Scaling the user base of digital ventures through generative pattern replication : the case of ridesharing

Digital ventures, for example Uber and Airbnb, seek to scale their user base quickly and effectively across markets in order to lock out competitors and drive adoption through positive feedback loops. I view such rapid global scaling as an organising logic by which digital ventures replicate a generic solution to recurring challenges. This thesis intends to understand the process by which digital ventures scale across a multitude of varied regional markets. By arguing that this process is qualitatively different from our current conceptualisations of scaling I aim to encourage more researchers to pay heed to scaling as an integral part of digital innovation literature. To this end I present a qualitative study of a digital venture called BlaBlaCar, a ridesharing venture that rapidly scaled its user base into 22 markets. My findings are based on original data, collected over a course of two years in two stages. First, by collecting observational data for four months, and second, by collecting 58 interviews across 15 offices globally. In this thesis I distinguish and describe scaling as the process of generative pattern replication (GPR), where an existing scaling pattern is specialised to the specific circumstances of a new market, and applied there. I trace three mechanisms underpinning rapid scaling across regional boundaries: instantiation, venture meshing, and value frame. I explain these mechanisms and how they interact in the process of GPR. My research speaks to the digital innovation literature by making a unique contribution: a novel perspective on scaling of digital ventures including a process model and related mechanisms. In addition, my proposed research findings have the potential to offer valuable insights for digital ventures looking for novel scaling and digital innovation management tools

What shapes smart mobility? A comparison of smart mobility governance in Seattle, Greater Manchester and Stockholm

This thesis compares how smart mobility services have been shaped and steered in Seattle, Greater Manchester, and Stockholm, and explores how smart mobility providers can be held accountable for contributing to meeting local sustainable transport objectives. The research draws from and contributes to literature on governance, innovation, and smart mobility. The data used for this research was collected through semi-structured interviews with policymakers and other stakeholders involved in shaping smart mobility services in the three cities. Seattle has taken strong regulatory action to steer services, Greater Manchester has favoured a mix of regulation and collaboration with smart mobility providers, and Stockholm has adopted a hands-off position unless there is a need to address market failures. The comparative approach taken in this research provides new insights into the key elements shaping the interaction between governance context and smart mobility adoption. Smart mobility services are shaped by pre-existing governance arrangements in each city. They are also shaped by the corporate strategies of smart mobility providers, which are often developed at the international level but determine how services evolve locally. Direct steering in the form of experimentation, local strategies, policies, and regulations also plays an important role in shaping services in each city. This research argues that cities need to develop strong partnerships and reciprocal relationships with smart mobility providers in order to gain more leverage in steering services and delivering public value. However, the three case studies show that, for now, smart mobility provides unspectacular benefits and presents various risks, which need to be understood and managed. The concluding discussion stresses the need to think critically about the role of smart mobility services as part of the broader transport system, particularly in relation to rapid decarbonisation

Ridesharing Using Adaptive Waiting Time

The culture of sharing by the advances in communication technologies has entered a new era, and ever since, sharing instead of ownership has been sharply increasing in individuals’ behaviors. Particularly in transportation, concepts of sharing a ride in either carpooling or ridesharing have been adopting for 70 years. During the past fifteen years, the revolution in communication devices has formed the online version of ridesharing that responds to transportation needs shortly. Ridesharing is considered to be a strategy to mitigate congestion and air pollution by increasing the occupancy rate of vehicles in the road network. An online ridesharing framework is an end-to-end framework that manages the request and matches the passengers to accomplish their rides together. In this thesis, we studied the online ridesharing problem and proposed an end-to-end framework to handle the passengers. In our end-to-end framework, we design the objective with respect to the passenger’s perspective. We assume that all the passengers tend to share their ride to reduce their transportation costs using vehicles. When two passengers get matched to accomplish their ride together, they accept a deviation from their shortest path to make sharing possible. To minimize the information provided by passengers, we define scheduling flexibility using a system-wide fixed flexibility factor ϵ, which indicates the tolerable increase in travel duration, proportional to the shortest path duration. For a trip, scheduling flexibility is the amount of time that the system has to divide between the detour from the shortest path and the waiting time to find a proper match. To split the scheduling flexibility between the detour and the waiting time, we introduce the concept of adaptive waiting time, which is the key enabler of our framework to provide a quality match for passengers. For a passenger, the optimal waiting time with respect to ϵ minimizes the expected travel cost. In this work, we use future demand to calculate the expected travel cost. We carefully design a simulation to observe the ability of our framework to match the passengers. The trip cost and trip duration are approximated using Gradient boosting trees, and we simplify the NYC road network as a grid network. The proposed approach works for 24 hours to handle 356049 ride requests on a rectangle with an area equal to 44 km2. We analyze several metrics to indicate the quality of the matching process. The simulation results show that by using our approach, 75.2% of the passengers can share their ride by increasing the trip duration for 4.334 minutes on average, and it leads to reducing the total cost by 12% and reducing the total traveled distance by 14.29%

Business Cluster Branding and the Interplay of Cooperation and Competition: A Cross Case Analysis

The number of business cluster is sharply increasing over the last years and consequently they gained massive attention in research. One central question raised, how to improve the competitiveness of business cluster. An approach was to focus on branding. However, cluster work has always in common the appearance of coopetition. The research on coopetition has increased significantly over the last two decades. Nevertheless, the combination of branding and coopetition research on business cluster remain unexplored. Thus, it is relevant to ana-lyze the branding of business clusters and the influence of coopetition. In this research a qualitative research design is used. The primary data set consists of three semi-structured interviews with two managing directors of business cluster in Finland and Germany with dif-ferent funding structure and with a cluster consultant with broad experiences in both coun-tries. That allowed to investigate similarities and differences among the management struc-ture, branding and its coopetition. The findings show that a corporate branding strategy is suitable to brand a cluster organization to give guidance and structure to the process. The complexity of business cluster demands a separation of the branding focus. The inside focus named cluster identity must be shaped and the outside focus named cluster image has the goal to increase visibility. Those two focuses cause coopetition. The cooperation towards a common branding but also the competition about resources from the cluster management side. The positions within the cluster management are a further area of coopetition, as well as the process to create the cluster identity. The cluster management must be aware of those areas to efficiently manage those tensions. The study provides practical insights on managing cluster branding and helps to anticipates common areas of coopetition

Digital Democracy : The Tools Transforming Political Engagement

This paper shares lessons from Nesta's research into some of the pioneering innovations in digital democracy which are taking place across Europe and beyond.Key findings:Digital democracy is a broad concept and not easy to define. The paper provides a granular approach to help encompass its various activities and methods (our 'typology of digital democracy').Many initiatives exist simply as an app, or web page, driven by what the technology can do, rather than by what the need is.Lessons from global case studies describe how digital tools are being used to engage communities in more meaningful political participation, and how they are improving the quality and legitimacy of decision-making.Digital democracy is still young. Projects must embed better methods for evaluation of their goals if the field is to grow

Contracting and Safety

This open access book examines the increase in outsourcing, contracting and subcontracting as ways of organising work. It explores the impact of these employment arrangements on public safety, particularly when they are linked to complex supply networks in a range of engineering industries including oil and gas, nuclear power and aviation. The brief provides practical recommendations on how best to manage arrangements that target short-term profitability and also maintain excellence in long-term safety outcomes. The brief is a source of advice for organisations on how to maximise the benefits and minimise long-term system reliability issues that can be introduced by contracting and outsourcing, rather than assuming it to be a wholly negative or positive practice. Contracting and Safety comprises qualitative, empirical studies focusing on high-reliability organisation. As such, this brief provides a rich picture of the experience of working in complex supply chains. It will be of interest to researchers in industrial safety, as well as safety professionals and project managers within engineering industries

Bit Bang 8: Digitalization

This book is the 8th in the Bit Bang series of books produced as multidisciplinary teamwork exercises by doctoral students participating in the course Bit Bang 8: Digitalization at Aalto University during the academic year 2015–2016. Digitalization has brought great opportunities for economic growth, productivity gain and job creation in our societies, and will change the way industry will operate. Bit Bang 8 addressed the topic of digitalization from the perspective of its economic, environmental and social sustainability. The course elaborated on the interconnectedness of these phenomena, and linked them to possible future scenarios, global megatrends and ethical considerations. How will digitalization shape our future? How can we prepare can prepare our societies to respond to these changes? Working in teams, the students set out to answer questions related to the digitalization and to brainstorm radical scenarios of what the future could hold. This joint publication contains articles produced as teamwork assignments for the course, in which the students were encouraged to take novel and radical views on digitalization. The Bit Bang series of courses is supported by the Multidisciplinary Institute of Digitalisation and Energy (MIDE). Previous Bit Bang publications are available from http:/mide.aalto.fi

Contracting and Safety

This open access book examines the increase in outsourcing, contracting and subcontracting as ways of organising work. It explores the impact of these employment arrangements on public safety, particularly when they are linked to complex supply networks in a range of engineering industries including oil and gas, nuclear power and aviation. The brief provides practical recommendations on how best to manage arrangements that target short-term profitability and also maintain excellence in long-term safety outcomes. The brief is a source of advice for organisations on how to maximise the benefits and minimise long-term system reliability issues that can be introduced by contracting and outsourcing, rather than assuming it to be a wholly negative or positive practice. Contracting and Safety comprises qualitative, empirical studies focusing on high-reliability organisation. As such, this brief provides a rich picture of the experience of working in complex supply chains. It will be of interest to researchers in industrial safety, as well as safety professionals and project managers within engineering industries

Organizing sustainable development

The role and meaning of sustainable development have been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. However, there has recently been a dynamic increase in interest in the subject, which results in numerous, in-depth scientific research and publications with an interdisciplinary dimension. This edited volume is a compendium of theoretical knowledge on sustainable development. The context analysed in the publication includes a multi-level and multi-aspect analysis starting from the historical and legal conditions, through elements of the macro level and the micro level, inside the organization. Organizing Sustainable Development offers a systematic and comprehensive theoretical analysis of sustainable development supplemented with practical examples, which will allow obtaining comprehensive knowledge about the meaning and its multi-context application in practice. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest to students at an advanced level, academics and reflective practitioners in the fields of sustainable development, management studies, organizational studies and corporate social responsibility