Towards Lean Service sustainability: an action research approach

This thesis argues that the sustainability of Lean philosophy adoption depends on following a systemic and holistic thinking, combining Lean technical and social dimensions. Based on the constructivism research paradigm, the study was supported on the Action Research methodology (AR), particularly the Canonical Action Research method (CAR). Acknowledging on lessons learned from two research cycles, the evolving approach to applying and sustaining Lean in a financial services provider was performed. The result was positive and the innovative approach followed was coined as Lean Service System Approach (LSSA). It combines the standard roadmap in Lean Leap model with Lean Service Critical Success Factors, covering the four perspectives of organisation, people, process and customer, within continuous improvement cycles. This approach was able to anchor Lean in the organisation over time and answered the research question of how to sustain Lean thinking in service organisations. Future research perspectives were also identified to foster further contributions to the Lean community, practitioners and academia.Esta tese argumenta que a sustentabilidade da filosofia Lean nas organizações depende da adoção de um pensamento sistémico e holístico e da combinação das suas dimensões: técnica e social. A investigação foi baseada no paradigma científico do construtivismo, suportada na metodologia de Action Research (AR), particularmente no método de Canonical Action Research (CAR). Após os dois primeiros ciclos de CAR, com a incorporação das lições aprendidas e com o propósito de manter o Lean na organização, foi efetuada uma abordagem evolutiva aplicada na implementação do Lean em um fornecedor de serviços financeiros. O resultado foi positivo, tendo sido criada uma abordagem inovadora nomeada de Lean Service System Approach (LSSA). Esta combina o modelo Lean leap com os fatores críticos de sucesso do Lean Service abarcando quatro perspetivas: organização, pessoas, processos e clientes, em ciclos de melhoria contínua. Esta abordagem foi capaz de ancorar o Lean na organização e respondeu à questão de investigação de como manter o pensamento Lean em organizações de serviços. Foram igualmente identificadas perspetivas futuras de investigação para fomentar novas contribuições para a comunidade Lean, para a indústria e para a academia

Digital Strategy Formulation: An Investigation with Design Sprints and Deep Learning

Since the invention of transistors, digital technologies have continued to have a profound impact on the global economy. Relentless performance improvements combined with convergence of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, internet of things, and cloud computing has led to a surge in scale and importance as a source for competitive advantage. However, in 2019, only around 16% of companies managed to realize a significant improvement in business performance from digital transformation (DT). The challenges that organizations face in succeeding at DT can be traced back to strategy formulation and execution. Therefore, the aim of this research is to develop insights and tools to enhance the understanding and practice of digital strategy formulation. A comprehensive review of the literature demonstrated that DT, as an emerging body of knowledge, is lacking an in-depth and applied investigation of digital strategy formulation. The main knowledge gaps are: (1) a lack of guidance on digital strategy formulation process activities and outcomes; (2) limited consideration of the iterative nature of digital strategy formulation and validation; and (3) limited empirical investigation of digital strategy archetypes to guide the formulation process. Addressing this research gap was accomplished over three stages. First, an in-depth exploratory case study was conducted by investigating digital strategy formulation process with active participation research over six months. This investigation identified key process activities and highlighted the role of roadmapping in integrating the outcomes. Second, the findings were supplemented with literature review to design a conceptual framework for agile roadmapping to facilitate the digital strategy formulation process. This framework was then tested and calibrated over three pilot studies with companies across Europe attempting to start their DT journey. Finally, deep learning and natural language processing techniques were employed to empirically investigate the digital strategy of Fortune 500 companies from earnings call transcripts. This empirical investigation identified four digital strategy archetypes that are being employed by companies across various sectors. The findings from this research contribute to a better understanding of digital strategy formulation. It was identified that digital strategy formulation is an ongoing search process for an adequate strategic response to the DT of the economy. Specifically, incorporating agility into the formulation process is an effective way of managing the associated uncertainty of DT. Moreover, the findings demonstrated that proactively iterating between strategy formulation and validation can accelerate the realization of the emergent digital strategy. The proposed framework and the digital strategy archetypes provide a baseline for DT professionals toward a more robust digital strategy formulation.Ministry of Education - United Arab Emirate

DIGITAL CO-CREATION Digitalization within Service Design : Transformation from analog thinking towards digital doing

The German automotive industry has accelerated its digital transformation as OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) moving from car manufacturers towards becoming mobility providers, striving for new mobility solutions like offering Mobility as a Service (MaaS), Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Self-Driving-System (SDS). OEMs focus on expanding their core product-driven businesses to access service-orientated business models, the transformation from ownership towards shared mobility. Considering internal and external factors, this requires a new set of expertise, capabilities and an underlying approach to fulfill the demands in the complexity of human-centered development and front- and backstage alignment within the organization. At the same time, Service Design as a practice has risen in attraction by industry, being recognized and increasingly requested for its integration in the functions and divisions of the organization. The scale of Service Design in influence and impact has reached professional practice, making its way from a trendy buzzword to professional practice of turning complex problems collaboratively into tangible solutions. It is seen as a powerful opportunity for combining Business, Human-Centered Design and Engineering. Service Design establishes new ways of exploring business opportunities towards agile problem-solving but focuses on the ‘doing’ side towards further implementation. The contribution of this industrial-based doctoral thesis shall define how Service Design can be deployed and implemented in the field of organizational transformation and mobility development in the era of digital transformation (Digitalization). This research approach seeks to acquire new knowledge on how the Service Design practice can be applied and executed to be perceived as a practical approach to improve the enterprise’s processes and operating procedures and also provide a strategy to grow Service Design within the organization. This research has followed developing a pilot in a lean start-up approach of build, measure, learn with various business units and brands within the Volkswagen Group, this also implies that this research case study consisted of analyzing the Volkswagen Group needs for Service Design. The ‘10X-Service Design Lab’ (10X-SDL) has been designed as the framework of a combination of modular lab space, facilitation enhanced process, methodological driven tool box, operational model in alignment with a digital workflow and workspace striving for accelerated decision making. It is based on the hypothesis that the proposed framework enhances Service Design practice and, at the same time, it increases its attractiveness for business purposes. The 10X-SDL is designed to accelerate project development in a human-centered and holistic way by an open workspace platform lead by facilitators on which project developers, participants, and stakeholders can digitally co-create products, services, systems, and strategies. This research has been conducted as a case study within the Volkswagen Group from 2015 to 2019 in cooperation with the main partners of Service Innovation Corner (SINCO) of the University of Lapland and visual collaboration software company DEON

Product development in a consulting firm: scaling potential inspired by the best practices for startups

Successfully developing a software product from the scratch until launching to the market is not simple. This is the day-by-day of many startups, whose existence is based on building and selling scalable products. But what if a company built on a business model that is, by its nature, very different from startups, decided to venture into product development? This study analyzes a consulting firm that decided to develop and commercialize a Software as a Service (SaaS). Results show that, although the business drive is clear, several challenges must to be overcome for a consulting firm to operate closer to how a startup would. According to theory, consulting firms have high variable costs bound to consultants’ wages, causing the operating expenses to increase at the same rate as the revenue. In comparison, technology startups have higher fixed costs typically linked to licenses and developers’ salaries, operating with low variable costs, what creates potential to scale revenue faster than the operating expenses. By analyzing the financial figures of a real consulting firm, this theory was proven to be valid, and therefore, despite of achieving outstanding growth, scaling in the consultancy model is limited. Thus, this work explores well-consolidated theoretical frameworks for startups to successfully develop and launch products to the market, and in parallel, it dives deep into a real consulting firm’s processes, practices, and challenges for developing a SaaS. The analysis within this firm is done by first looking into project documents for elements that communicate the steps for developing the case product. To complement the analysis and discover the underlying practices and challenges in this process, members of the development team were surveyed and observed during a workshop to co-create the value proposition of the case product. Findings show that, even though the process is found to be closer to the traditional product development, an iterative approach with continuous learning was in use. Also, the team pointed out a lack of understanding on the potential customers, and the feeling that an internal competition for resources was compromising the workforce of the development team. Finally, discussions about the value proposition revealed difficulties for the company to detach itself from a consulting mindset towards a startup-oriented thinking. Although there are challenges, there are also ways to systematically overcome them, uncovering a better track to successfully accomplish such endeavor

Fostering Continuous Innovation with Engaging IT-Assisted Transparent Information Sharing : A Case Study

The paper received the Honorary Mention – Best Paper Award Nominee.Peer reviewe

Unlocking Agility: Building Learning Capabilities Within A Consumer Healthcare Organization

Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly infusing the concept of agility to strive for continuous improvement. Significant exploration and research have focused on more technical-driven departments, like Information Technology and Research and Development. However, there has been little research with the focus on more process-driven functions, like Learning and Organizational Development. This action research study presents a case study of the implementation of a new training solution within a consumer healthcare organization from the lens of the project leader. Building upon the case study, this capstone includes a review of existing research and literature of agility with a focus on the healthcare sector, change management, adult learning, and organizational learning. The overall goal of this study is to explore the value of agility in building learning capacities within the pharmaceutical industry. Looking forward, the aim is to provide insights on how agility can be developed to facilitate an organization’s transformation to become a learning organization

Project Half Double: Preliminary Results for Phase 1, June 2016

Project Half Double has a clear mission to succeed in finding a project methodology that can increase the success rate of our projects while increasing the speed at which we generate new ideas and develop new products and services. Chaos and complexity should be seen as a basic condition and as an opportunity rather than a threat and a risk. We are convinced that by doing so, we can strengthen Denmark’s competitiveness and play an important role in the battle for jobs and future welfare. The overall goal is to deliver “projects in half the time with double the impact”, where projects in half the time should be understood as half the time to impact (benefit realisation, effect is achieved) and not as half the time for project execution.The purpose of Project Half Double is to improve Danish industrial competitiveness by radically increasing the pace and impact of the development and innovation activities carried out within the framework of the projects.The formal part of Project Half Double was initiated in June 2015. We started out by developing, refining and testing the Half Double methodology on seven pilot projects in the first phase of the project, which will end June 2016.The current status of responding to the above overall Project Half Double goal for the seven pilot projects can be summarised as follows:- The Lantmännen Unibake pilot project was able to launch the first stores after 5 months, which is considerably shorter lead time than comparable reference projects, which have had a lead time of 10 months or more. This is in line with the overall goal of Project Half Double of delivering impact faster.- Four pilot projects have the potential to deliver impact faster, but it is too early to evaluate. Some results might be evaluated in the second half of 2016, while other results take longer to evaluate (Coloplast, Novo Nordisk, GN Audio and VELUX).- Two pilot projects will probably not be able to deliver impact faster, although it is too early to evaluate them. The evaluation of these pilot projects takes place over a longer period of time as it will take years before many of the key performance indicators associated with them can be evaluated (Grundfos and Siemens Wind Power).In addition to the current status of delivering impact faster for the seven pilot projects, it is important to highlight that Project Half Double phase 1 has planted many seeds in the pilot organisations concerning project methodology and beyond. The many learning points from each pilot project show that Project Half Double has left its clear footprint in the pilot organisations, and that the Half Double methodology has evolved and developed very much during Project Half Double phase 1

Lean Service Innovation

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach to lean service innovation. The knowledge gap relates to three specific challenges of service innovation: early identification of the core customer value with business potential, in-depth understanding of customer value for new or potential customers, and discovery and utilization of latent customer needs. As a result, this article introduces a model of lean service innovation. The model focuses on the process rather than on single cocreation methods. The model shows how a new service can iteratively be developed through several improvementroundsintoafinalservice,andeachroundincreasesthecompany’sunderstanding of customer value and capability to better integrate resources for this. Both the theoretical domain and the application of service-dominant logic can be extended with the lean service innovation approach introduced here. It shows the process of in-depth learning with customers and the rapid prototyping of a service. It facilitates early identification of the core customer value with business potential in the innovation process, identification of customer value for new or potential customers, and discovery and utilization of latent customer needs in innovation. It illustrates repeated experimentation andimprovementofservicewithcustomersandultimatelysupportstheimplementation of service-dominant logic in innovation

Project Half Double Current Results of Phase 1 and Phase 2, December 2017

The Half Double mission: Project Half Double has a clear mission. We want to succeed in finding a project methodology that can increase the success rate of our projects while increasing the development speed of new products and services. We are convinced that by doing so we can strengthen Denmark’s competitiveness and play an important role in the battle for jobs and future welfare. The overall goal is to deliver “Projects in half the time with double the impact” where projects in half the time should be understood as half the time to impact (benefit realization, effect is achieved) and not as half the time for project execution. The Half Double project journey: It all began in May 2013 when we asked ourselves: How do we create a new and radical project paradigm that can create successful projects? Today the movement includes hundreds of passionate project people, and it grows larger by the day. The formal part of Project Half Double was initiated in June 2015. It is a two-phase project: phase 1 took place from June 2015 to June 2016 with seven pilot projects, and phase 2 is in progress from July 2016 to July 2018 with 10 pilot projects.The Half Double consortium: Implement Consulting Group is the project leader establishing and managing the collaboration with the pilot project companies in terms of methodology. Aarhus University and the Technical University of Denmark will evaluate the impact of the pilot projects and legitimize the methodology in academia.The Danish Industry Foundation, an independent philanthropic foundation, is contributing to the project financially with DKK 13.8 million.About this report: This report focuses on phase 2 pilot projects documenting their development and further consolidates results from the phase 1 pilot projects. This is the third report about Project Half Double (Svejvig et al. 2016, Svejvig et al. 2017). This report’s target group inludes practitioners in Danish industry and society in general. The editorial team from Aarhus University prepared the report from October 2017 to December 2017, which means that data about pilot projects from December 2017 is not included

Project Half Double: results of phase 1 and phase 2 - June 2019

The purpose of this report in a series of reports from Project Half Double is to present the final overall results from phase 1 and phase 2 of Project Half Double as well as to describe the nine pilot projects from phase 2 in detail