August 2016 Download this article as a PDF

Welcome to the August 2016 issue of the Technology Innovation Management Review. The authors in this issue share insights on corporate entrepreneurship, digital transformation in communications service providers, co-creating user stories with stakeholders, audience commodification, and idea selection in innovation activities.

In the first article, Kamal Sakhdari, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Entrepreneurship at the University of Tehran, Iran, seeks to understand why some firms are able to generate higher levels of corporate entrepreneurship than others. After critically reviewing the literature and then developing a framework that integrates previous research, Sakhdari recommends five potentially worthwhile avenues for future research to help managers foster corporate entrepreneurship.

Next, Omar Valdez-de-Leon, a Senior Consultant within the Global Consulting and Systems Integration practice at Ericsson, presents a digital maturity model for telecommunications service providers. Developed using the Delphi method with a panel of 10 experts from communications service providers, academia, and the industry analyst and consultant communities, the model integrates seven dimensions and five maturity levels. Telecommunications service providers can use this practical and detailed model to assess their progress along a digital transformation journey.

Then, Anna-Greta Nyström, Miia Mustonen, and Seppo Yrjölä from Åbo Akademi University, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, and Nokia Innovation Steering, respectively, present a case study into the value of co-creating user stories with industry partners as a means of enhancing sensemaking. This practical approach to understanding current and future market trends complements and builds upon the traditional, consumer-focused perspective on co-creation.

Next, Datis Khajeheian, a lecturer in the Center for Communication, Media and Information Technologies in Aalborg University of Denmark, examines business model innovation through audience commodification. As a means of changing the value-creation mechanism, audience commodification involves transforming the engagement and interactions of media audiences into commodities that then be sold on to advertisers, providing higher value than the current "view-based" model. Khajeheian evaluated this approach through the construction of a prototype social dating platform to test the behavioural responses of users and their acceptance of a novel business model.

Finally, Andrew N. Forde and Mark S. Fox from the University of Toronto, Canada, propose an approach to idea selection in "front end of innovation" processes that emphasizes the formation of requirements for any idea that can be prioritized and measured against possible future worlds. Envisioning and quantifying possible future worlds based on key characteristics enables companies to calculate which "good ideas" are most likely to be successful and therefore are worthy of further development.

In September, we will be examining the theme of Knowledge Mobilization with guest editors Kimberly Matheson, Professor of Health Sciences and Director of the Canadian Health Adaptations, Innovations, & Mobilization (CHAIM) Centre at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and Cathy Malcolm Edwards, Managing Director of 1125@Carleton.

For future issues, we welcome your submissions of articles on technology entrepreneurship, innovation management, and other topics relevant to launching and growing technology companies and solving practical problems in emerging domains.

We hope you enjoy this issue of the TIM Review and will share your comments online. Please contact us with potential article topics and submissions.

Chris McPhee
Editor-in-Chief

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Keywords: audience commodification, business models, co-creation, corporate entrepreneurship, digital maturity model, digitization, front end of innovation, idea selection, user stories