Thomas Abrell

The role of users and customers in digital innovation

We study three B2B manufacturing firms that deal with digital innovation.We identify the distinct roles of customers and users in guiding digital innovation.Customer knowledge provides short-term guidance for digital innovation processes.User knowledge provides long-term guidance for digital innovation processes.We identify 12 practices for leveraging customer and user knowledge for use in digital innovation. Diffusion of digital technologies into the manufacturing industry has created new opportunities for innovation that firms must address to remain competitive. We investigate the role of customer and user knowledge in the digital innovation processes of three global B2B manufacturing companies. We find that the B2B manufacturing industrys characteristics influence how users and customers may be leveraged. Customers making the purchasing decisions are considered for knowledge about short-term changes in market needs, while users working directly with the products provide long-term guidance for digital innovation. We identify practices for acquiring, distributing, and using customer and user knowledge for digital innovation.

Design Thinking as Mindset, Process, and Toolbox

Design Thinking is a development that has recently attracted significant attention in the management discourse. The Institute of Information Management at the University of St.Gallen, the academic home of all three authors, has been conducting Design Thinking teaching and research for 10 years. In this study, Design Thinking is defined as: mindset, process, and toolbox. As a mindset, Design Thinking is characterized by several key principles: a combination of divergent and convergent thinking, a strong orientation to both obvious and hidden needs of customers and users, and prototyping. As a process, Design Thinking is seen as a combination of a micro- and a macro-process. The micro-process—as innovation process per se—consists of these steps: “Define the Problem”, “Needfinding and Synthesis”, “Ideate”, “Prototype” and “Test”. The macro-process consists of milestones manifested in prototypes that must fulfill defined requirements. As a toolbox, Design Thinking refers to the application of numerous methods and techniques from various disciplines: design, but also engineering, informatics, and psychology. Today, a growing number of companies, consulting firms, and universities use Design Thinking, continuously enlarging and re-defining its meaning. At University of St.Gallen, Design Thinking is taught as a problem-based course, together with research partner companies, with more than 40 projects successfully completed over the past 10 years. Research in Design Thinking at the University of St.Gallen focuses on aspects of modeling the Design Thinking processes and corporate entrepreneurship. In the near future, Design Thinking is expected to be deployed as an innovative method in corporations and also become an integral part of management education, particularly innovation. In addition, it will be developed further at the interface of design, design management and engineering sciences.

User knowledge utilization in innovation of complex products and systems: An absorptive capacity perspective

Firms tap into user knowledge to learn about the users’ needs. While users have been recognized as a valuable source of knowledge for innovation, few studies have investigated how their knowledge is integrated into innovation processes in the context of complex products and systems (CoPS). The purpose of this study is to reveal the practices of CoPS manufacturers to facilitate user knowledge utilization for innovation. We investigate two case companies, a medical device manufacturer and an aircraft manufacturer, and report on seven managerial practices for utilizing user knowledge. We adopt the absorptive capacity model in structuring our findings and elaborate three of the models sub‐capabilities (recognition of the value of user knowledge, acquisition of user knowledge, and assimilation/transformation of user knowledge) by proposing that each is associated with a distinct managerial goal and related practices: (1) Sensitizing the organization to the innovation potential of user knowledge, (2) identifying and gaining access to suitable user knowledge, and (3) analyzing and interpreting user knowledge and integrating it into product development. Our study contributes to the innovation management literature by analyzing the capabilities required to utilize user knowledge throughout the CoPS innovation process.

Design Thinking and Corporate Entrepreneurship: An Integration and Avenues for Future Research

Design Thinking and corporate entrepreneurship are both topical in the contemporary innovation management discourse. This study outlines promising avenues for future research for the two concepts’ connections and synergies. Four research themes are identified and presented: Design Thinking and opportunity recognition/creation, Design Thinking and effectuation in corporate entrepreneurship, Design Thinking and corporate entrepreneurship strategy, as well as entrepreneurial design management. Promising avenues for each research theme are identified. Two of the research themes are on an individual level, while the other two themes are on an organizational level. The study contributes to the fields of corporate entrepreneurship and Design Thinking by conceptually linking the two, presenting research in the field and noting avenues for further research.

The role of customer and user knowledge in internal corporate venturing: the viewpoint of the corporate entrepreneur

To meet the challenge of continuous innovation, established corporations turn to entrepreneurial innovation, for which one of the success factors is working with customers and users and using their knowledge. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by addressing the role of customer knowledge and user knowledge in early internal corporate venturing projects in business-to-business (B2B) firms. We conducted a single case study with five sub-cases in a large European manufacturing corporation. Our contributions are two-fold: First, we show that the characteristics of the B2B manufacturing industry prevent tacit customer knowledge from being acquired in the early stage of internal corporate venturing, so corporate entrepreneurs must rely on explicit customer knowledge. Second, we find a difference between user corporate entrepreneurs with personal user backgrounds and developer corporate entrepreneurs, who do not consider user knowledge important. We find first evidence of user entrepreneurship in the early stage of internal corporate venturing.

The Early Stage of Internal Corporate Venturing: Entrepreneurial Activities in a Large Manufacturing Company

What types of activities are conducted in the early stage of internal corporate venturing in a large manufacturing company? To study these activities, we first performed a literature review that led to a conceptual construct of six activity categories and five process stages. Then, we analysed five projects in our case company. Multiple sources produced an extensive body of data. Our subsequent data analysis resulted in a comprehensive categorization of the key activities and multiple insights concerning their impact on the entrepreneurial mindset and innovation culture of the studied company.