Evaluating Open Data Innovation: A Measurement Model for Digital Innovation Contests

Digital innovation contests emerge as important intermediaries in open data markets. However the understanding of how contests affect innovation value chains is low and there is a lack of innovation measurement frameworks to support the management of digital innovation contests. Therefore, in this paper we apply design science to design a measurement model for digital innovation contests from the organizer’s perspective that adds to the available knowledge of innovation measurement. We use a recent case of digital innovation contests to motivate the model and discuss its implications on the innovation value chain. The measurement model contributes with new knowledge in the area of open data innovation and provides support for practice in managing innovation through digital innovation contests. For future research we intend to enhance the model to also measure the effects on innovation ecosystems, to operationalize the measures and to evaluate the model in several digital innovation contests as well as to include the perspective of the participants

Design elements that influence the participation of solvers in innovation contests

This study analyzes all of the innovation contests, also known as crowdsourcing contests, posted on the Inocrowd platform. Inocrowd is an open innovation intermediary firm, based in Portugal, that hosts crowdsourcing contests for firms, called “seekers” looking to solve innovation challenges. The main aim of this study is to examine to what extent some design elements of crowdsourcing contests can influence the participation of “solvers” in these contests. The design elements considered in this study are the monetary award amount, the project type, the platform maturity and the anonymity of “seeker” firms. We then created a mathematical model that can be used to predict the participation of “solvers” in crowdsourcing contests, based on the design elements examined. This paper contributes to the growing research field of open innovation, particularly crowdsourcing contests hosted by intermediary firms, and will provide managers with a framework for designing innovation contests with more participation.Este estudo tem como objetivo analisar todos os concursos de inovação, ou concursos de crowdsourcing, colocados na plataforma Inocrowd. A Inocrowd e um intermediário de inovação aberta, sediada em Portugal, que coloca concursos de crowdsourcing para empresas, conhecidas como ”seekers”, que procuram resolver desafios de inovação. O objetivo primário deste estudo é examinar até que ponto alguns elementos de design destes concursos de inovação influenciam a participação de investigadores, de nome “solvers”, nestes concursos. Os elementos de design considerados nesta investigação são a valor do prémio monetário, o tipo de projeto, a maturidade da plataforma e o anonimato dos “seekers”. Um modelo matemático foi desenvolvido no âmbito de prever a participação dos “solvers” nos concursos de crowdsourcing colocados na plataforma Inocrowd, baseado nos elementos de design examinados. Este estudo contribui para área de pesquisa crescente que e a Inovação aberta, particularmente na área dos concursos de crowdsourcing colocados por intermediários de inovação, tendo como objetivo fornecer aos gestores uma estrutura para criar concursos de inovação com mais participação

Open collective innovation

Report published by Advanced Institute of Management ResearchThe innovation context is changing. The production of knowledge is accelerating. Knowledge creation is now a globally distributed activity. Globalisation has massively increased the range of markets and segments – putting pressure on innovation search routines to cover much more territory. The proliferation of the internet and emergence of large-scale social networks necessitates the development of new approaches to innovation. The involvement of active users in innovation is accelerating. As a result of the changing context in which innovation is taking place established organisations need to review their approaches to innovation management.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

Kokemuksia avoimen innovaation kiihdyttämisestä – teollisten yritysten motivaatio, haasteet sekä saavutetut hyödyt ja konkreettiset tulokset

Open innovation has become a renowned concept since its appearance in early 2000’s. The creator of the notion, Henry Chesbrough, argues for mutual benefits of open collaboration and idea flows between organisations. Although there are companies who have embraced the opportunities of open innovation, many are still reluctant to open up toward externals and have difficulties in understanding the actual benefits of such collaboration. Industryhack is a Finnish open innovation accelerator – an intermediary helping companies in bene ting from open innovation activities – who connects its customers with external teams possessing relevant knowledge related to a de ned problem and provides a model for co-development and experimentation. This thesis sheds light to the motivations, benefits, challenges as well as concrete results experienced by eight of these customer companies who represent industries such as heavy machinery, recycling, energy and maritime. This research is based on qualitative methodology and the case study method. The main theoretical framework used is the coupled model of open innovation (Piller and West, 2014). The data collection is done by theme interviews with nine management level representatives of the case companies. The main motivation for companies to collaborate with externals is to test new concepts and build an external talent network, which is in line with the experienced benefits. Other benefits are related to positive company culture development (towards more open) and moving the new concepts forward in pilot projects. These pilots have evolved into actual products in two of the investigated cases. The main challenges are sufficient preparations for collaboration, limited internal resources and lack of commitment from own organisation. For future research, impacts of continuous experimentation with externals, understanding better the bottlenecks of longer-term collaboration with selected external teams as well as investigating the motivations of these external participants would be of interest.Avoin innovaatio syntyi käsitteenä 2000-luvun alkupuolella ja on sittemmin muodostunut tunnetuksi konseptiksi niin tutkimus- kuin yritysmaailmassa. Termin luoja Henry Chesbrough argumentoi organisaatioiden välisen avoimen yhteistyön ja ideoiden vaihdannan etujen puolesta. Vaikka monet yritykset ovat toteuttaneet avoimen innovaation periaatteita käytännössä, suuri osa on edelleen haluton avaamaan liiketoimintaansa ulkopuolisille eikä ymmärrä tällaisen yhteistyön mahdollistamia konkreettisia hyötyjä. Industryhack on suomalainen avoimen innovaation kiihdyttäjä – taho, joka auttaa yrityksiä hyötymään avoimesta innovaatiosta käytännössä. Industryhack yhdistää asiakasyrityksiään ulkopuolisiin tiimeihin, joilla on tarvittavaa tietotaitoa ennalta määritetyn ongelman ratkaisemiseen, ja tarjoaa yhteistyömallin ratkaisuiden kehittämiselle ja kokeilulle. Tämä diplomityö valottaa kahdeksan Industryhackin asiakasyrityksen kokemuksia em. yhteistyöstä ja kokeilusta motivaation, hyötyjen, haasteiden sekä konkreettisten tulosten näkökulmasta. Yritykset edustavat mm. kierrätys-, energia-, konepaja- ja meriteollisuutta. Tutkimuksessa käytetään kvalitatiivista metodologiaa, tutkimusmetodina on tapaustutkimus ja pääasialliseksi teoreettiseksi viitekehykseksi on valittu avoimen innovaation yhdistetty malli (coupled model of open innovation) (Piller and West, 2014). Aineisto kerättiin teemahaastatteluilla yhdeksältä henkilöltä, jotka toimivat pääosin johtotehtävissä tapausyrityksissä. Yritysten pääasiallinen motivaatio yhteistyöhön ulkopuolisten kanssa liittyy uusien konseptien testaamiseen ja ulkoisen osaamisverkoston rakentamiseen, mikä on linjassa myös yritysten kokemien hyötyjen kanssa. Muita hyötyjä ovat avoimuudelle myönteisemmän yrityskulttuurin muodostuminen sekä uusien konseptien jatkokehittäminen pilottiprojektien avulla. Kahdessa tapauksista pilottiprojekti on edennyt valmiiksi tuotteeksi saakka. Yritysten kokemat haasteet liittyvät pääasiassa riittäviin valmisteluihin ennen yhteistyön aloittamista, rajallisiin sisäisiin resursseihin sekä oman organisaation sitoutumisen puutteeseen. Jatkotutkimuksen kannalta kiinnostavia teemoja ovat jatkuvan ulkopuolisten kanssa tehtävän kokeilemisen ja yhteistyön vaikutukset, lupaavimpien tiimien kanssa tehtävän pilottivaiheen pullonkaulojen parempi ymmärtäminen sekä ulkopuolisten osallistujien motivaatio

Comparative Financial Systems: A Survey

What is a Financial System? The purpose of a financial system is to channel funds from agents with surpluses to agents with deficits. In the traditional literature there have been two approaches to analyzing this process. The first is to consider how agents interact through financial markets. The second looks at the operation of financial intermediaries such as banks and insurance companies. Fifty years ago, the financial system could be neatly bifurcated in this way. Rich households and large firms used the equity and bond markets, while less wealthy households and medium and small firms used banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions. Table 1, for example, shows the ownership of corporate equities in 1950. Households owned over 90 percent. By 2000 it can be seen that the situation had changed dramatically. By then households held less than 40 percent, nonbank intermediaries, primarily pension funds and mutual funds, held over 40 percent. This change illustrates why it is no longer possible to consider the role of financial markets and financial institutions separately. Rather than intermediating directly between households and firms, financial institutions have increasingly come to intermediate between households and markets, on the one hand, and between firms and markets, on the other. This makes it necessary to consider the financial system as an irreducible whole. The notion that a financial system transfers resources between households and firms is, of course, a simplification. Governments usually play a significant role in the financial system. They are major borrowers, particularly during times of war, recession, or when large infrastructure projects are being undertaken. They sometimes also have significant amounts of funds. For example, when countries such as Norway and many Middle Eastern States have access to large amounts of natural resources (oil), the government may acquire large trust funds on behalf of the population. In addition to their roles as borrowers or savers, governments usually play a number of other important roles. Central banks typically issue fiat money and are extensively involved in the payments system. Financial systems with unregulated markets and intermediaries, such as the US in the late nineteenth century, often experience financial crises (Gorton (1988) and Calomiris and Gorton (1991)). The desire to eliminate these crises led many governments to intervene in a significant way in the financial system. Central banks or some other regulatory authority are charged with regulating the banking system and other intermediaries, such as insurance companies. So in most countries governments play an important role in the operation of financial systems. This intervention means that the political system, which determines the government and its policies, is also relevant for the financial system. There are some historical instances where financial markets and institutions have operated in the absence of a well-defined legal system, relying instead on reputation and other implicit mechanisms. However, in most financial systems the law plays an important role. It determines what kinds of contacts are feasible, what kinds of governance mechanisms can be used for corporations, the restrictions that can be placed on securities and so forth. Hence, the legal system is an important component of a financial system. A financial system is much more than all of this, however. An important pre-requisite of the ability to write contracts and enforce rights of various kinds is a system of accounting. In addition to allowing contracts to be written, an accounting system allows investors to value a company more easily and to assess how much it would be prudent to lend to it. Accounting information is only one type of information (albeit the most important) required by financial systems. The incentives to generate and disseminate information are crucial features of a financial system. Without significant amounts of human capital it will not be possible for any of these components of a financial system to operate effectively. Well-trained lawyers, accountants and financial professionals such as bankers are crucial for an effective financial system, as the experience of Eastern Europe demonstrates. The literature on comparative financial systems is at an early stage. Our survey builds on previous overviews by Allen (1993), Allen and Gale (1995) and Thakor (1996). These overviews have focused on two sets of issues. Normative: How effective are different types of financial systems at various functions? Positive: What drives the evolution of the financial system? The first set of issues of considered in sections 2-6, which focus on issues of investment and saving, growth, risk sharing, information provision and corporate governance, respectively. Section 7 considers the influence of law and politics on the financial system while Section 8 looks at the role financial crises have had in shaping the financial system. Section 9 contains concluding remarks.

The changing nature of debt and equity; a financial perspective

Debt ; Securities ; Corporations - Finance

Embracing open innovation to acquire external ideas and technologies and to transfer internal ideas and technologies outside

The objective of this dissertation is to increase understanding of how organizations can embrace open innovation in order to acquire external ideas and technologies from outside the organization, and to transfer internal ideas and technologies to outside the organization. The objective encompasses six sub-objectives, each addressed in one or more substudies. Altogether, the dissertation consists of nine substudies and a compendium summarizing the substudies. An extensive literature review was conducted on open innovation and crowdsourcing literature (substudies 1–4). In the subsequent empirical substudies, both qualitative research methods (substudies 5–7) and quantitative research methods (substudies 8–9) were applied. The four literature review substudies provided insights on the body of knowledge on open innovation and crowdsourcing. These substudies unveiled most of the influential articles, authors, and journals of open innovation and crowdsourcing disciplines. Moreover, they identified research gaps in the current literature. The empirical substudies offer several insightful findings. Substudy 5 shows how non-core ideas and technologies of a large firm can become valuable, especially for small firms. Intermediary platforms can find solutions to many pressing problems of large organizations by engaging renowned scientists from all over world (substudy 6). Intermediary platforms can also bring breakthrough innovations with novel mechanisms (substudy 7). Large firms are not only able to garner ideas by engaging their customers through crowdsourcing but they can also build long-lasting relations with their customers (substudies 8 and 9). Embracing open innovation brings challenges for firms too. Firms need to change their organizational structures in order to be able to fully benefit from open innovation. When crowdsourcing is successful, it produces a very large number of new ideas. This has the consequence that firms need to allocate a significant amount of resources in order to identify the most promising ideas. In an idea contest, customarily, only one or a few best ideas are rewarded (substudy 7). Sometimes, no reward is provided for the selected idea (substudies 8 and 9). Most of the ideas that are received are not implemented in practice

Monetary Policy and Bank Lending

This paper surveys recent work that relates to the "lending" view of monetary policy transmission. It has three main goals: 1) to explain why it is important to distinguish between the lending and "money" views of policy transmission; 2) to outline the microeconomic conditions that are needed to generate a lending channel; and 3) to review the empirical evidence that bears on the lending view.