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Purpose Firms increasingly rely on both external and internal crowdsourcing to capture ideas more broadly and enhance innovative problem-solving. Especially in internal crowdsourcing, knowledge sharing that contributes to develop or further the understanding of the problem the idea is focused on solving can take place between critical employees, and in that way improve ideas generated by others. This far, most crowdsourcing practices have focused on identifying solutions to proposed problems, whereas much less is known about how crowds can be used to share problem-related knowledge. There is thus an untapped potential in leveraging crowds not just to generate solution-oriented ideas but also to share knowledge to improve ideas and even to reframe problems. This paper aims to explore the effect of problem- and solution-related knowledge sharing in internal crowdsourcing for idea development. Design/methodology/approach Data on ideas and comments were collected from an idea management system in a Swedish multinational company. The investigation captures the influences of the problem- and solution-related knowledge sharing on ideas based on content analysis and logistic regression analysis. Findings The results from this study show that sharing knowledge related to solutions in idea development impacts idea acceptance positively, whereas sharing knowledge related to problems in idea development has a negative effect on the likelihood of idea acceptance and these effects of knowledge sharing are moderated by the active author responses. Practical implications This research provides managerial implications for firms to deliberately manage knowledge sharing in peer communities in internal crowdsourcing, especially by providing suggestions on problem reframing and solution refining for ideas. Originality/value The results contribute to existing theory in terms of extending the view of crowdsourcing in ideation to include how crowds contribute to the development of the problem and the solution during the development of ideas and providing new insights on knowledge sharing in internal crowdsourcing based on problem-solving theory.

PurposeDigital capabilities in operations and delivery through constant data acquisition and future predictions have accelerated digital servitization through reduced uncertainty. New flexibility in value-capture concepts like dynamic and value-based pricing is introduced, which was impossible before. This paper explores two things. Firstly, how embracing contractual flexibility of price-variance and contract lengths influences customer perceived value in artificial intelligence (AI) enabled digital offerings. Secondly, the role transparency plays in the perceived value of such offerings.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses an experiment-based survey and quantitative assessment within a business-to-business setup with 137 respondents across a couple of industrial manufacturers in the Nordic region.FindingsThe authors observations indicate that value-capture-related flexibilities introduced by digital offerings, namely price fluctuations and longer contract lengths, are perceived to deliver more value to customers than standard offerings with known conditions. The authors findings indicate that introduced flexibilities are perceived as opportunities rather than uncertainties leading to higher perceived value by customers. The increased value perception can be explained by the transparency of these offerings provided by data-driven digital technologies'.Originality/valueThe paper is an original work to understand the value-capture implication of digital servitization. The authors discuss the possibilities of different value-capture strategies that companies can adopt within digital business models.

The ISO Innovation Management System (IMS) Standard (ISO 56002) provides a much needed and well-timed input to the innovation management discipline. While research efforts within the domain of innovation management have vastly increased over the past decades, research has primarily been conducted through specific contributions to distinct areas of innovation management (e.g., top management, culture, processes), lacking a more holistic perspective. Practitioners know that managing innovation is challenging. Bringing in a globally recognised standard that offers a holistic perspective will be key in professionalising the innovation management discipline, much like quality management and project management standards have done in the past.

In this chapter, the editorial team looks across the cases and the emerging themes to offer insights about the standard and its implications for the innovation management community and the future of the innovation management discipline. For practitioners, the case is made for a call to action to rally around the benefits of the standard as a foundation for dynamic innovation capability and innovation community building that will stand the test of time. For academic educators and researchers, it is teaching about open, connected innovation models that go beyond internally focused ones and understanding through research the system element interdependencies and how these elements can be adapted in different organisational contexts. For standard developers, a key issue is to ensure that a core innovation management system can handle the variations and complexities of different organisations and types of innovations. For professional associations, it is about continuing to build the identity of the profession and supporting professionals to strengthen the innovation management discipline in organisations. For policymakers, it starts with understanding where the standard could have policy relevance and broadening the range of innovation policy instruments available. Finally, it is about imagining a future where in 10 years innovation management is a well-recognised discipline and profession, with systemic and systematic approaches that accelerate learning to realise value more quickly for a better world.

This study originates in a recognised unsustainable cost escalation for complex defence equipment. In order to understand how such cost escalation for complex product systems (CoPS) can be avoided,...

Servitization is today a common theme among manufacturing companies, with the goal of better addressing the needs of their customers. Digitalization is one key enabler of servitization. One aspect of this concept can be provided through digital product-service platforms, which may facilitate the enrichment of a market offer, as well as keeping costs under control. Platforms are in general a well-established concept for manufacturing companies, as enablers of rich product offerings based on a few components. Less is known, however, about how the ambition to create digital product-service platforms interplays with the business model innovation needed as a result of the servitization efforts, along with processes and organization. This paper identifies a number of challenges that manufacturing companies may face when undertaking platform development for services, based on an empirical study made in the Swedish company Husqvarna Group.

Cost escalation for many complex defence equipment is arguably not sustainable. Customer driven requirements have led to an exponential increase in costs by pushing frontiers of technology to suppo...

Despite the potential of Industry 4.0 and the increasing interest from the manufacturing industry, the adoption of Industry 4.0 is still lacking behind in SMEs in the manufacturing industry. In this paper, we explore why this is happening. The research is based on a multiple case study of 24 small and medium sized Danish manufacturing companies, which have all started their Industry 4.0 journey. We analyze the case data from the perspective of dynamic capabilities. Our findings show that the companies experience multiple barriers related to the sensing and seizing capabilities, which hinder their engagement with Industry 4.0. The lack of capabilities to sense and seize opportunities in relation to Industry 4.0 leads us to question whether manufacturers understand Industry 4.0 as a strategic asset or a set of disconnected technology improvements which may bring benefits to the operations, but do not utilize the systemic potential of Industry 4.0.

Innovation auditing is a well-established practice used by managers to identify strengths and weaknesses in innovation. Existing audit frameworks fall short, however, because they neglect three major trends that currently transform the innovation landscape. These trends are as follows: 1) a shift from closed to more open models of innovation (“openness”), 2) a shift from providing physical products to industrial product–services (“servitization”), and 3) a shift from an analog to a highly digitalized world (“digitalization”). This article identifies new innovation practices, opportunities, and challenges that arise for manufacturing firms along these trends. The article proposes a revised innovation audit framework, which acknowledges these trends and supports innovation management in increasingly dynamic and competitive environments.

Internal crowdsourcing utilizes a firm’s employees, of which many have a strong understanding of the domains in which the firm operates, for contributing with, developing and evaluating ideas. On the one hand, these employees can use their domain-specific knowledge to identify the value of what may seem a far-fetched solution to the average employee. On the other hand, previous research has shown that employees typically evaluate ideas in their domains less favorably if they do not align with ongoing exploitation activities. Hence, this study focuses on whether a higher degree of relevant domain-specific knowledge makes employees participating in internal crowdsourcing prefer exploitative solutions when evaluating ideas. An empirical study of an online platform for firm-internal innovation in a multinational engineering company showed that employees who only infrequently participated in internal crowdsourcing mostly contributed to and evaluated ideas within their own domain. Employees who frequently participated also contributed to and evaluated ideas outside their own domains. By statistically analyzing group differences during idea evaluation, we show that employees participating infrequently favor exploitable solutions, whereas employees participating frequently are more uncertain. The former difference is only seen concerning ideas that require domain-specific knowledge to understand, but the latter is observed for all types of ideas. This study makes three substantial contributions. First, employees with domain-specific knowledge, through their preference for exploitative solutions, bias the outcome of internal crowdsourcing when idea evaluation requires domain-specific knowledge. Second, this bias is aggravated by the overall higher level of uncertainty displayed by employees participating frequently in internal crowdsourcing and thereby tend to reach out to other domains. Third, in order to mitigate this, bias management can build engagement in internal crowdsourcing through idea challenges that do not require domain-specific knowledge and consider avoiding employees with a strongly associated domain knowledge for idea evaluation. QC 20211129

As industries hold the opportunity to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) driven innovation, their success to a significant extent will depend on the value the new technology generates for different business stakeholder groups. This is in turn dependent upon how management can embrace these techniques and change as companies will frequently need to transform both internal processes and offerings to customers in order to reap the benefits of AI. AI is a growing research area currently concentrated around technology and modeling of techniques and yet only few examples and limited research are available, on how AI technology enables new capabilities that can impact the value delivered as well as radically transform it. We thus need to understand what new capabilities these technologies bring about and how they are used. Based on three concrete empirical quasi-experiments, interviews conducted with start-ups and a Swedish industrial manufacturing firm dealing with outdoor power products (like grass-cutters, chain-saws, concrete-saws, etc.) for professional and consumer use and using an analytical framework derived from the Resource Based View, this paper explores capabilities enabled through Edge AI and the competitive advantage these may offer. Specific capabilities (self-calibration, enhanced-sensing, selective-capture and reputation) are identified and implications for theory are discussed, pointing out the importance to consider this type of technology not only as a resource, but rather as a dynamic capability in itself.

Needs for new engineering methodologies, curriculum renewal, and new forms of education and training arise, as Cyber-Physical Systems are becoming smarter, more automated, connected and collaborative. In this setting, the use of competence networks, i.e. non-profit collaborations between industry and academia aiming to promote learning and knowledge creation, stands out as a promising approach. Drawing upon experiences from the Innovative Center for Embedded Systems, a KTH-Industry cross-disciplinary and multidomain competence network for students, practicing engineers, managers, and academic faculty, we describe and reflect on challenges and lessons learnt during the 11 years of operation of the ICES network. The findings support a need to emphasize knowledge sharing and exchange encompassing multiple disciplines and cross-domain industrial experience. A competence network acts as a social network that facilitates communication, learning and knowledge creation for both individuals and organizations. Competence networks can thus act as tools for policy makers, creating incentives for life-long learning inside companies. A focused engagement and activities directed towards stakeholders help to establish trust, providing potential for agile and persevering forms of cooperation. QC 20200818

Frugal innovation is the process of innovating to respond to severe resource constraints with products that have cost advantages compared with existing solutions. The philosophy behind frugal innovation can be applied to both products and services from different sectors, as shown by academia and managerial applications. In this article, the purpose is to examine the intellectual structure of the developing domain of frugal-innovation research in order to identify the most active and influential communities, as well as the most seminal works and the most active scholars. Therefore, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of the literature on frugal innovation. The outcomes of our analysis allow us to offer an objective and scientific mapping of the development of this field. Four distinct intellectual communities have been identified: strategic challenges, inclusive development, sustainability, and industrial application. We, herein, provide insights into the commonalities between these distinct communities and into the intellectual structure of the domain, as well as indications for future studies. The results dig into the evolution of the topic and instigate further research explorations toward the industrial applications of frugal innovation, addressing whether and how this approach could deliver benefits to companies in terms of product development, industrial systems, and logistics.

Many studies in the field of innovation focus on novelty and technology, but recent literature and contemporary design practices have proposed an alternative view. Innovation has instead been sugge ...

Novelty and value are two key features of any type of innovation and have consequently received much emphasis in design and innovation studies. Lately, the predominant unilateral emphasis on novelty has been questioned in an emerging literature stream focusing on the role of tradition in innovation, and recent research has shown that a potential way of creating value is to use a combination of novel and traditional components, resulting in what is suggested as design innovation dissonance. Drawing on research through design, this paper develops the writing of production novellas from the design of three different design innovation processes, the deliberate use of tensions between novelty and tradition in material, form, manufacturing process, context, and history is described and analysed, in order to unveil explicit steps of the design process.

Digitalization is frequently seen as an important source of service innovation, enabling new solutions where products and services are bundled into offerings. As the realization of such offerings frequently requires the inclusion of new technological components and implies changes to activities across the value chain, they often require collaboration with other companies. This article explores what challenges arise when different organizations collaborate in service innovation enabled by digitalization. This study investigates a joint project between three companies aiming to innovate, build, and verify a proof-of-concept for an automated return process at a European rental company in the construction industry. An explorative case study approach was selected, and data were collected through semi-structured interviews with key managers in the collaborating companies as well as through meetings and workshops during the innovation project. The empirical observations revealed four main challenges: (1) the formulation of shared and complementary innovation objectives, (2) the joint design of a new business model addressing both value creation and value appropriation, (3) the management of the collaborative project across organizational boundaries, and (4) the fruitful combining of multiple agile organizing approaches.

This article investigates the effects of different characteristics of supplier–customer relationships in the Japanese automotive industry, and how these influence predictions about future technologies of a disruptive nature, such as Electric Vehicles (EVs). We conducted a survey of a broad set of suppliers in the Japanese automotive industry and another survey of suppliers registered with Toyota's two supplier associations. The data were used to analyse the influence of particular relationships and practices on information gathering about new technologies, preparations for R&D and production of new components, and predictions about new technologies. The study shows that suppliers’ R&D intensity and the usage degree of the drawing-supplied parts system lead to predictions favouring the uptake of new technologies. Moreover, communication between automakers and suppliers and arm's-length relationships simultaneously lead to favourable views on the future of new technologies, especially with regard to EVs. Moreover, we find that Japanese-style cooperative relationships, arm's-length relationships, communication between automakers and suppliers, and communication among suppliers all lead to less favourable views on new technology uptake (in this case, EVs). We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice, specifically for EVs.

This paper provides an overview of the main perspectives and themes emerging in research on open innovation (OI). The paper is the result of a collaborative process among several OI scholars – having a common basis in the recurrent Professional Development Workshop on ‘Researching Open Innovation’ at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. In this paper, we present opportunities for future research on OI, organised at different levels of analysis. We discuss some of the contingencies at these different levels, and argue that future research needs to study OI – originally an organisational-level phenomenon – across multiple levels of analysis. While our integrative framework allows comparing, contrasting and integrating various perspectives at different levels of analysis, further theorising will be needed to advance OI research. On this basis, we propose some new research categories as well as questions for future research – particularly those that span across research domains that have so far developed in isolation. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

The environment in which a company or organization operates today can be characterized by accelerating change, the globalization of markets, the emergence of new technologies and competitors, new regulatory requirements and ever more demanding users and citizens. In this environment, the ability to innovate becomes a key success factor for most organizations. They seek to continuously create and realize value by introducing new or changed products, services, processes, models, methods, etc.

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are evolving to become more intelligent, autonomous and collaborating, playing an important role in societal infrastructure. The amount of knowledge required in developing and managing future CPS will be unprecedented, leading to stronger needs for collaboration, competence provisioning, continuous learning and renewal of education. This is where “competence” (or learning) “networks” involving academia and industry play an important role. We elaborate and discuss needs, lessons learnt and challenges for such competence networks in the context of CPS. We draw upon our experiences gained from ICES - the KTH-industry cross-disciplinary and multi-domain competence network which in 2019 has been operational for 11 years, growing from 6 to more than 30 participating organizations. The ICES network focuses on activities to support students, industrial engineers and managers, and academic faculty, acting as a network, catalyst and competence provider directed towards these stakeholders. We elaborate challenges faced during the operation of ICES including the lack of prioritization of competence networks and education, the paradox with strong needs for competence networks but perceived lack of time, the challenges of reaching out to stakeholders, and fragmented efforts addressing competence provisioning. We finally discuss ways forward. In conclusion, we believe that the ICES type of network could be relevant in many other areas characterized by complex systems. QC 20200611

Simonsson and Magnusson address a range of issues facing original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) using digital technologies as a means for increasing the service part of their offerings. Digitalization enables manufacturing companies to pursue new strategies where various services are bundled with products to support customers in a larger part of their businesses and operations, often referred to as servitization. Such a transition is of interest for OEMs as it allows them to target a bigger area of the customer business and builds closer customer contact. This chapter identifies and explores a number of fundamental challenges related to this type of digital business model innovation, more specifically customer interaction, offer delivery, platform strategies and organization, based on a case study from the Swedish company Husqvarna.

Agile methodologies have been adopted by an increasing number of organizations to improve their responsiveness. However, few studies have empirically analysed the effect of Agile on long-term organizational goals such as learning and innovation. Using an abductive approach, this study examines the relationships between self-regulated teams' social conduct and their resulting learning and innovation. Results indicate that the time pressure induced by the implementation of Agile impedes team engagement in learning and innovation activities. Time pressure is affected by a set of different control strategies, more specifically concertive, belief, diagnostic and boundary controls, and these need to be adequately addressed in order to minimize the potential dark side of Agile.

This article introduces the distinction between thin and thick contracts to the investigation of licensing-in as a mechanism for technological learning. Thick contracts include a clause specifying ...

While organizations increasingly implement web-enabled ideation systems to access the collective intelligence of their distributed employees, recent studies show that most attempts to use these systems underperform or fail. This article draws on a qualitative case study of the Ericsson system “Idea Boxes” to explore a novel approach to manage ideation based on the use of the moderator role. The aim of this study is to understand to what extent and how the introduction of moderators can contribute to a better management of web-enabled ideation systems and to overcome the shortcomings commonly associated with their use. The contribution of this study to innovation literature is threefold. First, it develops a conceptual framework that gives insights into the practices implemented by moderators to manage ideation, namely: (1) formulating an ideation strategy, (2) combining means for community building, and (3) formalizing the ideation process. It focuses on unfolding their key complementarities. Second, this study relates these practices to the shortcomings of web-enabled ideation systems with respect to the sourcing, filtering, and handling of employees' ideas. It discusses how the identified practices can help organizations address these shortcomings by stimulating sustained employee participation, increasing the quality and fit of the ideas generated, and ensuring their efficient selection and integration. Third, this article compares moderators to other innovation roles discussed in the new product development literature with the aim of broadening the future research agenda toward an investigation of emerging organizational roles having limited formal authority to manage innovation. The findings of this study provide valuable guidelines to managers to implement more sophisticated approaches for a better management of the ideation process through web-enabled ideation tools.

New organization designs emerge continuously in highly dynamic innovation context to improve readiness to change. The adoption of self-managing teams operating cross-functionally on a bulk of products, together with the reduction of vertical layers in the organization, seems to be a common strategy for many organizations aiming to achieve higher level of efficacy and shorter lead times. Authors explore the extent to which new micro-and meso-level organizational forms contribute to the achievement of organizational efficiency, and produce secondary effects on long-term innovation goals.

This chapter aims to explore Management Control Systems (MCS) resulting from the implementation of agile development methods, relying on an established MCS taxonomy. An abductive approach was adopted, considering the shortage of research evaluating the post-adoption effects of agile methods. Four organizations from an international telecommunication firm that implemented agile methods were involved, and 44 individual semi-structured interviews were performed. In addition, 121 free comments from a global survey to the same organizations were used as secondary data. The paper indicates how Scrum, a widespread agile method, implicitly brings multiple enforcing levers of control to a team’s self-regulatory learning processes.

As innovation today is one of the keys to success for firms, creativity among its employees becomes a key asset and the understanding about what motivates employees in ideation is consequently of h ...

The Role of Social Networks in Organizing Ideation, Creativity and Innovation : An Introduction

In this article we analyse the role of goal setting for innovation in an RD some scholars claim that goals should be amb ...

Innovation is to a large extent considered a social and communicative process, and input from other individuals potentially improves the generation of novel and valuable ideas also in the early sta ...

Drawing upon recent literature, which employs social networks in the field of project management, the aim of this research is to empirically investigate the importance of projects’ social capital for knowledge development in R&D projects. Primary data were collected via sociometric questionnaires on a population of 53 biotech R&D projects located at one of the most important science parks in Sweden. The analysis focused on the distinctive structural configuration of projects’ social capital, among which the roles of network diversity were emphasized. Our results suggest that certain structural configurations of project social capital maximize the level of effectiveness in knowledge development. More specifically, we found an inverted U-shaped relationship between projects’ network diversity and their level of knowledge development, demonstrating that intermediate levels of diversity maximize project knowledge development. Implications for innovation managers and policymakers are discussed.