Public Sector Open Innovation: Exploring Barriers and How Intermediaries Can Mitigate Them

Public organizations are increasingly embracing open innovation (OI) practices. Still, little is known about how the challenges they face when doing so compare to the barriers that have been identified for OI in the private sector. Similarly, despite being recognized as imperative actors in private sector OI, the understanding of open innovation intermediaries’ (OIIs) roles in public sector OI is limited. Given these two knowledge gaps, this licentiate thesis sets out to further the knowledge of what types of barriers impede public sector OI, and how OIIs can mitigate them. These issues are explored through four case studies within the public transport sector in Sweden. In all the cases, public organizations were trying to accelerate innovation through outbound OI practices, and in three of the cases, OIIs were utilized to facilitate the processes. A comparison of the case study findings and extant OI literature suggests that OI practices are harder to adopt for public organizations than for private firms. Public organizations face more rigorous regulations and more extensive bureaucracy, have fewer incentives to take risks, and are influenced by objectives and inner mechanisms that are difficult for external innovators to understand. Further, a cross-comparison of the case studies identifies that OIIs can mitigate the negative impacts of the aforementioned barriers by expanding the boundaries of innovation ecosystems, decreasing costs for distant search and data processing, fostering inter-organizational collaboration, and assisting public organizations in managing the innovation trajectory. Even so, the studied cases also illustrate that the introduction of OIIs can be contested, and that they might have hampering effects as well. Therefore, OIIs need to be carefully designed and launched so that they match the needs of the specific situations

Barriers to innovating with open government data: Exploring experiences across service phases and user types

Open government data (OGD) can enable outbound open innovation (OI) that is beneficial to society. However,\ua0innovation barriers hinder OGD users from generating value. While previous studies have detailed a large number of such\ua0barriers, little is known of how different types of OGD users are affected, and when the barriers appear in their innovation\ua0processes. To this end, this paper describes a case study of distributed service development in the Swedish public transport\ua0sector. The contribution to extant research is twofold. Firstly, based on an inductive analysis, three OGD user archetypes are\ua0proposed: employees, entrepreneurs and hobbyists. Secondly, the study finds that the significance of distinct innovation barriers\ua0varies across phases of the services’ lifecycles and depending on the OGD users’ motivation, objective, pre-conditions and\ua0approach. Drawing on these insights, we propose that OGD initiatives aimed at facilitating outbound OI to a greater extent\ua0should address the barriers that appear during diffusion of innovations, the barriers that are not directly related to the OGD\ua0provision, and the barriers that are experienced by non-obvious OGD user groups

Involving External Stakeholders in Project Courses

Problem: The involvement of external stakeholders in capstone projects and project courses is desirable due to its potential positive effects on the students. Capstone projects particularly profit from the inclusion of an industrial partner to make the project relevant and help students acquire professional skills. In addition, an increasing push towards education that is aligned with industry and incorporates industrial partners can be observed. However, the involvement of external stakeholders in teaching moments can create friction and could, in the worst case, lead to frustration of all involved parties. Contribution: We developed a model that allows analysing the involvement of external stakeholders in university courses both in a retrospective fashion, to gain insights from past course instances, and in a constructive fashion, to plan the involvement of external stakeholders. Key Concepts: The conceptual model and the accompanying guideline guide the teachers in their analysis of stakeholder involvement. The model is comprised of several activities (define, execute, and evaluate the collaboration). The guideline provides questions that the teachers should answer for each of these activities. In the constructive use, the model allows teachers to define an action plan based on an analysis of potential stakeholders and the pedagogical objectives. In the retrospective use, the model allows teachers to identify issues that appeared during the project and their underlying causes. Drawing from ideas of the reflective practitioner, the model contains an emphasis on reflection and interpretation of the observations made by the teacher and other groups involved in the courses. Key Lessons: Applying the model retrospectively to a total of eight courses shows that it is possible to reveal hitherto implicit risks and assumptions and to gain a better insight into the interaction...Comment: Abstract shortened since arxiv.org limits length of abstracts. See paper/pdf for full abstract. Paper is forthcoming, accepted August 2017. Arxiv version 2 corrects misspelled author nam

Public–private innovation: barriers in the case of mobility as a service in West Sweden

Departing from open innovation (OI), this case study explores the development of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in West Sweden. An analysis of 19 interviews reveals how representatives from involved actors perceive internal and external barriers as hampering the regional public transport authority’s attempts to collaborate with private actors, and that the perception of barriers is incongruent across public and private actors. Transferability to other cases of public–private OI is discussed, and implications for public actors are proposed. The paper expands the knowledge of preconditions for MaaS’ development and of the unique conditions for OI in public–private settings

Four essays on the complexity of entrepreneurial ecosystems

Over the course of the last decade, the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems has emerged as a popular approach to examine entrepreneurial activity within regional agglomerations and the relationships between the stakeholders of such systems. Building on the growing body of literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems, this doctoral dissertation aims to improve the understanding of how entrepreneurial ecosystems evolve and how digitalization influences the broader entrepreneurial landscape. In order to answer these guiding research questions, a range of methodological approaches is employed, including nonlinear time series analysis, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), literature reviews and network analysis. Essentially, it is found that (1) the evolution of entrepreneurial ecosystems exhibits features of deterministic chaos, (2) specific combinations of digital technologies and infrastructures are conducive to high or low to medium levels of start-up activity in entrepreneurial ecosystems, (3) ecosystems can be categorized by five overarching ecosystem characteristics and five generic ecosystem types, and (4) prominent APIs from incumbent companies represent crucial resources for health start-ups that operate in the digital entrepreneurial ecosystem

Catalyzing Knowledge Transfer in Innovation Ecosystems through Contests

Open innovation practices are gaining traction. Hence, the relevance of measures for engaging and managing heterogeneous groups of distributed complementors is rising. This mixed-method case study defines a pilot demonstration of emergent technology as an innovation ecosystem and utilizes a knowledge transfer lens to explore the impact of an open innovation contest. The contribution to the IS research stream is threefold. Firstly, the paper portrays that open innovation contests can spark coupled open innovation and facilitate innovation management, without lowering the generative capability. Secondly, it explains these gains by concluding that contests can catalyze cross-border knowledge transfer within innovation ecosystems. Thirdly, the paper moreover proposes that additional innovation deployment measures are needed in order for sustaining established relations and for aiding the implementation of innovation ideas beyond the contests

Making Mobility-as-a-Service: Towards Governance Principles and Pathways

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is a service concept that integrates public transport with other mobility services, such as car sharing, ride sourcing, and bicycle sharing. The core idea is that intermediary digital services make it easier for users to plan, book, and pay for complementary mobility services, thereby facilitating less car-centric lifestyles. However, although MaaS has gained much interest in recent years, the concept has proven difficult to realize. Accordingly, there is a prevalent demand for knowledge on how to enable and push MaaS developments.Conceptualizing MaaS developments as an innovation process that might contribute to a sustainability transition, this thesis sets out to improve the understanding of how public sector actors can facilitate action in the early phases and steer the innovation trajectory towards addressing long-term sustainability goals. The public transport authority in V\ue4stra G\uf6taland (Sweden), and its attempts to facilitate MaaS developments, is used as a starting point. Three of its MaaS-related activities between 2016 and 2019 are analyzed based on participatory observation and stakeholder interviews. Additionally, the thesis draws on two qualitative studies of MaaS developments situated in Finland and Australia.The thesis’ contribution to the research field of MaaS is threefold. Firstly, it explores expectations of MaaS. A majority of the actors involved in the studied MaaS developments reckoned that MaaS will support a modal shift away from private car use. Still, while some actors were confident that this will lower the negative externalities of personal mobility systems, others feared that it will reinforce social and environmental problems. Of note is that none of these views are yet backed by any extensive empirical evidence, the shortage of which is an ongoing challenge for MaaS developments. Secondly, the thesis identifies institutional factors that shape MaaS developments. The studied developments were enabled by novel information technologies and motivated by the need to lessen the negative impacts of private cars. Yet, the developments brought together actors that had not previously collaborated and challenged models of collaboration, business, and customer relations, which made them contingent on complex modifications within and beyond personal mobility systems. Thirdly, the thesis examines how the public sector governs MaaS developments. The governance approaches varied across Sweden, Finland, and Australia in terms of leading actors, methods of intervention, and underlying motivations, but were yet to deliver much tangible results for citizens in all three countries.Based on these findings, the thesis proposes principles and pathways for MaaS governance. The principles advocate a broad set of activities to address all the institutional factors that impede MaaS developments. In contrast to the observed governance approaches, this includes activities aimed at strengthening mobility services and active mobility, and at weakening the private car regime. The pathways describe four roles public sector actors can take in MaaS developments – MaaS Promoter, MaaS Partner, MaaS Enabler, and Laissez-Faire – and illustrate how the method(s) of intervention can be adjusted between innovation phases. The principles and pathways thereby provide a comprehensive tool for understanding and enhancing public-private dynamics in MaaS developments