May 2018 Download this article as a PDF

Welcome to the May 2018 issue of the Technology Innovation Management Review. The authors in this issue share insights on the factors that erode engagement among users in living labs, the types of innovation instruments living labs can use to promote co-creation, how to develop value propositions for servitization, and how digitalization can help lean global startups internationalize faster.

In the first article, Abdolrasoul Habibipour, Anna Ståhlbröst, and Birgitta Bergvall-Kåreborn from Luleå University of Technology in Sweden and Botnia Living Lab, along with Annabel Georges and Dimitri Schuurman from imec.livinglabs in Belgium, examine the reasons why some users drop out of living lab field tests. Based on 14 interviews with living lab experts, they develop a taxonomy of the factors that influence drop-out behaviour in living lab field tests and propose a unified definition of “drop-out” in living lab field tests. The resulting taxonomy of 44 key factors that influence drop-out behaviour can help organizers anticipate potential problems and keep users motivated and engaged throughout the innovation process. 

Next, Lotta Haukipuro and Satu Väinämö from the University of Oulu in Finland and Pauliina Hyrkäs from the Northern Ostrobothnia Hospital District examine three innovation instruments used by Oulu Urban Living Labs to co-create needs-based solutions. The innovation instruments are applied in three different environments – a school, a hospital, and an airport – in which 12 SMEs and startups developed solutions based on predefined needs of customer organizations and with the participation of users from stakeholder organizations. Based on the results, the authors propose a new, generic model for using innovation instruments to facilitate co-creation for the development of needs-based products and services in different service domains.

Then, Kwesi Sakyi-Gyinae and Maria Holmlund from the Hanken School of Economics in Finland examine how to create value propositions in a servitization context by focusing on the customer perspective. Their findings demonstrate how customers articulate the benefits (or “value in use”) of a selected offering, which can be used to develop value proposition elements that are aligned with these benefits. The authors discuss the implications of their findings for the value proposition literature and for companies evolving their business models for servitization.

Finally, Michael Neubert from the International School of Management in Paris examines how lean global startups develop new foreign markets more rapidly due to digitalization. By interviewing 73 senior managers of lean global startups, the author gained insights into how digitalization allows lean global startups to increase decision-making efficiency and to optimize strategies and processes for evaluating international markets, thereby enabling them to internationalize faster.

In April, we examined the theme of Frugal Innovation with Guest Editors Deepak S. Gupta, Executive Director of Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Services (ARIES) at Centennial College in Toronto, Canada, and Mokter Hossain, Assistant Professor in the Center for Industrial Production at Aalborg University, Denmark.

For future issues, we are accepting general 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 have also recently issued a call for papers for a special issue on Technology Commercialization and Entrepreneurship with guest editors Ferran Giones from the University of Southern Denmark and Dev K. Dutta from the University of New Hampshire, USA.

Please contact us with potential article topics and submissions, and proposals for future special issues.

Chris McPhee
Editor-in-Chief

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Keywords: business models, co-creation, drop out, entrepreneurship, facilitation, innovation, internationalization, lean global startups, living labs, services, servitization, stakeholders, users, value propositions, value-in-use