Publications

Swiss Manufacturing Survey

Die jährlich stattfindende Erhebung hat das Ziel, die aktuelle Situation des produzierenden Gewerbes in der Schweiz aussagekräftig darzustellen und über ihre langfristige Ausrichtung einen möglichen Strukturwandel abzubilden. Der Fokus auf produzierende Unternehmen liefert neue Informationen, die durch andere Umfragen bisweilen nur unzureichend abgefragt werden. Durch diese Transparenz erhalten Unternehmen, Verbände, Wissenschaft und Politik die Möglichkeit, Entwicklungen sowie Trends zu identifizieren, zu analysieren und entsprechend zu agieren.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.