public institutions which used their reputation and financial power to stimulate participation. Since the beginning of the 19th century, also industry has organized innovation contests. One early example of this time is the Billiard Ball Prize, which granted

Relational governance, communication and the performance of biotechnology partnerships

10,000 for a suitable substitute for ivory to make billiard balls (Masters and Delbecq 2008). Nowadays, with the global availability of broadband access to the World Wide Web, IT-based innovation contests are used for a broad range of tasks – from designing wristbands for watches (e.g., Swarovski) to solving complex scientific problems (e.g., XPrize foundation). Innovation contests allow tapping into the wisdom of the crowd (Surowiecki 2004) and integrating interested customers, end users, partners, and other outside innovators (Neyer et al. 2009) into the innovative activities of an organization. This open innovation approach follows the assumption of Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, that “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.” Integration of interested innovators allows access to both, participants’ tacit knowledge concerning needs (need information) – and their expertise with problem solving (solution information). Advances in innovation technology impact the opportunities to globally tap into this knowledge, making innovation contests a powerful tool for a variety of goals.

Service-Systems-Engineering

Purpose – Emerging biotechnology firms rely on a network of socio‐economic partnerships that can be classified as “interimistic” or close, collaborative but relatively short‐lived. Few studies have assessed the importance of relational governance to the performance of these partnerships. The purposes of this research were to determine the effect of relational governance on the performance of financial partnerships and to compare biotechnology manager assessments of their financial and non‐financial partnerships.Design/methodology/approach – Interviews were conducted with managers of emerging biotechnology companies and lead investors in Canada, France and Germany. Relational governance was assessed by relational norms such as flexibility, information sharing, solidarity and fairness. Performance was assessed by overall effectiveness and partnership benefits. First, the contribution of relational governance to partnership effectiveness and benefits was examined. Second, for the financial partnerships, the ...

Leadership Excellence: Learning from an Exploratory Study on Leadership Systems in Large Multinationals.

ZusammenfassungService-Systems-Engineering (SSE) stellt die systematische Gestaltung und Entwicklung von Servicesystemen in den Mittelpunkt des Forschungsinteresses. Servicesysteme ermöglichen interaktive Wertschöpfung durch eine auf ein Wertversprechen ausgerichtete Konfiguration von Akteuren und Ressourcen. Weil diese Konfiguration unter anderem die Servicearchitektur, die Technologie, die Information und physische Artefakte in der Nutzung einschließt, handelt es sich um soziotechnische Systeme. Die Wirtschaftsinformatik kann mit ihrer interdisziplinären Tradition und Integrationsfähigkeit eine führende Rolle im Verständnis und der Entwicklung dieser Systeme spielen. SSE verdeutlicht das Potenzial, das die Entwicklung anwendbarer Theorien, Methoden und Ansätze der systematischen Gestaltung, Entwicklung und Pilotierung von Servicesystemen besitzt. Dies gilt umso mehr, wenn diese auf einem verbesserten Verständnis der grundlegenden Wirkprinzipien dieser Systeme beruhen. In diesem Zusammenhang stellen sich insbesondere drei zentrale Forschungsherausforderungen: 1.) die Entwicklung von Servicearchitekturen, 2.) die Entwicklung neuer Interaktionsformen mit Servicesystemen sowie 3.) die Mobilisierung von Ressourcen für Servicesysteme. Letzteres bezeichnet eine IT-gestützte Ausweitung des Zugriffs auf und der Nutzung von Ressourcen. Die Forschung in diesem Kontext ist vor allem deshalb herausfordernd, weil die Entwicklung von Modellen, Methoden und Artefakten in Servicesystemen oft die Einbettung in reale oder sogar neuartige Servicesysteme erfordert. Daher erscheinen methodisch vor allem die Pilotierung IT-basierter Innovationen, gestaltungsorientierte Forschung sowie Aktionsforschung sinnvoll. Als eine integrative Disziplin ist die Wirtschaftsinformatik besonders gut positioniert, um die Forschung zur evidenzbasierten Gestaltung der Architekturen, Interaktionen und Ressourcenzugängen von Servicesystemen zu befördern und wichtige Beiträge zu einer Konstruktionslehre für Servicesysteme zu leisten.AbstractService systems engineering (SSE) focuses on the systematic design and development of service systems. Guided by a value proposition, service systems enable value co-creation through a configuration of actors and resources (often including a service architecture, technology, information, and physical artifacts), therefore constituting complex socio-technical systems. IS research can play a leading role in understanding and developing service systems. SSE calls for research leading to actionable design theories, methods and approaches for systematically designing, developing and piloting service systems, based upon understanding the underlying principles of service systems. Three major challenges have been identified: engineering service architectures, engineering service systems interactions, and engineering resource mobilization, i.e. extending the access to and use of resources by means of IT. Researching SSE is challenging. Assessing the models, methods, or artifacts of SSE often requires embedded research within existing or even novel service systems. Consequently, approaches such as piloting IT-based innovations, design research or action research are the most promising for SSE research. As an integrative discipline, IS is in a unique position to spearhead the efforts in advancing the architecture, interaction, and resource base of service systems with evidence-based design.