Learning from leading-edge customers at The Sims: opening up the innovation process using toolkits

Recently, toolkits for user innovation and design have been proposed as a promising means of opening up the innovation process to customers. Using these tools, customers can take on problem-solving tasks and design products to fit their individual needs. To date, arguments in favor of this new concept have been limited to the idea of satisfying each user's needs in a highly efficient and valuable way. The aim of this empirical study is to extend our knowledge of how users deal with 'the invitation to innovate' and how attractive individual user designs might be to other users. In studying the users of toolkits for the immensely popular computer game The Sims , we found that (1) users are not 'one-time shoppers'– in fact, their innovative engagement is rather long-lasting, continuous, evolving, and intense. We also found that (2) leading-edge users do not merely content themselves with the official toolkits provided by the manufacturer. They employ user-created tools to push design possibilities even further. (3) Moreover, individual user designs are not only attractive to the creators themselves; instead, certain innovative solutions are in high demand among other users. Based on our findings, we discuss how toolkits and their users might add to the process of innovation in general. We argue that toolkits could serve as a promising market research tool for guiding a firm's new product development efforts. Furthermore, toolkits may serve as a crèche for interested but inexperienced users who could evolve into leading-edge users over time. These innovative users might then be integrated into more radical product development efforts.     

Opening up for competitive advantage – How Deutsche Telekom creates an open innovation ecosystem

When, on 21st September 2006, ' The Economist ' compared incumbent telecommunication operators with dinosaurs that could soon face extinction, most readers were ready to agree. The mixture of declining revenues and fierce competition was believed to shake the market and soon to dethrone former national champions. However, there are ways to fight that extinction and one way is to open up for competitive advantage. This paper reflects on a case study at Deutsche Telekom, the German national telecommunication operator. The aim of this study is to analyse to what extent the open innovation paradigm has been embraced inside this now multinational company. Using empirical evidence from 15 in-depth interviews, we identify 11 open innovation instruments and detail their value contribution. We can show that Deutsche Telekom has successfully enhanced its innovation capacity by opening up its traditional development process and embracing external creativity and knowledge resources.     

The role of technology in the shift towards open innovation: the case of Procter & Gamble

As with all new ideas, the concept of Open Innovation requires extensive empirical investigation, testing and development. This paper analyzes Procter and Gamble's 'Connect and Develop' strategy as a case study of the major organizational and technological changes associated with open innovation. It argues that although some of the organizational changes accompanying open innovation are beginning to be described in the literature, more analysis is warranted into the ways technological changes have facilitated open innovation strategies, particularly related to new product development. Information and communications technologies enable the exchange of distributed sources of information in the open innovation process. The case study shows that furthermore a suite of new technologies for data mining, simulation, prototyping and visual representation, what we call 'innovation technology', help to support open innovation in Procter and Gamble. The paper concludes with a suggested research agenda for furthering understanding of the role played by and consequences of this technology.     

Realized absorptive capacity and entrepreneurial universities’ organizational change: the role of process innovation practices

Although essential to all institutions, organizational change is a complex and high risk activity. In this paper, we examine how organizations develop and implement capabilities to facilitate organizational change. Drawing on the dynamic capability perspective and a ‘resourcing’ synergy view, we investigate how realized absorptive capacity in terms of transformation and exploitation capability directly affects organizational change, and how process innovation practices act as an effective mechanism that link transformation and exploitation capability with organizational change. To distinguish our analysis, we focus on both an emerging organizational form and an emerging economy context. Specifically, on the basis of a questionnaire survey of 316 academics from entrepreneurial universities in Malaysia, we find that both transformation and exploitation capability are facilitators of organizational change. However, the relationship of transformation capability with organizational change is fully mediated by process innovation practices, while the relationship between exploitation capability and organizational change is partially mediated by process innovation practices. Our research therefore contributes to the dynamic capability perspective of organizational change and absorptive capacity by highlighting the importance of integrating organizational transformation and exploitation capability with process innovation practices in different ways to facilitate organizational change. Our findings and accompanying discussion on how process innovation practices can generate moves towards universities that are more entrepreneurial will also be of interest to university managers and policy makers.     

Beating the odds in the innovation arena: The role of market and technology signals classification and noise

Innovation is a risky business. Notwithstanding the attention in research on the determinants of innovation success, the estimates of the extremely high failure rates (ranging from 40% to 90%) have not come down. As a result, new approaches have to be found to address the issues that prevent organizations from reaching innovation success over a longer period of time. In this study, Signal Detection Theory (SDT) is introduced to show that it may be less important to improve innovation practices in companies, than it is to change the nature of the projects that enter the corporate innovation funnel. In our empirical study of 44 innovation projects in the pharmaceutical and electronics industry, we show that pursuing more noisy signals (uncertain technological and market opportunities) is currently beneficial for innovation success. In general, companies allocate too few resources to noisy innovation opportunities. Interestingly, we find a positive, and not an inverted U-shaped, relationship between noise/signal ratios and innovation success. This indicates that there are almost no companies that take too much risk in the current competitive environment and that many can gain from increasing their noise tolerance. The implications from this study are quite counter-intuitive in a sense that ‘risk’ is not the cause of the innovation problems, but may be a solution.     

Learning technology through a process approach: The implementation of curriculum innovation through the pragmatic interventions of the teacher

The paper focuses on the practice of technology education in eight secondary schools in the north east of England. It illustrates that whilst Technology has been defined in terms of process the attempts to teach technological understanding solely through a similar model may not be the most effective method. In their quest for achievement for their pupils, teachers are adept at circumventing educational ideals by devising strategies and methodologies (in most cases subconsciously) which produce end results that satisfy their pupils, and also examination bodies, but may negate more reflective objectives. These approaches are not merely an attempt at obtaining easily gained acclaim but may be symptomatic of deeper rooted beliefs and ideals. The conclusions are based on a survey of published work as well as on the results of ethnographic research which appraised the practice of a sample of teachers in their handling of key points in this process approach.     

The role of process plant contractors in transferring technology

Process plant contractors implement and bring to fruition the capital investment programmes in such sectors as chemicals and metals. In undertaking a contract they perform all or a number of the following: plant design and engineering, supply of process technology, procurement of equipment, supervision of construction, plant commissioning, and the arrangement of project finance. Specific characteristics of the industry are the variety of functions undertaken by the contractor and operation on a worldwide basis.
The nature and extent of contractor involvement in transferring technology is determined by a complex interaction of a number of economic and technological factors. The source of technology may be 'in-house', a long term licence agreement, or some specific arrangement to meet a particular enquiry. The paper illustrates the various means for technology transfer drawing on examples from the experience of one contractor.     

Opening and closing open innovation projects: A contractual perspective

In this article we introduce three concepts from transaction cost economics that have so far remained excluded from the open innovation literature, and that enable us to address the demands in the literature for an explanatory mechanism for closing open innovation: unanticipated disturbances, tolerance zone and interpretations of contracts. First, we argue that threats resulting from unanticipated disturbances are absorbed in a tolerance zone and lead to adaptations in knowledge sharing. Second, we argue that these threats and changes in knowledge sharing at the project level impact the interpretation of the open innovation contract at the firm level. Adopting a contractual perspective, the article contributes to the open innovation literature by explaining the tolerance zone of transitioning between closed and open innovation. We illustrate in a case study on a B2B open innovation project how a threat to value creation leads to a continuation of open innovation, whereas a threat to value capture leads to a closing of open innovation.     

玻璃包装容器制造技术的创新

玻璃容器的主要市场大致可分为三部分，即饮料用容器、食品用容器及化妆、医药品用小型容器等。     

Buyer (dis)satisfaction and process innovation: The case of information technology services provision

Studying buyer satisfaction within business services is important because if buyer expectations are not addressed, it can endanger the relationship. Dissatisfied buyers can remain silent or switch supplier without notice, damaging the supplier-buyer relationship. Therefore, suppliers often invest substantial effort in collecting feedback with an expectation that it will foster improvements and innovation in processes. However, using a mixed method sequential research design, we find that there is no direct association between the level of dissatisfaction and process innovation: this poses questions about redundancy of feedback collection. We find that there is a time lag between dissatisfaction identification and problem resolution. We also find that there is a cognitive gap between a supplier's interpretation of the buyer's expectations and the buyer's actual expectations. Further, existing processes that are improved repetitively using discontent feedback suffer from diminishing returns. Suppliers need to proactively seek solutions rather than reactively dealing with buyer problems.     

抓紧"入世"机遇加速纺织业科技进步

自1994年以来,我国纺织服装出口一直居世界第一位。但是,迄今为正,我们的比较优势都是建立在劳动密集型产业和低价格劳动力的基础上。面对“入世”,机遇与挑战并存。因此,深入了解世贸组织原则与相关协议内容及世界市场竞争趋势,并在此基础上制定扬长补短的发展战略,是非常必要和紧迫的任务。     

Opening the black box: the relation between technology and work

This article argues that social scientists need to develop a detailed understanding of 'technology', and its relationship to social variables, if the full impfication of new technologjes is to be adequately investigated. Material from research on telephone exchange modemisation in British Telecom is used to develop such an approach.     

Innovating the innovation process: an organisational experiment in global pharma pursuing radical innovation

The challenge of managing the fuzzy front end of the innovation process is particularly acute for large, multi‐brand, research and development (R&D)‐intensive firms. Poor performance at generating radical innovations has resulted in many large organisations seeking to innovate how they organise for innovation. This paper presents an inductive, longitudinal study of an organisational experiment that sought to get ‘game‐changing, radical ideas’ into the new product development funnel of a top three pharma. The immediate outcomes of a team‐based internal innovation tournament included 33 new product ideas, 14 of which were radical. The medium term outcome of the experiment was a reorganisation of how the firm now pursues radical innovation activities. We link these outcomes to team leadership, contrasting innovation processes, including decisions about how to incorporate the ‘voice of the consumer’. The inductive, longitudinal study suggests causal interconnections between innovation team leadership, innovation team processes, and innovation outcomes.     

Managing technology and innovation: a review

This paper reports the first phase of a major study into the linkages between technology and strategy, with particular reference to smaller firms. As a preliminary step, a wide review of relevant literature was undertaken.
Two main strands of knowledge have been identified. First, a number of high profile issues have dominated the field of technology management starting with Schumpeter's 'creative destruction'. This seminal work has been refined, notably by Pavitt and Porter, culminating in the view that technology has become one of the principal determinants of competition. Second, a number of models were examined that assess development of technology within the firm over time.
The principal implication for R&D managers is the authors' conclusion that the various constructs must be used pro-actively in formulating technology strategy, thus providing a basis for better assessing acquisitions and disposals of technology-intensive operations.     

A tentative model of the innovation process

The paper proposes a model of innovation claimed to be applicable both to the lone entrepreneur and the large institution. It treats innovation as a social process and views it in some respects as analogous to natural selection.
The model takes into account 12 elements: the innovator, the new concept, the innovating group, the new product, target user, competitors, capital supply, strategy, supplying organization, technology, relevant environment and chance. The author characterises each element and shows how they interact in the course of guiding a particular innovation to success or failure.
The operation of the model is illustrated by applying it to two cases — the rise and decline of the metal ski and the launch and success of a national US newspaper.
The paper concludes with a list of possible uses of the model, as a checklist for action, as a basis for incorporating other approaches to the innovation process and as a starting point for a quantitative representation of the innovation process.     

National characteristics: innovation systems from the process efficiency perspective

This study compares the innovation system characteristics of 40 countries from the perspective of process efficiency. We treat the national innovation system as a two‐stage process that first produces knowledge and then commercializes the knowledge produced. After identifying efficiencies through data envelopment analysis, the within‐country strengths, or the contribution of the individual process factor to the efficiency, of all 40 target countries are compared by applying the network‐based ranking method. The comparison is different from previous efficiency‐based studies in that it hints at country characteristics and highlights the cross‐country benchmarks for each process factor. The pattern of within‐country strengths underlines the characteristic of each country. Based on country characteristics, we highlight the national differences and categorize the target countries into nine distinctive groups. We find that no single country demonstrates characteristics that focus on both the knowledge production and knowledge commercialization stages. The results provide policy makers with both references on what to improve and information for where to learn the experience from.     

Using systems thinking to understand the evolving role of technology in the design process

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - Many teaching in higher education whose fields rely heavily on processes using technology can be overwhelmed by the pace of developments,...     

Unveiling the role of risk-taking in innovation: antecedents and effects

This study addresses innovation development with a focus on risk-taking, widely considered a relevant driver for the exploration and exploitation of new ideas. The study empirically examines the effects of risk-taking propensity on innovation performance and its antecedents. We consider the role of several key antecedents related to the organizational structure and the activities of firms aimed at encouraging employees to take risks in innovation. We performed an empirical survey within a global and innovation-oriented Swedish company to test our hypotheses. Correlation and linear regression analyses were used to analyze the collected data. The results highlight the significant effect of risk-taking on innovation performance and show that the availability of organizational resources, innovation support activities, clear innovation goals, and collaboration have a significant positive effect on risk-taking. However, contrary to the hypothesis, well-established innovation processes have a significant but negative effect on risk-taking and innovation performance. This study contributes to existing knowledge on the role of risk-taking for innovation, providing insights into designing organizational contexts that encourage an appropriate risk appetite in employees.     

The role of design method and process technology in stable outsourcing equilibria

We analyze a model of vertical (dis)integration between manufacturing and design in a monopolistically competitive market. Specialized input manufacturers can serve multiple design firms and the manufacturer-designer pairs negotiate a non-binding contract to share input customization cost and production surplus. Hand-collected data on 387 product lines from 118 semiconductor firms are used to predict the firm’s decision to outsource manufacturing. We find that, for instance, the use of design tools that facilitate collaboration and process technologies that facilitate learning are both positively associated with outsourcing, consistent with the model’s prediction.