Reexamining E-participation : Systematic Literature Review on Citizen Participation in E-government Service Delivery

E-government is becoming a mature research field thanks to the proliferation of papers about this changing paradigm. Among this research, the participation of citizens in e-government is a topic that has particularly stimulated numerous discussions. This participation (referred to as “e-participation”) is often reduced to the democratic participation of citizens in decision-making and policy design (or “e-democracy”). However, this paper aims at reexamining the scope of e-participation by considering the under-investigated field of citizen participation in e-government service delivery. This participation can take place as the co-design and co-execution of these services. In order to examine the existing body of knowledge of the field, we conduct a Systematic Literature Review followed by a template analysis of the selected papers. This analysis allows us determining avenues for further research in this area about the following research themes: stakeholders involved, organizational and motivational pre-conditions, participation methods and outcomes of participation

Assessing the maturity of crowdventuring for corporate entrepreneurship

none2noCorporate entrepreneurship is a process of strategic renewal and development of an existing business through the creation of new products, services, and activities, as well as new competitive postures and independent ventures. The performance of this process, which leverages the creativity and the initiative spirit of employees and managers, thus relies on the capacity of the organization to create favorable conditions for the emergence of such latent entrepreneurial potential. The development of participatory innovation models and collective intelligence offers new insights for conducting research on factors enabling corporate entrepreneurship. In particular, the internal company ‘crowd’ can be investigated with the purpose of studying the conditions under which the corporate entrepreneurship process can be successfully nurtured and conducted. In such view, this article moves from an extended review of corporate entrepreneurship and organizational innovation literature to define the concept of crowdventuring and to present an assessment tool aimed at evaluating the maturity of the crowdventuring process within an organization. The tool, which captures both individual and organization-related factors, is also used for an illustrative application into a multinational IT company. Some implications are drawn at the theory and practitioner levels.openElia, Gianluca*; Margherita, AlessandroElia, Gianluca; Margherita, Alessandr

Achieving sustainability: from innovation to valorisation and continuous improvement

The Software Process Improvement methodology plans and implements improvement activities to achieve specific goals, for example, increasing development speed, achieving higher product quality, and reducing costs. The approach paves way for the implementation of SPI innovations in software organisations. Innovation is the successful implementation of novel and appropriate ideas within an organisation. Innovation is underpinned by the concepts of creativity and invention. Often organisations, projects and individuals fail to gain adequate value let alone added value from their innovations. The term valorisation encompasses all activities that maximise the achievements of a project and innovation. The emphasis is on optimising the value of the project and innovation for diverse stakeholders (society, community, institutions, and individuals) and boosting its impact. In this paper, the authors report on the understandings and collective experience gained over several years in industry as well as academia culminating in the design and implementation of the European Union VALO Project which dissemination and exploitation. VALO outputs include the elements of the training and online examination for possible certification to become Valorisation experts. The insights gained from the VALO project, enabled the development of a valorisation strategy which is used, alongside quality strategies to enable the development of a Quality and Valorisation of Projects Framework. The genericity of the framework provides the potential foundations for successful projects of high quality and maximises the valorisation of project and innovation results. Software development projects (and projects in general) fail regularly. These quality failures manifest themselves in late deliveries, over-budget, not satisfying the users’ requirements and more importantly poor reliability. Quality attributes are system qualities (such as availability, modifiability, performance and security), business qualities, (such as time to market, cost and benefit, product lifetime and target market), and architectural qualities (such as conceptual integrity, correctness and completeness). Whenever any of these qualities are compromised a system can be considered a total or partial failure. Moreover, after a project’s completion, there is often evidence that it fails to deliver sustained value to stakeholders. In this paper, we examine the challenges and benefits of sustainability viewed from a STEEPLED multidimensional analysis

How to Gamify? A Method For Designing Gamification

During recent years, gamification has become a popular method of enriching information technologies. Popular business analysts have made promising predictions about penetration of gamification, however, it has also been estimated that most gamification efforts will fail due to poor understanding of how gamification should be designed and implemented. Therefore, in this paper we seek to advance the understanding of best practices related to the gamification design process. We approach this research problem via a design science research approach; firstly, by synthesizing the current body of literature on gamification design methods and interviewing 25 gamification experts. Secondly, we develop a method for gamification design, based on the gathered knowledge. Finally, we conduct an evaluation of the method via interviews of 10 gamification experts. The results indicate that the developed method is comprehensive, complete and provides practical utility. We deliver a comprehensive overview of gamification guidelines and shed novel insights into the overall nature of the gamification development and design discourse

Development Paths Towards Open Government. An Empirical Analysis Among Heritage Institutions

In the face of the growing digitization of society, a series of transformations are taking place in the public sector that have been described as the second generation of e-government development. The present article traces how these transformations have been anticipated by successive generations of e-government maturity models and critically assesses existing stage models. Based on a survey among 1560 heritage institutions in 11 countries, an empirically validated maturity model for the implementation of open government is presented. The model uses innovation diffusion theory as a theoretical backdrop. While the model is at odds with the unidimensional nature of the Lee & Kwak Open Government Maturity Model (Lee & Kwak, 2012), the findings suggest that the transformative processes predicted by various e-government maturity models are well at work. They result in increasingly integrated services, participative approaches and an emerging collaborative culture, accompanied by a break-up of proprietary data silos and their replacement by a commonly shared data infrastructure, allowing data to be freely shared, inter-linked and re-used. In order to put our findings into perspective, we take stock of earlier discussions and criticisms of e-government maturity models and offer a new take on the issue of stages-of-growth models in the field of e-government. The proposed approach rests on the assumption of an evolutionary model that is empirically grounded and allows for varying development paths

Co-creation in living labs: exploring the role of user characteristics on innovation contribution

Since the 1970s, the innovative potential of users has been recognized by von Hippel and his seminal works on the Customer Active Paradigm (CAP) and Lead Users. This fostered further research into the nature of user contribution in NPD and the characteristics of innovative and innovating users. This research stream has been labeled user innovation and looks at the utility gains for end-users when involved in innovation. More recently, open innovation approaches have been looking to integrate the insights and creative potential of users through various methods and tools. One of these approaches gaining ground are the so-called Living Labs, an innovation approach relying on intensive user involvement through co-creation, using real-life settings and a multi-stakeholder approach. Although user involvement is seen as key within these Living Labs, research integrating the insights from user innovation into ways of user selection and user contribution in Living Labs is scarce. Within this paper, we will explore some of the hypotheses from user innovation regarding user characteristics in three concrete Living Lab projects and assess whether these characteristics have an impact on the outcomes and on the user contribution. The results indicate that it is necessary to take into account domain-related as well as innovation-specific characteristics, otherwise this may lead to one-dimensional user contributions. Moreover, our research suggests that Living Labs are capable to facilitate a diversity of user contributions through a mix of self-selection and purposeful sampling

Innovation jams as vehicles for innovation

This thesis investigates the emerging phenomenon of the innovation jam, and its use by large firms. Innovation jams allow firms to engage with new actors (e.g. employees, customers, lead users) across company and geographical boundaries, and to direct innovative activity in novel ways. Despite the increasing use and popularity of innovation jams by firms, they have received relatively little scholarly attention compared to other, similar collective practices to promote innovation. Moreover, the previous literature focuses primarily on innovation jams as a vehicle for idea generation and knowledge creation while in order to realize an innovation, the firm needs to integrate the knowledge which calls for an extended perspective on this topic. While innovation jams offer many opportunities to firms, their use also challenges the firm’s established development practices. Previous studies rarely link them to firms’ established development practices and other business activities. There is a need to understand an innovation jam as a situated practice, in order to better understand how it interacts with the surrounding organization. The aim of this thesis is to explore the innovation jam as a potential vehicle for innovation in large, established firms. To do so, the thesis draws on data from four exploratory case studies: three in-depth, single case studies, and one multiple case study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and observations over the period 2011 to 2016. This thesis proposes to view an innovation jam as a dual search process: on the one hand, a series of knowledge search and knowledge creation activities, and on the other hand, a series of activities to achieve commitment from the firm's employees and managers. The thesis points also to a feedback loop which emerges between innovation jams which shapes further search for knowledge, and how problems for local search are formulated and defined. As a result of this feedback loop, innovation jam problems will tend to converge towards well-known problem definitions. In order for an innovation jam to become a vehicle for innovation, firms could benefit from considering how well the knowledge attributes required to solve a problem corresponds with the firms’ existing knowledge base, on the one hand, and with the firms’ established coordination mechanisms, on the other hand. This thesis points also to that firms implementing and using an innovation jam, can benefit from reframing problems to ‘fit’ with the firm’s established language, the development of new evaluation criteria, and adjustments to a firm’s strategy