Chair of Strategic Entrepreneurship
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Always on par?
(2024)
This article explores how entrepreneurial small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) manage coopetition strategies to innovate with large firms. While coopetition offers opportunities for innovation and growth, asymmetries between SMEs and large firms can provoke unilateral actions, opportunistic tactics, and knowledge theft which can undermine SME innovation power and jeopardise coopetition success. Based on a qualitative multiple-case study of 25 coopetitive innovation projects, each involving an SME and a large firm, we find that SMEs manage these risks by pursuing a synergistic mix of three distinct coopetition strategies: (1) Co-distribution, (2) Technology licensing, and (3) R&D co-development. In each strategy, SMEs navigate different coopetition intensities by dynamically combining the principles of separation, integration, co-management and co-ownership to achieve specific innovation outcomes. Our findings suggest that SMEs shift between cooperation- and competition-dominant strategies and employ a mix of management principles to offset asymmetrical risks and maximise their innovation benefits from coopetition with large firms.
In response to escalating environmental concerns and the imperative for sustainable development, corporations have turned to eco-innovation (EI) to enhance competitiveness and reduce ecological footprints. This study scrutinizes 17 European Commission EI-awarded companies from 1990 to 2021, uncovering pivotal dimensions and archetypes that drive successful EI implementation. Internal drivers, including management commitment and agile work structures, are paramount for “Believers” who champion sustainability as a core value. “Sellers” strategically respond to market demands, while “Beneficiaries” follow regulatory mandates. The academic implications are profound, providing a robust foundation for future research. This typology contributes to the discourse surrounding EI development and diffusion while offering corporate managers tangible guidance for tailored EI strategies. It illuminates how distinct motives lead to nuanced combinations of internal and external drivers. This empirical study fills a critical research gap, providing best-practice insights for companies seeking to integrate EI effectively.
Bibliometric analysis has recently become a popular and rigorous technique used for exploring and analyzing the literature in business and management. Prior studies principally focused on ‘how to do bibliometric analysis’, presenting an overview of the bibliometric methodology along with various techniques and step-by-step guidelines that can be relied on to rigorously conduct bibliometric analysis. However, the current body of evidence is limited in its ability to provide practical knowledge that can enhance the design and performance of bibliometric research. This claim is supported even by the fact that relevant studies refer to their work as ‘bibliometric analysis’ rather than ‘bibliometric research’. Accordingly, we endeavor to offer a more functional framework for researchers who wish to design/conduct bibliometric research on any field of research, especially business and management. To do this, we followed a twofold way. We first outlined the main stages and steps of typical bibliometric research. Then, we proposed a comprehensive framework for specifying how to design/conduct the research and under what headings the relevant stages (step-by-step) will be used and/or presented. Thus, the current paper is expected to be a useful source to gain insights into the available techniques and guide researchers in designing/conducting bibliometric research.
Past research showed how multinational enterprises (MNEs) create specific organizational structures to manage tensions in collaborations with competitors (i.e., coopetition). In this study, we explore how MNEs design their organizational structure to approach tensions specifically in the formation phase of coopetition. Formation is the first and arguably most difficult step in coopetition when tensions are particularly high. Based on an in-depth case study in the agrochemical industry, we find that MNEs create dedicated Coopetition Formation Teams (CFTs), moving within and between their firms to tackle a mix of four paradoxical tension types: performing tensions (conflicting goals), belonging tensions (incompatible values and beliefs), organizing tensions (dysfunctional processes), and learning tensions (conflicts between prior and new knowledge). Separated from the rest of their organization and equipped with unique capabilities to manage conflicts, CFTs combine the separation and integration principles to dynamically address these tensions. However, when paradoxical tensions persist and start to exacerbate, CFTs rely on conciliation by top management as a critical third principle to resolve conflicts. This study is the first to analyze the formation of coopetition between MNEs, proposing an integrated framework that connects the organizational design, the four paradoxical tension types, and the three principles to manage them.
This publication-based dissertation investigates how firms of different sizes and structures manage simultaneous cooperation and competition (coopetition). It includes five self-contained research papers, four designed for publication in peer-reviewed academic journals, and one developed for publication as an academic teaching case study. The first paper is a systematic literature review that identifies recent accomplishments and future trends in coopetition research. It delivers a comprehensive, unique, and updated view on the field, unifying scattered research findings into a cohesive and overarching framework. The second paper is a single-case study, zooming in on the inner workings of a corporate incubator. It explores the role and management of internal coopetition to develop entrepreneurial competencies for business model innovation. The third paper shifts the research focus toward large multinational enterprises to explore the formation of new coopetition relationships. It illuminates a new organizational design and accompanying management principles to address paradoxical tensions in the first and potentially most difficult phase of coopetition. The fourth paper taps into the complexities of coopetition between small- and mid-sized firms and large corporates. It uncovers three coopetition strategies and a mix of management principles for smaller firms to navigate asymmetrical risks in coopetition with larger companies. The fifth paper expands the scope of the dissertation to include an entire industry, analyzing the drivers, strategies, and outcomes of coopetition in a highly concentrated and regulated sector. Taken together, the five research papers collectively contribute to a more nuanced understanding about the management of coopetition and provide valuable implications and recommendations for practitioners.
Freeletics
(2023)
Going through a dynamic market change with increased user growth and competition, the digital fitness scale-up Freeletics GmbH (Freeletics) found itself at a crossroads in September 2020. Equipped with fresh funding of US$25 million, the chief executive officer and the business development lead discussed the path forward for the company. Its current successful offering, a digital fitness coaching app, promised continuous growth. However, changing market conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, new user behaviours, and emerging technologies offered new opportunities—and new competition. Consequently, Freeletics had to diversify its business model with new offerings to strategically renew its competitive advantages while keeping the existing successful business growing. The chief executive officer and business development lead had to find an organizational approach that would allow them to start a new entrepreneurial journey without neglecting what they had already built.
Syngenta AG (Syngenta), the Monsanto Company (Monsanto), Bayer Crop Science (Bayer), BASF SE (BASF), Dow AgroSciences (Dow), and DuPont de Neumours, Inc. (DuPont) were the only multinational firms engaged in the discovery of new agrochemical and seed technologies. Despite their fierce rivalry, the six competitors had forged strong collaborative relationships to manage the rising challenges in developing and launching agricultural innovation. A wave of unprecedented mega mergers transformed the industry into even fewer and larger firms. Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, and Corteva became the four new leaders in agriculture. As rivalry increased and innovation became even more challenged, the four competitors were pushed to reassess how they could innovate and collaborate together. Their key challenge was to determine how they could work together to develop the next wave of innovation in agriculture without compromising their individual strengths and competitive advantages.
Purpose
Small businesses are facing evolving environments, with a resulting need to shift their traditional approaches toward new business models (BMs). Many face difficulties within this transition process due to their specific resource constraints. Based on this, incremental changes to the BM – business model transition (BMT) – are proposed as comprising a suitable framework for entrepreneurial small businesses.
Design/methodology/approach
This study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) to cover a broad range of relevant literature within a final sample of 89 articles. The SLR method was chosen to integrate research in a systematic, transparent and reproducible way. For qualitative analysis and framework derivation, the study draws on a thematic ontological analysis.
Findings
The broad search criteria, focusing on BM, incremental BM changes and small businesses, pave the way for a comprehensive overview of multiple research streams of BM concepts (e.g. digital and sustainable BM). The main contribution of this work is the resulting holistic BMT framework, comprising the main parts BM innovation, external antecedents (transition of environment, entrepreneurial ecosystem), internal antecedents (dynamic capabilities, entrepreneurial orientation, resilience, strategy) and output (firm performance).
Practical implications
The framework provides guidance for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial managers to implement and complete BMT in small businesses. Furthermore, the presented paper sets a future research agenda focusing on small businesses structured according to the derived framework.
Originality/value
This study provides the first SLR of existing BM concepts with a small-business specific perspective on BMI and a focus on various incremental BM changes.
Power and organizations
(2024)
In the last two decades, the call for fewer hierarchies and flat structures has increased tremendously as shown by the numbers of recent papers. Academics and practitioners continually discuss the perfect organizational type. Nevertheless, this discussion is nothing new; already in mid last century, researchers were analyzing softened hierarchies in organizations. Due to the long-standing and recently reignited debates and influences from various perspectives, the body of research is vast, highly fragmented, and distributed among different disciplines. By reviewing the field systematically, we have analyzed in depth the current state of research and thereby interrelate the power relationships between manager and employee with the organization type they work in. With the aid of this newly developed framework, we can show that most companies act in a hierarchical organization not a flat one. Additionally, we show that even in organizations typified by flat structures, hierarchies do nevertheless appear. This revelation supports earlier findings that where formal hierarchies decrease, informal hierarchies increase, but this is contrary to much of current business understanding. Our research contributes to academia by providing a long-needed, integrated framework for power relationships in different types of organizations on the basis of which future scholars can undertake further research.
The purpose of this review is integrating and contextualizing relevant literature on the factors influencing the adoption of AI in the healthcare industry into a comprehensive framework. Health systems are considered fundamental to creating societal value. However, global health systems are challenged by the increasing number of patients due to population aging and the growing prevalence of chronic diseases and cancer. Meanwhile, the United Nations calls for equal access to healthcare, tackling costs, and addressing resource constraints to foster the sustainable development of societies. In this context, artificial intelligence (AI) is gaining attention as it constitutes a promising technology to address these burgeoning challenges. Despite opportunities, the literature specifically on the adoption of AI in the healthcare industry is fragmented across various research fields, lacking a comprehensive overview. It lacks theoretically grounded research integrating, for example, the factors that influence the adoption of AI in healthcare institutions.
Derived from a multi-disciplinary systematic literature review, building on 130 studies, we propose the Adoption of AI in the Healthcare Industry Model. This model encompasses five dimensions influencing the adoption of AI in the healthcare industry and contextualizes them. We propose that macro-economic, regulatory, and technological readiness serve as external antecedents whereas organizational and individual readiness constitute internal antecedents influencing adoption of AI in healthcare institutions.
Our review has implications for research on technology acceptance related to AI in healthcare. Further, we provide hands-on guidance for AI providers, health institutions, and official bodies such as governments to foster the adoption of AI to leverage value.
The use of analytical tools and disruptive technologies is a strategic imperative for companies to operate successfully in global markets. Wilo, a leading premium provider of pumps and pump systems, tasked Holger Jentsch, the Vice President (VP) of the Group Sales Excellence department, with piloting initial technological transformation projects in certain sales processes. As a lighthouse project, Jentsch aimed to use an artificial intelligence (AI) based analytics tool to prevent customer churn. Therefore, the case outlines critical success factors for the implementation of data-based decision-making which are elementary for Jentsch’s digital transformation project.
Enacting disruption
(2023)
Purpose
Entrepreneurial ventures aspiring to disrupt existing market incumbents often use business-model innovation to increase the attractiveness of their offerings. A value proposition is the central element of a business model, and is critical for this purpose. However, how entrepreneurial ventures modify their value propositions to increase the attractiveness of their comparatively inferior offerings is not well understood. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the value proposition innovation (VPI) of aspiring disruptors.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a flexible pattern matching approach to ground the inductive findings in extant theory. The authors conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with managers from startups in the global electric vehicle industry.
Findings
The authors developed a framework, showing two factors, determinants and tactics, that play a key role in VPI connected by a continuous feedback loop. Directed by the determinants of cognitive antecedents, development drivers and realization capabilities, aspiring disruptors determine the scope, focus and priorities of various configuration and support tactics to enable and secure the success of their value proposition.
Originality/value
The authors contribute to theory by showing how cognitive antecedents, development drivers and capabilities determine VPI tactics to disrupt existing market incumbents, furthering the understanding of configuration tactics. The results have important implications for disruptive innovation theory, and entrepreneurship research and practice, as they offer an explanatory framework to analyze strategies of aspiring disruptors who increase the attractiveness of sustainable technologies, thereby accelerating their diffusion.
This study investigates the Leader Member Exchange (LMX) model and job satisfaction for employees working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research is based on 22 semi-structured interviews conducted with consultants on different career levels within a multinational corporation (MNC) in 2022. The results indicate that the shift to remote work, during the COVID-19 pandemic, has brought new considerations to the LMX model and job satisfaction. In addition, it also positively impacted economic, environmental, and social sustainability goals. The qualitative study identifies three aggregated key factors, conducted from the interview data, that contribute to job satisfaction in a remote work setting: (1) methods of collaboration, (2) performing through collaboration, and (3) identification with work and employer. These findings offer valuable insight on remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic. They also provide a foundation for further research on remote and hybrid work and collaboration models, whilst providing understanding on their alignment to economic, environmental, and social sustainability goals.
Today's business environments demand continuous innovation and adaption in established companies for long-term competitiveness. To ensure this, many leaders thrive for agility in their organizations. Currently, this concept is mostly regarded operationally as a project management approach. But the realization of the full strategic potential of agility requires a holistic, organization-wide approach. While one possibility to implement such 'organizational agility' lies in the use of suitable management control systems, no established framework exists to achieve this. To address this gap, the present study qualitatively analyses case companies with an agility enabling MCS to answer the question of how management control systems can be designed to enable and support agile capabilities on an organizational level. The proposed novel framework for management control systems includes five elements and their mutual interactions that help leaders to enable and support organizational agility for continuous innovation and adaption: Empowerment of employees, anchoring of flexibility, performance transparency, leadership support, and the cultural foundation of organizational agility.
Digital, faster, better?
(2023)
Companies' distinct value framework is subsequently altered because of digital transformation, which include the acceleration of technical breakthroughs, the challenge of business models, and the disruption of the processes involved in the production of new products. This study sheds light on the relationships between digital transformation, business model innovation, and new product development by employing a sequential explanatory approach, combining quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, utilizing structural equation modeling based on 430 questionnaire respondents, and a multiple case study design using 4 cases. The research model demonstrates that digital transformation has a pervasive impact, with business model innovation and new product development speed serving as crucial mediators. Although a faster rate of new product development is directly correlated to improved performance, the relationship between digital transformation and new product development performance is much more nuanced and requires the integration of several different maturity needs. As a result, this research contributes to the literature on digital transformation and new product development by providing a more in-depth problematization. It also assists managers in developing a finer-grained understanding of the necessary prerequisites to transform their organizations.
Prior research has indicated that hypercompetition exists in the venture capital (VC) market. However, it remains poorly understood what implications arise from hypercompetition on VCs' strategies and operational activities and how VC funds can capitalise their competitive advantages and signal investor quality to start-ups and limited partners. To fill this knowledge gap, we use inductive qualitative research and grounded theory as a research strategy. Our results offer evidence that hypercompetition requires strategic and operational adaptability to new market dynamics and a strong need to develop competitive strategies and improve fund capabilities. We harness the different VC fund strategies from our sample to derive dynamic fund strategies to support quality signalling and exploitation of competitive advantages. The six fund strategies differ based on fund size, capabilities and degree of adaptability. Our study contributes to the literature by addressing the topic of fund strategy formulation and competitive advantages in high-competitive market dynamics.
Achieving continuous innovation performance still poses a major challenge to established companies as it requires high flexibility and adaptability in usually efficiently structured organisations. One way to tackle this challenge lies in establishing effective behaviours to successfully establish and apply innovation leadership mechanisms in an organisation. The emerging agile leadership style could provide such effective behaviours, as it addresses the demand for flexibility and adaptability on the organisational level. Despite these clear parallels research on the link between agile leadership and innovation leadership, and their possible combined contribution to drive continuous innovation performance is still in its infancy. Accordingly, the present study examines the behaviours of agile leaders to promote continuous innovation in established companies. It applies a discovery-driven research process of agile leaders to derive and categorise their behaviours. The subsequent comparison of the identified agile leadership behaviours with innovation leadership mechanisms from existing literature leads to eight specific, combined agile leadership principles within the three categories empowerment, performance enhancement, and support for continuous innovation. Eventually, this basis allows the conceptualisation of a first exploratory framework with the identified behaviours as possible enablers, and innovation leadership mechanisms as possible mediators for the continuous innovation performance, subject to test. These findings enhance existing theory by clarifying a possible link between agile leadership and continuous innovation. That way, practitioners can profit from concrete principles for agile leaders to inspire and enable continuous innovation in individuals and teams.
Although firms rely on employees’ innovative work behaviour and effective leadership to achieve service innovation performance, these relations remain underexplored, especially regarding digital leadership. We conceptualise a digital leader’s capabilities and explore influences on innovative work behaviour and service innovation performance, using the dynamic capabilities view as a theoretical lens. Applying a multi-method exploratory research design, our qualitative results, based on 34 expert interviews, deliver a taxonomy of digital leadership capabilities along three dimensions. With 249 survey participants, we quantitatively tested dimensional influences individually (multidimensional view) and collectively (unidimensional view) using structural equation modelling. In line with our mediation results, both views are significantly positively related to innovative work behaviour; still, only the unidimensional view significantly influences service innovation performance. Our results underpin the comprehensive character of digital leadership capabilities contributing to innovation research with a new “antecedal” perspective. We also provide practical relevance by revealing innovation-effective leadership capabilities.
The data-creativity nexus: shaping the future of marketing in the age of artificial intelligence
(2023)
This study investigates the impact of artificial intelligence on marketing. Based on an extensive dataset of interviews with marketing executives, the study assesses current practices and argues that the future of marketing is inextricably linked to the effective integration of data and creativity. Thus, this research sheds light on this under-explored nexus.
This publication-based dissertation analyzes the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and technological entrepreneurship on firm level over six chapters. The essence of this dissertation consists of four independent research papers developed for publication in academic journals whose peer review process is double-blinded. The first chapter offers a general introduction to the subject matter and provides a summary of the four research papers in this dissertation. The second chapter is a systematic literature review that focuses on the importance of AI in strategic management. The third chapter is a research paper that examines the significance of technology-driven entrepreneurship activities and provides crucial lessons from small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the manufacturing industry. The fourth chapter is a research paper that empirically examines how top management can encourage and facilitate AI-enabled business model innovation. The fifth chapter comprises a teaching case study and provides and understanding of how to implement an AI-based analytical tool in a firm. The sixth chapter outlines the main findings and contributions of this dissertation.