Delineating the fuzzy front end of market shaping

Emerging perspectives define markets as continuous, malleable processes that can be shaped through various activities. In this research, the authors address the early phase of such market-shaping processes, developing a conceptual framework and linking the front-end phase to an overall market-shaping process. We propose and develop a fuzzy front end (FFE) concept centered around the market image to reflect market shaping's less organized and more exploratory early phase. Nine propositions outline this critical phase and its fundamental dimensions, roles, and characteristics. Finally, by outlining the FFE of market shaping, this article reveals future research directions for elaborating on the concept.© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

A service-oriented hybrid access network and clouds architecture

Many telecom operators are deploying their own cloud infrastructure with the two-fold objective of providing cloud services to their customers and enabling network function virtualization. In this article we present an architecture we call SHINE, which focuses on orchestrating cloud with heterogeneous access and core networks. In this architecture intra and inter DC connectivity is dynamically controlled, maximizing the overall performance in terms of throughput and latency while minimizing total costs. The main building blocks are: a future-proof network architecture that can scale to offer potentially unlimited bandwidth based on an active remote node (ARN) to interface end-users and the core network; an innovative distributed DC architecture consisting of micro-DCs placed in selected core locations to accelerate content delivery, reducing core network traffic, and ensuring very low latency; and dynamic orchestration of the distributed DC and access and core network segments. SHINE will provide unprecedented quality of experience, greatly reducing costs by coordinating network and cloud and facilitating service chaining by virtualizing network functions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

Revisiting the IIoT Platform Graveyard: Key Learnings from Failed IIoT Platform Initiatives

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has led to a competitive race among digital and incumbent players to establish IIoT platforms. However, despite the undisputed potential of the IIoT, a first wave of IIoT platforms failed around 2018, with GE’s Predix being the most prominent one. Nevertheless, building upon valuable lessons learned, the IIoT platform market continued to grow significantly. We now experience a second wave of IIoT platform failures, with companies like Siemens, Google, and SAP divesting or restructuring significant parts of their IIoT platform. Acknowledging this, we revisited the IIoT platform graveyard to challenge and extend existing lessons learned. Hence, we interviewed major IIoT platforms and customers that were impacted by IIoT platform failures. We identified six key learnings that we integrated into a preliminary model for IIoT platform growth, highlighting evolutionary steps for successful platform growth. These findings provide practitioners strategic orientation for establishing IIoT platforms long-term

Recombination in the Open-Ended Value Landscape of Digital Innovation

Digital innovation introduces a new open-ended value landscape to anyone seeking to generate or capture new value. To understand this landscape, we distinguish between design recombination and use recombination, explore how they play out together, and redirect the attention from products and services toward digital resources. Digital resources serve as building-blocks in digital innovation, and they hold the potential to simultaneously be part of multiple value paths, offered through design recombination and assembled through use recombination. Building on this perspective, we offer the value spaces framework as a tool for better understanding value creation and capture in digital innovation. We illustrate the framework and offer the early contours of a research agenda for information systems researchers

UNCOVERING THE PROCESSES OF IT VALUE COCREATION IN DIGITAL PLATFORM ECOSYSTEMS

Pervasive digitization and complex business challenges encourage companies to collaborate, build innovative digital solutions, and cocreate IT value in multi-firm environments. Despite much research extensively focused on the outcome of value cocreation, emphasizing the concept of cocreating with customers, what remains under-investigated is the ‘process’ of IT value cocreation in digital platform ecosystems with customers, partners, and competitors. This research investigates what are the key processes of IT value cocreation in digital platform ecosystems. We draw on dynamic capabilities theory to examine value cocreation in two digital platforms to tease out key processes of IT-based value cocreation in multi-firm, complex environments. We advance a theoretical framework that helps us understand how firms manage the IT cocreation journey by sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring competencies to address rapidly changing environments. This research provides an emerging model and theoretical insights into extant literature about the nine processes involved in IT value cocreation in digital platform ecosystems, also opening up new avenues for future research

Dynamic and Improvisational Capabilities in Small Defense Contractor Firms: An Investigation into the Role of IT Enabled Business Processes

In turbulent environments where the competitive landscape is shifting and uncertain, the dynamic capabilities by which firm manager’s, integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences becomes the source of sustained competitive advantage. As they attempt to reconfigure their organizational competencies, firms are turning to Information Technology (IT) resources as an enabling resource. While the importance of dynamic capabilities has been widely recognized, in today’s fast paced and ever changing business landscape, the need for improvisational capabilities has also been underscored. Whereas dynamic capabilities refer to the ability to respond to change through “planned” reconfiguration in moderately turbulent times, improvisational capabilities refer to the ability to respond to change through “spontaneous” reconfiguration in highly turbulent times. This study begins to defragment dynamic and improvisational capability literature and demonstrate the need for these two complementary capabilities. This study also develops and offers an initial prescription for executing these complementary capabilities. This study highlights the significant differences in the execution of dynamic and improvisational capabilities at the sub-routine level. Lastly, this study offers valuable insight into how IT can enable both dynamic and improvisational capabilities