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The boundaryless enterprise
(2023)
This book introduces readers to modern organizational concepts and their consequences for working people in the digital economy. Decentralization, networking, the merging of the physical and virtual worlds, and the ever-increasing interaction of human and artificial intelligence are (re) shaping organization and leadership. Digital technologies are changing the coordination of internal and external organizational processes and require new competencies. The aim of the book is to illustrate these interrelationships in a theoretically sound and practical manner.
The book is intended for students of business management and practicing business managers alike.
The emergence of FinTechs, InsurTechs and the ever-increasing regulatory pressure have accelerated insurance companies' need to innovate their business models and to find novel sources of value creation and cost-saving. This study provides a deep insight into various internal and external barriers influencing business model innovation in the German insurance industry. Results of interviews conducted with 23 experts working in established insurance firms operating in Germany showed that internal barriers constitute more of a hindrance than external barriers. This dynamic holds especially true for regulations, as the fear of breaching external regulation fosters the development of even stronger internal rules that fundamentally impede business model innovation.
Modularity in making
(2020)
An increasingly popular form of open innovation in the digital age is ‘making,’ where users innovate across multiple disciplines and make products that meet their needs, using mechanical, electronic, and digital components. These users have at their disposal, a wide solution space for innovation through various modular toolkits enabled by digital-age technologies. This study explores and outlines how these users simplify this wide solution space to innovate and make tangible products. Following a modularity theory perspective, it draws on case studies of users and their innovations: (1) Users with initial prototype product designs based on the Internet of things (IoT) from a maker event and (2) users with established product designs from the online community platform Thingiverse. The studies found that users reused the design in the form of existing off-the-shelf products and utilized digital fabrication and low-cost electronics hardware as a ‘glue’ to create physical and informational interfaces wherever needed, enabling bottom-up modularity. They iteratively refined their innovations, gradually replacing re-used designs with own integrated designs, reducing modularity, and reducing wastage. The study contributes to open innovation and modularity with implications on the design of products and toolkits enabled by the digital age.
Der Kunde als Mitentwickler
(2018)
Im Rahmen der marktorientierten Unternehmensführung übernimmt der Kunde zunehmend eine aktive Rolle des Mitentwicklers von Produkten und Dienstleistungen. Hier bestehen bereits Konzepte der interaktiven Wertschöpfung, wie etwa Open Innovation und Mass Customization. Mit JOSEPHS® wird eine Plattform für Kundeninteraktionen vorgestellt. Es handelt sich um ein offenes Innovationslabor in Nürnberg, das sich als Intermediär zwischen Unternehmen und Kunden versteht. Hier werden durch verschiedene Akteure bereits in frühen Phasen des Entwicklungsprozesses Kunden und Nichtkunden einbezogen. Am Unternehmen Mifitto wird das Konzept erläutert und die Vorteile werden dargestellt.
Dieses Lehrbuch vermittelt in komprimierter Form die wesentlichen Inhalte des Standardwerkes“ Interaktive Wertschöpfung“ von Ralf Reichwald und Frank Piller. Unternehmerische Wertschöpfung findet heute zunehmend nicht mehr sequentiell im Sinne einer klassischen Wertschöpfungskette statt, sondern interaktiv und iterativ zwischen einem fokalen Unternehmen und externen Mitwirkenden. Vor allem Kunden und Nutzer werden selbst aktiv (Co-Creation). Dies gilt für die Forschung und Entwicklung neuer Produkte und Dienstleistungen (Open Innovation) genauso wie für operative Wertschöpfungsprozesse (Mass Customization). Die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Unternehmen und Externen wird dabei in vielen Fällen anders organisiert. Statt Aufgaben zu verteilen bzw. anzuweisen, reagieren die Beitragenden auf einen offenen Aufruf zur Mitwirkung und selektieren selbst, wann und wie sie sich beteiligen (Crowdsourcing). Die erweiterte Co-Autorenschaft mit Frank Piller, Kathrin Möslein, Christoph Ihl und Ralf Reichwald bildet für die Weiterentwicklung dieses Buches eine neue konzeptionelle Basis.
Purpose: Firms increasingly integrate a wide range of actors in the early ideation and concept creation phases of innovation processes leading to the collection of a large number of ideas. This creates the challenge of filtering the most promising ideas from the large number of submissions. The use of external stakeholders into the evaluation and selection of submissions (i.e., open evaluation) might be a viable alternative. This paper provides a stateof-the-art analysis on how such open evaluation systems are designed and structured.
Design/methodology/approach: Since open evaluation is a new phenomenon, an exploratory qualitative research approach is adopted. 122 instances of open evaluation in 90 innovation contest cases (selected out of 400 cases) are examined for their design elements.
Findings: This research reveals that open evaluation systems are configured in many different ways. In total, 32 design elements and their respective parameters are identified and described along the six socio-technical system components of an open evaluation system. This study allows for a comprehensive understanding of what open evaluation is and what factors need to be taken into consideration when designing an open evaluation system.
Practical implication: Scholars and professionals may draw insights on what design choices to make when implementing open evaluation.
Originality/value: The comprehensive analysis performed in his study contributes to research on open and user innovation by examining the concept of open evaluation. In particular, it extends knowledge on design elements of open evaluation systems.
The proliferation of innovation contests has fostered community-based idea evaluation as an alternative to expert juries to filter and select new product concepts at the fuzzy front end of corporate innovation. We refer to this phenomenon as open evaluation, as all registered participants can engage in jury activities like voting, rating, and commenting. While previous research on innovation contests and user engagement includes participant-based evaluation, the iestigative focus so far has not been on this phenomenon. Access to jury activities in open evaluation practice contradicts innovation theory, which recommends careful selection procedures to establish expert juries for assessing new product concepts. Additionally, little is known about contingency factors that influence the performance and acceptance of open evaluation's results. To address these two questions on the objectives and contingency factors for open evaluation of new product concepts, this study applies exploratory multiple-case research of open evaluation in nine innovation contests. Data collection encompassed expert interviews and complementary sources of evidence. Results indicate that firms pursue six distinct objectives to support participant-based generation and selection of new concepts. In addition, eight contingency factors influence the performance of open evaluation and the acceptance of its results. Finally, results showed open evaluation output to efficiently complement jury decisions in filtering and selecting ideas for new product development.
Purpose
Increasing demographic diversity within societies and workforces causes challenges with regard to the innovation performance of companies. By definition, innovation communities nowadays are composed of members with diverse function background and age diversity. The challenging question is how to manage diverse corporate innovation communities. The purpose of this paper is to find out which factors determine the success of corporate innovation communities in times of demographic shifts.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical field to answer the research question are three corporate innovation communities in companies of different industries and size. Multiple case study methodology is applied to gather and analyse the data.
Findings
The study presents an empirically derived framework to structure success factors of diverse corporate innovation communities chronologically in the three phases of preparation, execution and finalization of a community work process. The success factors are described in detail and finally a time sequential guideline for those who are responsible for community management in demographic change is provided.
Research limitations/implications
It is contributed to the literature on innovation communities and it is shown that innovation communities are not only an instrument to solve innovation tasks but are also a promising means to tackle other challenges of recent demographic changes. As limitation must be considered, that the analysed innovation communities only received corporate support for a short period of time and the supporting organizations operate in manufacturing industries in Germany only.
Practical implications
The paper highlights that managers need to be aware that diversity in corporate innovation communities per se does not lead to success. Furthermore, a guideline of success factors for managers of diverse corporate innovation communities is presented which highlights important aspects that managers need to consider during the community work process.
Social implications
Due to demographic shifts in Germany and other European countries, societies in general and workforces in particular have modified. Most pervasive shifts take place with regard to age structures and diversity. Implications how manager could handle diversity successfully are therefore of high relevance for societies.
Originality/value
This study provides a theoretical understanding of the implications of organizational and age diversity on corporate innovation community management. Extant authors have already focussed on success factors in innovation communities and diverse settings isolated, but have not merged these issues.