Referent:
Christoph Riedl, M.Sc
Technische Universitaet Muenchen
Lehrstuhl fuer Wirtschaftsinformatik Prof. Dr. Krcmar.
Boltzmannstr. 3
85748 Garching
Germany

E-Mail: riedlc@in.tum.de
 

Titel:
Tool-Supported Innovation Management in Service Ecosystems

Abstract:

Problem Electronic services delivered over the Internet are gaining importance in the business world giving rise to the study of the “Internet of services” and “service ecosystems.” Approaches of new service development (NSD) that prescribe systematic ways of developing services of all kinds, seem deficient in addressing many of the challenges and opportunities arising from electronic services delivered through open platforms. By analysing the differences between traditional NSD and the development of electronic services, this research conceptualises, designs, and develops tool support for innovation management in the context of service ecosystems. Research Method Following the design science paradigm this research uses theory-driven design to develop concepts for tool-supported innovation management for electronic services in service ecosystems. To evaluate selected aspects of the designed artefacts, this research uses multiple methods including a Web-based experiment, a controlled laboratory experiment, and questionnaires. Result A key result is the Idea Ontology, a SemanticWeb-based approach of a common language to enable information sharing and to foster interoperability between innovation management tools. The proposed ontology captures both a core idea concept and further concepts to support collaborative idea development, including rating, discussing, tagging, and grouping ideas. Regarding the use of rating mechanisms our findings show that simple rating mechanisms such as thumbs up/down rating or 5-star rating do not produce valid idea rankings and are significantly outperformed by a multi-attribute scale. Furthermore, we introduce the notion of ad-hoc establishing shared artefacts thus supporting a shift from the mere collection of independent contributions to collaborative idea development. Research Implications This work contributes to open innovation research by extending the currently dominating focus from that of a single firm to that of a network of actors bound together through a central platform. Furthermore, it contributes to the study of innovation portals supporting an online innovation community in collaborative idea generation through the use of duplicate detection and idea selection through idea rating mechanisms. This work contributes to theory by demonstrating how theories can be used to guide design decisions to build better systems. Practical Implications The system design and design principles developed in this thesis can guide future developments to provide tool-supported innovation management in service ecosystems and, in particular, innovation portals supporting an online innovation community. Specifically, our research provides actionable design guidelines for community-based rating mechanisms, and for establishing awareness of previous contributions which allows channelling individual efforts in innovation portals. Originality The specific contribution of the Idea Ontology is the description of the technical architecture in which an ontology-based approach can be applied to achieve interoperability, re-use, and structure in an inherently unstructured field. Furthermore, we offer insights into how different rating mechanisms for idea selection work within the context of online innovation communities. We also presented a novel use of clustering in the idea generation process in the context of online innovation communities.