External stakeholder involvement, resources and decision-making as factors to innovation process efficiency and innovation success
Patovuori, Tuomo (2023)
2023
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202303073156
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202303073156
Tiivistelmä
The target organisation has ambitions to enable strategy through development and to have an efficient innovation process. Further, customers do not view the target organisation as innovative. The objective of this thesis is to investigate, on the unit level, how the innovation portfolio is managed: how idea gathering, refinement and selection are done. The phases of idea development and market launch are mostly excluded from the scope of the study.
The thesis adopts the value-in-use and value-in-experience perspectives which highlight that value is co-created by the producer and the consumer of the service. Value of the service is determined by the users of the service in their respective contexts, and hedonic values should be considered as well. Similarly the value of a service innovation is the relative value and newness perceived by the customer and not by the producer.
A service design approach is used for acquiring customer knowledge, empathizing with customers and assimilating customers’ knowledge and emotions. The goal is to utilize the increased knowledge to achieve innovation success. Customer involvement has been seen to improve the innovation process efficiency.
For the company to succeed in innovation and to have an efficient process, selection of ideas for development plays a major role. Effective idea selection results in an innovation portfolio that supports strategic ambitions and can be allocated the required resources.
This thesis is a case study in which the innovation process phases mentioned above are studied on unit level, resulting in suggestions for improvement. Ten interviews were held with representatives throughout the target organisation to obtain multiple viewpoints and opinions. Thus it has some influences from factual approach even though main focus was on unit level.
The main findings of this study are that the target organisation has two parallel innovation process for different types of developments, executed by different people. The processes are lacking some links between each other. Customers were involved very little in both, except for customers’ role as a source for ideas. Front-line employees were seen to substitute the customers in the innovation process and argued being able to represent customer views.
The target organisation struggles with the resources and number of different development projects ongoing at once. Overall, all the activities are seen to be in line with the target organisation’s strategic ambitions. For the selection and prioritisation of different developments, there was unclarity in the decision criteria and roles, which has resulted in an inefficient and opaque decision process.
The thesis adopts the value-in-use and value-in-experience perspectives which highlight that value is co-created by the producer and the consumer of the service. Value of the service is determined by the users of the service in their respective contexts, and hedonic values should be considered as well. Similarly the value of a service innovation is the relative value and newness perceived by the customer and not by the producer.
A service design approach is used for acquiring customer knowledge, empathizing with customers and assimilating customers’ knowledge and emotions. The goal is to utilize the increased knowledge to achieve innovation success. Customer involvement has been seen to improve the innovation process efficiency.
For the company to succeed in innovation and to have an efficient process, selection of ideas for development plays a major role. Effective idea selection results in an innovation portfolio that supports strategic ambitions and can be allocated the required resources.
This thesis is a case study in which the innovation process phases mentioned above are studied on unit level, resulting in suggestions for improvement. Ten interviews were held with representatives throughout the target organisation to obtain multiple viewpoints and opinions. Thus it has some influences from factual approach even though main focus was on unit level.
The main findings of this study are that the target organisation has two parallel innovation process for different types of developments, executed by different people. The processes are lacking some links between each other. Customers were involved very little in both, except for customers’ role as a source for ideas. Front-line employees were seen to substitute the customers in the innovation process and argued being able to represent customer views.
The target organisation struggles with the resources and number of different development projects ongoing at once. Overall, all the activities are seen to be in line with the target organisation’s strategic ambitions. For the selection and prioritisation of different developments, there was unclarity in the decision criteria and roles, which has resulted in an inefficient and opaque decision process.