The emerging research stream on digital sustainability examines how digital technologies enable the creation of environmental and social value. The need to finance the creation of such value calls for a business model perspective that combines value creation and value capture. To extend the digital sustainability literature in this regard, we adopt a microfoundations perspective and argue that the configuration of value creation influences the decision of users to pay for a value proposition or not, which in turn affects organizational value capture. Applying a crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis to 130 smart city initiatives in Switzerland, we develop a three-dimensional framework of business models for digital sustainability. The framework comprises 12 theoretically possible business model types, representing distinct business model configurations. We contribute to the digital sustainability and the microfoundations literatures by analyzing, explaining, and classifying the diversity of digitally enabled business models in the context of smart cities.
Innovation Management
Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann
Welcome to the Chair for Innovation Management at the University of St.Gallen. Our highly motivated team is dedicated to leading innovation research and high impact by combining rigor and relevance. Together with our international research partners in industry, we develop tools for the effective management of innovation. Our main areas of research are: Strategic Management of Innovation, Business Model Innovation, and Management of Emerging Technologies.
News
Students pursuing the Master in Business Innovation at the University of St. Gallen (MBI-HSG) had the chance to present their solutions for real-world business innovation challenges. In 6 weeks, 29 student groups worked in parallel on 13 challenges from Bosch, Siemens, Swisscom, Feldschlösschen Getränke AG, WWF, Vircom, Deutsche Telekom, KSB Company, Netstal, Helvetia Insurance Group, PostFinance. The output (a working paper, a presentation, and a video clip) was presented and discussed with executives from these companies.
What impact will technology have on students and researchers in the future? How will universities evolve and which role has AI in this development? The future of universities: New technologies in higher education. An interview with Prof. Dr. Naomi Haefner.
How will universities teach in the future? What impact do new technologies have? Where is the research heading? Who finances it all? The future of universities: interdisciplinary, personalized and problem-centric. An interview with Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann.
Prof. Oliver Gassmann and fellow researchers have calculated the R&D investments made by big pharma companies to get a new drug approved by the FDA. The result for the period from 2001 to 2020 and the 16 leading research-based pharmaceutical companies is a staggering 6.16 billion USD per approved drug.
Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann | Prof. Dr. Felix Wortmann | Dr. Wolfgang Bronner | Robin Deuber | Sebastian Otto | Ugne Potthoff | Johanna Knapp | Manuel Wlcek |
Founded in 2013, the Bosch Internet of Things (IoT) Lab is a cooperation between the University of St. Gallen, ETH Zurich and the Bosch Group. The Bosch IoT Lab investigates business models in the Internet of Things and explores disruptive IoT platforms, products and services. In the realm of “Connected Business”, the focus is on managing the digital transformation of large manufacturing companies driven by IoT-enabled services and data. In the realm of “IoT Platform Economy”, the focus is on building and managing platform business successfully. Finally, in the area of “IoT Technology Exploration”, the Lab develops and validates products and services in the domains of mobility, energy and health. Please click here for more information.
Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann | Dr. Naomi Haefner | David Wagner | Uliana Polyakova | Mario Mühlematter
The Emerging Technologies Lab is primarily concerned with examining and assessing new technologies with a particular emphasis on business models and business opportunities. Distributed Ledger Technologies (e.g., Blockchain) are one of the Lab’s core research topics. In order to evaluate the potential of DLTs/Blockchain within the industry context, the Lab continues to operate its working group, which was originally established in 2017. Furthermore, we initiated a long-term research project with Siemens, which will extensively investigate the implications of DLTs on the platform economy. Finally, we have a project examining the potential of AI in selected application areas from a business model perspective.
Prof. Dr. Maximilian Palmié | Dr. Mônica Barroso | Daniel Heigermoser | Selina Lorenz | Anna Mader | Stephanie Rüegger | Aristea Saputo
Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann | Prof. Dr. Max von Zedtwitz
GLORAD is the Center for Global R&D and Innovation with offices in St. Gallen (CH), Kaunas (CEE), Heilbronn (DE), Moscow (RU), Shanghai (CN), Silicon Valley (USA), and Sao Paulo (LATAM). Click here for more information.
Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann | Prof. Dr. Torsten Tomczak | Prof. Dr. Andreas Herrmann | Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Jenewein | Prof. Dr. Ernst Mohr
The Center for Innovation at the University of St. Gallen was founded in May 2007 and is based on a cooperation between the Institute of Technology Management (Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann) and the Center for Customer Insight (Prof. Dr. Torsten Tomczak, Prof. Dr. Andreas Herrmann, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Jenewein, Prof. Dr. Ernst Mohr). Click here for more information.
Our Team
Current Research Projects
Our research focuses on the impact of digital technologies on managerial practices, business models, organizations and society.
The SCCER CREST is a Swiss national research programme contributing on different levels to the reinforcement of energy reserach in Switzerland. Interested to learn more?
The Energy Innovation Lab at the Chair for Innovation Management supports the development and commercial exploitation of smart and sustainable business models.
This project examines how intellectual property changes in the context of self-learning systems.
This projects conducts research for the Swiss National Science Foundation on Digital Transformation.
Putting years of research about business model innovation into practice with Hansgrohe
The Chair for Innovation Management collaborates with Siemens to investigate decentralized platforms
The St.Gallen Blockchain Roundtable & The DLT Think Tank
88 pattern cards that help you design and implement platform business models in your company
The Chair for Innovation Management offers courses on the Bachelor, Master and PhD level as well as in the Executive Education programs. Teaching is very important to us and we aim to combine relevant knowledge with state-of-the art teaching methods. For an impression of your 2019 Course "Business Innovation - One" click here.
You can find a full overview of our courses here.
Selected Publications
Please find a selection of the most cited publications by the Chair for Innovation Management below. You can find the full publication list of Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann here.
Bencsik, B., Palmié, M., Parida, V., Wincent, J., Gassmann, O. (2023). Business models for digital sustainability: Framework, microfoundations of value capture, and empirical evidence from 130 smart city services. Journal of Business Research, 160. 1-14.
Schäfer, F. A., Gebauer, H., Gröger, C., Gassmann, O., Wortmann, F. (2023). Data-driven business and data privacy: Challenges and measures for product-based companies. Business Horizons, 66(4). 493-504.
To leverage the opportunities provided by the Internet of Things (IoT), product-based companies are exploring new data-driven business opportunities. They may miss these same opportunities, however, owing to data-privacy challenges. These challenges start with the customers of product-based companies, extend to the wider business ecosystem, and continue with the companies themselves. This article identifies 12 data-privacy challenges and introduces 12 measures to address them. These include intuitive recommendations, such as enabling cross-product consent collection, as well as less intuitive measures, such as fostering a can-do attitude in legal units, closing the gap between legal and business initiatives, or implementing a clear process for well-reasoned risk-taking. The following four principles were found to support companies in implementing these measures: (1) letting privacy and data-driven business go hand in hand, (2) putting customers first and turning their privacy preferences into opportunities, (3) aligning risk-management activities with the process of digital service development, and (4) using technology to professionalize legal processes.
Haefner, N., Parida, V., Gassmann, O., Wincent, J. (2023). Implementing and scaling artificial intelligence: A review, framework, and research agenda. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 197.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will have a substantial impact on firms in virtually all industries. Without guidance on how to implement and scale AI, companies will be outcompeted by the next generation of highly innovative and competitive companies that manage to incorporate AI into their operations. Research shows that competition is fierce and that there is a lack of frameworks to implement and scale AI successfully. This study begins to address this gap by providing a systematic review and analysis of different approaches by companies to using AI in their organizations. Based on these experiences, we identify key components of implementing and scaling AI in organizations and propose phases of implementing and scaling AI in firms.
Lingens, B., Seeholzer, V., Gassmann, O. (2023). Journey to the Big Bang: How firms define new value propositions in emerging ecosystems. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 69.
The goal of an ecosystem is the creation of a value proposition firms could not offer alone. But how are new value propositions being defined in emerging ecosystems? Our study with eight cases yields several implications along these lines: First, how to come up with an initial idea for a value proposition and convince partners to commit to it? And, second, how to setup the iterative process of value proposition adaption? And how to find a way to align both customer and partner interests along that way? Overall, this helps to understand how factors in the early stages of ecosystem development affect its value proposition.
Schuhmacher, A., Hinder, M., Dodel, A., Gassmann, O., Hartl, D. (2023). Investigating the origins of recent pharmaceutical innovation. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery
Leading pharmaceutical companies have historically been engaged in all stages of the R&D pipeline, from target identification through to drug marketing, and thus have been termed fully integrated pharmaceutical companies (FIPCOs). In the past decade, externally invented assets gained through partnering or mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have become a prominent component of the pipelines of such companies. Given the long development cycles and the increasing level of collaboration between pharma companies and biotech companies, however, the precise origins of innovation are not obvious, in part as regulatory approvals for innovative drugs by agencies such as the FDA are granted to the company filing the applications, which is not necessarily the company that discovered the active pharmaceutical ingredient. Understanding the origins of innovation provides a deeper understanding of the pharma business model and could support strategic improvements. We therefore systematically assessed the origins of innovation for all new molecular entities (NMEs) and new therapeutic biologics (NTBs) approved between 2015 and 2021 by the Center of Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the top 20 biopharma companies globally by sales in 2020 (see Supplementary information for details).
Boemelburg, R., Zimmermann, A., Palmié, M. (2023). How paradoxical leaders guide their followers to embrace paradox: Cognitive and behavioral mechanisms of paradox mindset development. Long Range Planning, 56(4). 1-13.
Organizational members must constantly confront and manage numerous paradoxical tensions inherent in organizational life, such as exploration and exploitation. Although prior research suggests that a paradox mindset helps individuals navigate such tensions, we know little about how paradoxical leaders might engender such a mindset in their followers. To shed light on this issue, we differentiate between cognitive and behavioral influences on followers' paradox mindset development. Drawing on primary data from 273 employees, our study indicates that the two influences are interrelated, with behavioral mechanisms mediating the effects of cognitive mechanisms. Our study advances extant theory by providing insights into how paradoxical leaders guide employees to situationally engage with specific paradoxical tensions and influence followers’ paradox mindset in general.
Haefner, N., Palmié, M., Leppänen, P. T. (2023). With(Out) a Little Help From My Friends? Reconciling Incongruous Findings on Stakeholder Management, Innovation, and Firm Performance. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 47(1). 142-171.
Are stakeholder management and innovation substitutes or complements in affecting firm performance? Extant research provides support for both positions and thus leaves us with a puzzle. We conduct an exploratory fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of 204 publicly listed European firms combining survey and archival data to formulate theory on how stakeholder management and innovation work (in)effectively together. Distinguishing between internal and external stakeholders and exploitative and exploratory innovation, we elaborate that managing for stakeholders and innovation can be both substitutes and complements depending on a set of contingencies. We discuss boundary conditions and implications for future research.
Schuhmacher, A., Hinder, M., Von Stegmann Und Stein, A., Hartl, D., Gassmann, O. (2023). Analysis of pharma R&D productivitya new perspective needed. Drug Discovery Today, 28(10).
R&D productivity continues to be the industry's grand challenge. We analyzed the R&D input, output, and outcome of 16 leading research-based pharmaceutical companies over 20 years (2001-2020). Our analysis shows that pharma companies increased their R&D spending at a compound annual growth rate of 6% (2001-2020) to an average R&D expenditure per company of $6.7 billion (2020). The companies in our investigation launched 251 new drugs representing 46% of all CDER-related FDA approvals in the past 20 years. The average R&D efficiency of big pharma was $6.16 billion total R&D expenditures per new drug. Almost half of the leading companies needed to compensate for their negative R&D productivity through mergers and acquisitions.
Palmié, M., Rügger, S., Holzer, M., Oghazi, P. (2023). The “golden” voice of “green” employees: The effect of private environmental orientation on suggestions for improvement in firms’ economic value creation. Journal of Business Research, 156. 1-12.
This study examines whether employees’ private environmental orientation matters for the economic performance of their firms. It argues that employees’ private environmental orientation affects not only their pro-environmental and pro-social behavior (PEPSB) in the workplace but also their inclination to make suggestions for improvements (i.e., their voice behavior). It also contends that their voice behavior is not limited to suggestions rooted in PEPSB but includes suggestions for other economically attractive improvements besides pro-environmental and pro-social improvements. This study further maintains that firms can support the transformation of employees’ private environmental orientation into voice behavior at work by influencing employees’ perception of the firm. Specifically, it posits that an employee’s private environmental orientation leads to more suggestions for economically attractive improvements at work, the more she or he perceives the company to emphasize sustainability. An analysis of 283 employees in the hospitality industry provides strong support for our theoretical account.
Palmié, M., Rügger, S., Parida, V. (2023). Microfoundations in the strategic management of technology and innovation: Definitions, systematic literature review, integrative framework, and research agenda. Journal of Business Research, 154. 1-17.
While innovations and new technologies are often pivotal to the long-term prosperity of firms, such firm-level outcomes emerge from the actions and interactions of organizational members who develop innovations and use new technologies. The “microfoundations movement” seeks to understand how micro-level (e.g., individual) actions and interactions lead to macro-level (e.g., organizational) outcomes and mediate relations between macro-level variables. Although the movement has grown tremendously over the last decade, it has yet to deeply pervade the domain of strategic technology and innovation management. Due to its tremendous growth, it is quite fragmented and dispersed, which impedes the identification of the most promising opportunities for future research. To overcome this problematic situation, we conduct a systematic literature review of existing research on microfoundations in the strategic management of technology and innovation, synthesize it into an integrative framework, and chart promising paths for future research. Specifically, we apply a multi-coder, multi-step approach, identify 87 relevant articles published in 23 leading academic journals over the period from 2003 to 2022, and propose a research agenda comprising more than 20 promising avenues for future research based on the resulting insights. These findings have important implications for the academic literature and management practice.
Miehé, L., Palmié, M., Oghazi, P. (2022). Connection successfully established: How complementors use connectivity technologies to join existing ecosystems – Four archetype strategies from the mobility sector. Technovation, 122. 1-13.
Supporting fast and extensive data transfer, connectivity technologies entail opportunities for stronger inter-firm collaboration and new value propositions, resulting in business model innovation. Whereas prior research has mainly focused on connectivity-induced changes in the business models of ecosystem orchestrators, we turn our attention to (prospective) ecosystem complementors. We examine how digital service providers can configure business model mechanisms to enter an ecosystem and connect themselves to its value proposition. Based on an explorative qualitative study of four cases in mobility, we develop four archetypical connection strategies for complementors. We observe that the four archetypes differ in their implications for the ecosystem value proposition, for the role of other actors in the ecosystem, and the triple-bottom-line performance of the ecosystem. Connectivity technologies can combine economic, environmental, and social benefits.
Palmié, M., Miehé, L., Oghazi, P., Parida, V., Wincent, J. (2022). The evolution of the digital service ecosystem and digital business model innovation in retail: The emergence of meta-ecosystems and the value of physical interactions. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 177. 1-10.
As e-commerce has increasingly gained traction in the retail market, many traditional “brick-and-mortar” retailers are innovating their business models and making the transition towards digital business models. While scholars have started to examine the influence of digitalization on various business model elements, they have so far paid little attention to its implications on the external relationships in which firms engage for value creation. Building on a qualitative analysis of seventeen interviews, this study develops a two-stage framework for the transition to digital business models. In Stage 1, retailers collaborate with specialized service providers to implement a digital business model. As firms from the retail ecosystem collaborate with firms from the digital-service ecosystem to create a value proposition for end-customers, a meta-ecosystem emerges. In Stage 2, firms (retailers) seek to differentiate themselves from their competitors in the meta-ecosystem. Physical interactions with the digital service providers, the product suppliers, and the customers are a primary means towards this end. Thus, digitalization does not make physical interactions and close personal ties obsolete. Our study has substantial implications for the academic literature and management practice.
Lingens, B., Seeholzer, V., Gassmann, O. (2022). The architecture of innovation: how firms configure different types of complementarities in emerging ecosystems. Industry and Innovation, 29(9). 1108-1139.
Ecosystems are one of the major trends today. They are based on complementarities, which can take the form of supermodularity or uniqueness and appear on both production and consumption side. Different configurations of complementarity lead to different characteristics of ecosystems with different implications. But which configuration of complementarities is beneficial in a given setting and what are the resulting consequences? We study emerging ecosystems driven by the respective orchestrator. Based on a multiple-case study, we show how and why orchestrators are leveraging different configurations of complementarities depending on, amongst others, competition on ecosystem or value proposition level and uncertainty and the resulting challenges for the orchestrator. These insights provide researchers with a better understanding of the basic mechanics of ecosystems and explain why certain types and structures of ecosystems are more likely to be seen in specific environments. For managers, it helps to sketch the development paths for own ecosystems.
Schuhmacher, A., Gassmann, O., Bieniok, D., Hinder, M., Hartl, D. (2022). Open innovation: A paradigm shift in pharma R&D?. Drug Discovery Today, 27(9). 2395-2405.
An analysis of 21 leading research-based pharmaceutical companies by global sales 2019 regarding their inbound R&D activities between 2015 and 2019.
Over the last decade open innovation (OI) has found its way into and is a widely used R&D model of the research-based pharmaceutical industry.
The depth and breadth of implementation differs greatly across major industry players: While four pharmaceutical companies (Novartis, Otsuka, Gilead, and Allergan) rely more on traditional R&D concepts, the vast majority (15 out of 21 companies) also uses network-based OI models to supplement R&D. And two companies (Bayer and AstraZeneca) have opened their R&D into ecosystem-enabled.
Schweitzer, F., Palmié, M., Gassmann, O., Kahlert, J., Roeth, T. (2022). Open innovation for institutional entrepreneurship: how incumbents induce institutional change to advance autonomous driving. R & D Management, 52(3). 465-483
Without fundamental institutional change, such as a change in laws and regulations, many new technologies cannot achieve their full potential. Efforts to induce institutional change in favor of such technologies are, therefore, increasingly critical for innovative firms. To study how German automotive firms induce change that accommodates autonomous driving (AD) solutions, we conducted a case study research encompassing analysis of 31 interviews, internal archival documents, and media data. Taking the firm as the level of analysis, we identify ten practices employed by innovating incumbents in the three steps of creating saliency for change, mitigating reservations against the desired change, and institutionalizing it. We find that these practices involve shaping-oriented and adaptation-oriented knowledge flows. Through the combined use of these practices throughout the three steps, firms ‘open up’ their development process, utilizing purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to advance innovation. Our findings contribute to the literature on open innovation and institutional entrepreneurship and suggest that future open innovation research can profit from adopting an institutional entrepreneurship perspective.
Friedrich, J., Palmié, M. (2021). Does Smart equal Sustainable? Selective Coupling and Sustainability Performance in 251 Smart City Initiatives understood as Hybrid Organizations. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2021(1).
This paper depicts smart city initiatives as hybrid organizations that incorporate competing institutional logics. These logics are not equally pronounced across initiatives. The salience of the logics affects initiatives’ selective coupling with economic, social, and environmental sustainability and, hence, their triple-layered sustainability performance. We suggest that the performance-related selective coupling is driven by two mechanisms: leveraging experience and seeking legitimacy. An empirical analysis of 251 initiatives supports our arguments. In line with the theory of selective coupling, we further find that initiatives embedded in a market logic display better overall sustainability performance than those embedded in a social welfare logic.
Lingens, B., Böger, M. (2021). Even a Small Conductor Can Lead a Large Orchestra: How Startups Orchestrate Ecosystems. California Management Review, 63(3). 1-26.
Contrary to existing literature, startups can be successful orchestrators of ecosystems. Based on nine qualitative case studies, this article introduces four archetypes that shed light on how a startup can fulfill the tasks of an orchestrator and overcome challenges. The findings identify dimensions of standardization/customization and sources of value creation as defining the role of ecosystem orchestrators and demonstrate the consequences for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), corporates, investors, and accelerators involved in such ecosystems.
Lingens, B., Miehé, L., Gassmann, O. (2021). The Ecosystem Blueprint: How Firms Shape the Design of an Ecosystem According to the Surrounding Conditions. Long Range Planning, 54(2). 1-53.
Ecosystems are formed by organisations that jointly create a value proposition that a single firm could not create in isolation. To deliver this value proposition, the partners need a focal firm, the orchestrator, to be align them towards the joint value proposition. Thus, how orchestrators design the alignment structure of an ecosystem is at the very heart of the ecosystem concept – yet it has not been sufficiently addressed by extant research. This is all the more true for the question of how the design of an ecosystem is shaped depending on surrounding conditions. This paper applies a qualitative study with ten cases and, based on the attention-based view of the firm, contributes to research on ecosystems in several ways. First, it explains which ecosystem designs are beneficial under which conditions. Second, it elucidates the structure and activities within ecosystems and shows that start-ups can be just as good ecosystem orchestrators as incumbents. Third, it explains the circumstances under which single vs. multi orchestrator ecosystems occur. Fourth, it presents the conditions when incumbents or start-ups make better orchestrators. Finally, it is among the first studies to apply the attention-based view to business ecosystems, and shows that doing so yields intriguing insights into this emerging field of research.
Palmié, M., Boehm, J., Friedrich, J., Parida, V., Wincent, J., Kahlert, J., Gassmann, O., Sjödin, D. (2021). Startups versus incumbents in ‘green’ industry transformations: A comparative study of business model archetypes in the electrical power sector. Industrial Marketing Management. Vol. 96.
Scholars have recently argued that startups and incumbents play differential roles in the disruptive transformations of industries toward sustainability and that the transformations are only likely to succeed if both startups and incumbents contribute. To understand their respective contributions and, thus, to understand how industries make the transition toward sustainability, comparative studies of incumbents versus startups during this transformation have been identified as a central pursuit, but yet they are mostly lacking. Since business models have become a principal way of characterizing firms, the present study takes a business model perspective and derives business model archetypes in the electrical power sector from an analysis of 280 startups and incumbents in three different countries. The selected countries (USA, UK, and India) represent three different energy profiles and leading instances of disruption in the energy sector. The article, then, undertakes a comparative analysis of startups and incumbents based on the empirically distilled business model archetypes and develops propositions on startups, incumbents, and business models in industry transformations. This analysis produces several important insights. First, incumbents do not seem to engage in less business model experimentation than startups. Second, incumbents have adopted several new business models that are not pursued by startups. Third, startups have espoused some business models that are not pursued by incumbents. Fourth, foreign firms can also affect the ‘green’ transformation of an industry in a focal country. Finally, the identified business model archetypes are likely to be of interest to scholars and practitioners who are seeking an improved understanding of business models in the electrical power industry and the industry’s competitive landscape. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2021.04.003
Schweitzer, F., Palmié, M., Gassmann, O., Kahlert, J. & Roeth, T. (2021). Open innovation for institutional entrepreneurship: how incumbents induce institutional change to advance autonomous driving. R&D Management.
Without fundamental institutional change, such as a change in laws and regulations, many new technologies cannot achieve their full potential. Efforts to induce institutional change in favor of such technologies are, therefore, increasingly critical for innovative firms. To study how German automotive firms induce change that accommodates autonomous driving (AD) solutions, we conducted a case study research encompassing analysis of 31 interviews, internal archival documents, and media data. Taking the firm as the level of analysis, we identify ten practices employed by innovating incumbents in the three steps of creating saliency for change, mitigating reservations against the desired change, and institutionalizing it. We find that these practices involve shaping-oriented and adaptation-oriented knowledge flows. Through the combined use of these practices throughout the three steps, firms ‘open up’ their development process, utilizing purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to advance innovation. Our findings contribute to the literature on open innovation and institutional entrepreneurship and suggest that future open innovation research can profit from adopting an institutional entrepreneurship perspective.
Haefner, N., Palmié, M., & Leppänen, P. T. (2021). With(out) a little help from my friends? Reconciling incongruous findings on stakeholder management, innovation, and firm performance. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, in press.
Are stakeholder management and innovation substitutes or complements in affecting firm performance? Extant research provides support for both positions and thus leaves us with a puzzle. We conduct an exploratory fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of 204 publicly listed European firms combining survey and archival data to formulate theory on how stakeholder management and innovation work (in)effectively together. Distinguishing between internal and external stakeholders and exploitative and exploratory innovation, we elaborate that managing for stakeholders and innovation can be both substitutes and complements depending on a set of contingencies. We discuss boundary conditions and implications for future research.
Haefner, N., Wincent, J., Parida, V., & Gassmann, O. (2021). Artificial intelligence and innovation management: A review, framework, and research agenda. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 162(1).
Artificial Intelligence (AI) reshapes companies and how innovation management is organized. Consistent with rapid technological development and the replacement of human organization, AI may indeed compel management to rethink a company’s entire innovation process. In response, we review and explore the implications for future innovation management. Using ideas from the Carnegie School and the behavioral theory of the firm, we review the implications for innovation management of AI technologies and machine learning-based AI systems. We outline a framework showing the extent to which AI can replace humans and explain what is important to consider in making the transformation to the digital organization of innovation. We conclude our study by exploring directions for future research. doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120392
Palmié, Maximilian, Boehm, Jonas, Lekkas, Charlotte-Katharina, Parida, Vinit, Wincent, Joakim, & Gassmann, Oliver: Circular business model implementation: Design choices, orchestration strategies, and transition pathways for resource-sharing solutions, Journal of Cleaner Production, 280 (2020): 124399.
Prominent political and societal stakeholders argue that business models (BMs) are pivotal in making a successful transition to a circular economy (CE). However, the existing CE literature has paid little attention to design choices that allow companies to implement circular business models (CBMs) that meet the requirements of their specific situations. Resource sharing (alternatively called asset sharing) is a key practice in making the transition to a CE. The present article, therefore, seeks to gain deeper insights into the CBMs of firms that orchestrate resource-sharing solutions. For this purpose, it uses a qualitative multiple case-study approach and analyzes nine firms that orchestrate virtual power plants in Germany and Switzerland. Specifically, the article explores the design choices with which firms are faced when they implement CBMs, and it examines different implementation strategies that flow from making certain design choices. The article also identifies transition pathways that enable firms to move between different implementation strategies in order to increase economic and environmental gains. The present article can serve as a stimulus for further detailed analyses of other BMs that are important to a CE in the future.
Lingens, B. Miehé, L., & Gassmann, O. (2020): The Ecosystem Blueprint: How Firms Shape the Design of an Ecosystem According to the Surrounding Conditions, Long Range Planning. doi: 10.1016/j.lrp.2020.102043
Ecosystems are formed by organisations that jointly create a value proposition that a single firm could not create in isolation. To deliver this value proposition, the partners need a focal firm, the orchestrator, to be align them towards the joint value proposition. Thus, how orchestrators design the alignment structure of an ecosystem is at the very heart of the ecosystem concept – yet it has not been sufficiently addressed by extant research. This is all the more true for the question of how the design of an ecosystem is shaped depending on surrounding conditions. This paper applies a qualitative study with ten cases and, based on the attention-based view of the firm, contributes to research on ecosystems in several ways. First, it explains which ecosystem designs are beneficial under which conditions. Second, it elucidates the structure and activities within ecosystems and shows that start-ups can be just as good ecosystem orchestrators as incumbents. Third, it explains the circumstances under which single vs. multiorchestrator ecosystems occur. Fourth, it presents the conditions when incumbents or start-ups make better orchestrators. Finally, it is among the first studies to apply the attention-based view to business ecosystems, and shows that doing so yields intriguing insights into this emerging field of research.
Gassmann, O., Frankenberger, K., & Choudury, M. (2020). The Business Model Navigator: The strategies behind the most successful companies. 2nd Edition. FT Pearson, UK.
Neumann, L., Winterhalter, S. & Gassmann, O. (2020): Market maketh magic - consequences and implications of market choice for frugal innovation, International Journal of Technology Management, Vol. 83, 55-77.
This study systematically analysed 237 frugal innovation cases in
order to understand the consequences and implications of market choice on the
characteristics of a successful frugal innovation. The results demonstrate that
this type of innovation is disruptive to its respective target market. Further, the
study shows that firms that want to achieve such innovation tend to focus either
on activities along the value chain or the solution (product/service) itself. This
distinction yielded four clusters of frugal innovation, which are described in
detail, including aspects regarding strategy, organisation, processes and
technology.
Schuhmacher, A., Gatto, A., Hinder, M., Kuss, M., & Gassmann, O. (2020): The upside of being a digital pharma player. Drug Discovery Today, (featured in Forbes, July 2020)
We investigated the state of artificial intelligence (AI) in pharmaceutical research and development
(R&D) and outline here a risk and reward perspective regarding digital R&D. Given the novelty of the
research area, a combined qualitative and quantitative research method was chosen, including the
analysis of annual company reports, investor relations information, patent applications, and scientific
publications of 21 pharmaceutical companies for the years 2014 to 2019. As a result, we can confirm that
the industry is in an ‘early mature’ phase of using AI in R&D. Furthermore, we can demonstrate that,
despite the efforts that need to be managed, recent developments in the industry indicate that it is
worthwhile to invest to become a ‘digital pharma player’.
Gassmann, O., Böhm, J., & Palmié, M.: Smart Cities: Introducing Digital Innovation to Cities. Bingley, Uk. Emerald Publishing, 2019. ISBN: 978-1-78769-614-3.
Transformation through digital innovation is becoming an imperative for every city. The ‘Smart City’ concept promises to solve the most urgent queries of progressive urbanization in the area of mobility, energy, water supply, security, housing deprivation, and inclusion. Despite the exploitation of existing potential in lighthouse-cities that include Barcelona, London, Munich, Lyon, and Vienna, the less tenacious pursuit of smart city possibilities in the majority of municipalities has resulted in major discrepancies between leading smart cities and those that are less aspirational. Although the necessity of action is frequently recognized, an appropriate path of action remains obscure.
Smart Cities: Introducing Digital Innovation to Cities offers answers, with clarifying examples, to questions that have remained unanswered for many cities. The book identifies and addresses the core elements and potential of smart cities, best practice methods and tools to be implemented, as well as how diverse stakeholders might be effectively integrated.
Based on perennial international research in the field of smart cities, this book brings together the authors' collective experience in practice-based political, administrative, and economic projects to provide a common framework to guide and engage key stakeholders in the transformation and realization of smart cities.
Schuhmacher, A., Gassmann, O., Kuss, M.& Hinder, M. (2019): The art of virtualizing pharma R&D. Drug Discovery Today, 24 (11), 2105-2107.
Today, virtualizing pharma R&D is increasingly related with data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), technologies that have been developed by software companies outside the healthcare sector. The process of virtualizing pharma R&D is closely related to the technological advancements that result in the generation of large data sets ranging from genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, medical imaging, IoT wearables and large clinical trials, making it necessary for pharma companies to find new ways to store and ultimately analyze information. As a consequence, pharma companies are experimenting with AI in R&D ranging from in-silico drug design to clinical trail participants identification or dosage error reduction.
Palmié, M., Huerzeler, P., Grichnik, D., Keupp, M. M., & Gassmann, O. (2018). Some principles are more equal than others: Promotion‐ versus prevention‐focused effectuation principles and their disparate relationships with entrepreneurial orientation. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 13(1), 93-117.
Recent research suggests that effectuation principles such as flexibility, precommitments, and affordable loss may differ substantially from one another. Responding to the call to clarify the effectuation concept, our study introduces the distinction between promotion‐ and prevention‐focused effectuation principles. It argues that promotion‐focused (prevention‐focused) principles are positively (negatively) associated with a firm's entrepreneurial orientation (EO). It further argues that causation is also promotion‐focused and positively associated with EO. An analysis of 151 Swiss energy small and medium‐sized enterprises supports this account. Thus, our study suggests that some effectuation principles are more similar to causation in their underlying regulatory focus and their relationship with EO than they are to other effectuation principles. We offer several paths for future research on effectuation, causation, and EO that emerge from these findings.