Stakeholder contributions to commercialization and market creation of a radical innovation : bridging the micro- and macro levels

Purpose: Successful commercialization is crucial to innovative firms, but further investigation is needed on how diverse stakeholders can contribute to the commercialization of a radical innovation that requires particular market creation support. This paper aims to, therefore, analyze the key stakeholders and their contributive activities in commercialization and market creation, particularly in the case of radical innovations. Design/methodology/approach: This study relies on qualitative research design including interviews with key stakeholders, such as regulators, scientists, experts, licensing partners, core company representatives and extensive secondary data. This single-case study concerns a functional food product, which is a radical innovation requiring the development of a novel product category positioned between the food and medicine categories in global market settings. Since its market launch in 1995, the involvement of multiple stakeholders was needed for its successful commercialization in over 30 countries. Findings: Results uncover the contributions of diverse stakeholders to commercialization and market creation, particularly of radical innovation. Stakeholders performed market creation activities such as regulating the marketing and labeling of food products, conducting safety assessments, revealing and validating the positive health effects of the novelty and raising awareness of healthy living and cardiovascular health. The commercialization activities included distributing the products overseas, applying the ingredient to different food products and making the products available for users. Research limitations/implications: This single-case study provides an overview of the positive stakeholder activities with contributions to market creation and commercialization of functional food innovations. Although the user perspective was not included in the empirical part of this study because of our focus on B2B actors, users of the innovation can contribute to R&D activities to a great extent. Originality/value: The developed framework of stakeholders’ contributive activities in radical innovation commercialization and market creation contributes to literature discussing market creation as well as commercialization within the marketing and innovation management research fields. This work also generates practical advice for managers who commercialize (radical) innovations.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Customer referencing as business actor engagement behavior – Creating value in and beyond triadic settings

The rising impact of customer engagement is increasingly evident in business markets. This paper studies customer referencing as an important manifestation of engagement behavior in the business-to-business (B2B) context. To extend extant research, which has thus far examined referencing almost exclusively from the seller's viewpoint, we study how referencing affects value creation in business networks. We explore resources contributed and gained though referencing and the resulting value outcomes for the entire reference triad (the seller, the reference customer, and the prospective buyer). Empirically, the paper draws on an extensive field study conducted in knowledge-intensive business service industries. The results explicate how customer referencing affects value creation within and beyond the triad, by i) enhancing or impairing actors' internal processes; ii) strengthening or damaging relationships between the triad actors; and iii) facilitating exchange in their broader business network. The paper contributes to research on customer referencing by explicating its role in value creation on a network level. As one of the first studies on engagement in the B2B context, this paper contributes to the emerging actor engagement research by analyzing how influencing behavior operates in a business network. These insights can help firms to facilitate exchange in complex markets.</p

Financing-Related Drivers and Barriers for Circular Economy Business: Developing a Conceptual Model from a Field Study

The transition toward sustainability and the circular economy is shaping technology investment and business, leading to there being growing interest in financial aspects of circular economy businesses. As research on circular economy drivers and barriers, in addition to the literature on circular economy business and finance, has not yet provided a comprehensive view on drivers of and barriers to circular economy business financing, this study takes a theory-developing qualitative approach. It integrates extant theoretical knowledge and empirical new insights from an extensive field study in Finland, Europe, based on over 270 data sources, including interviews, workshops, reports, and media documents. From these data sources, this paper analyzes and conceptualizes the driving and inhibiting factors that have shaped the sources, criteria, and subjects of circular economy business financing. The study results that the sources of financing—being public and private sources—apply diverse criteria for financing, such as valuation and profitability of circular business models, their type, investment costs, and their business potential for financing industry itself, when they assess different subjects of financing, such as individual companies’ circular businesses, supply chains, and joint projects. Findings show that many factors that could serve as drivers have considered inhibitors. As a theoretical contribution, our study develops a conceptual model on the key factors shaping the financing of CE businesses and set of propositions on these factors inhibit and drive CE financing. Our findings provide guidance for practitioners such as managers and policy makers who aim to advance circular economy business.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Catalyzing the circular economy of critical resources in a national system : Case study on drivers, barriers, and actors in nutrient recycling

Cycling of nutrients, such as phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N), is essential for all life: Nutrients are crucial for securing societies’ food systems and valuable raw materials for industrial processes. Recycling nutrients from various side and waste streams instead of virgin nutrients has attracted considerable interest in the society, particularly as geopolitical and epidemic issues have caused many nations to reconsider how they ensure flows of critical resources by increasing the Circular Economy (CE) principles. This study examines what drivers and barriers catalyze nutrient circulation in national settings, requiring diverse actors to support intentional nutrient recycling. By taking multidisciplinary and ecosystem approaches, we examine diverse sociotechnical drivers and barriers and the actor ecosystem involved. We conduct an extensive qualitative case study on nutrient circulation (P and N) in a Finnish context, analyzing over 150 documents and interviewing over 20 diverse actors (from diverse companies through ministries to farmers) involved in nutrient recycling, from biowaste through agricultural biomasses and sludge from municipal wastewater treatment plants. Our study 1) generates an ecosystem actor map uncovering diverse actors enabling nutrient recycling in society; and 2) exposes technological, business, organizational, regulatory, linguistic, visual, and psychological drivers and barriers shaping nutrient circulation. It explains the sociotechnical preconditions for different actor/stakeholder groups to adopt and advocate circular economy (CE) principles for nutrient recycling, which are generalizable to other critical resources. The study contributes to CE research and advises practitioners by providing a comprehensive catalyst toolbox to advance nutrient circulation and facilitate its acceptability and diffusion.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Relationship development patterns of university-based start-ups

In the present chapter, we focus on how start-ups become embedded in the university and industry context(s) in order to suggest a research agenda for a more systemic approach to university and industry actors when studying start-up development in entrepreneurial universities. More specifically, the story should not end in business formation but an entrepreneurial university also has roles in the further development of start-ups originating both from the university and industry. We base our suggested research agenda on a case study of the automotive and transport cluster in Western Sweden, which is established as both an academic context and an industry context. We relied both on secondary data about the case as such as well as primary data about the relationship development patterns of the 9 start-ups in the cluster. We identified 5 different patterns of how start-ups become embedded. Arguing that the development and success of university-based start-ups have to be understood in terms of how they embed in their context(s) entails several important implications for further studies connected to additional details of the development patterns, the roles universities play in the networking and embedding of start-ups and the design of collaborative platforms for collaboration between various actors.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Handbook of Service Science, Volume 2

Service science is concerned with the question of how systems can co-create value in an optimal way. In essence, innovations aim at enabling better value co-creation; but at the same time, cause disruption and tensions in the service ecosystem by challenging prevailing practices. This chapter examines the development and diffusion of a broad scale heath care service innovation – the Electronic Prescription system (eRX) – as a process of institutionalization within a service ecosystem. This case represents an innovation process that attempts to solve a major societal challenge, rationalization of medication and reduction of medication errors and abuse. This change requires commitment and adaptation by diverse actors in multiple service systems affected by the eRX, but is nearly disabled by these actors’ competing and even conflicting institutional logics. We examine how diverse stakeholders slowly move towards a convergent institutional logic as the innovation is gradually institutionalized in the broader service ecosystem, and discuss the major challenges along this process. This chapter highlights the dilemma of change in service ecosystems and highlights the role of institutions therein.</p

Coopetition for a Circular Economy : Horizontal Initiatives in Resolving Collective Environmental Challenges

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Towards Sustainability in Urban Living Labs : Dynamics of Actor Roles

Environmental sustainability is an increasingly interesting topic among living labs where diverse actor roles and their dynamic are rooted into new urban living labs. Therefore, this study examines the actor roles and their dynamics in the design, implementation and evaluation phases of the four living lab projects in the Hiedanranta district in Tampere in Finland. The projects focus on nutrient recycling and material circulation, and their outcomes contribute to the circular economy and sustainability of the region to a large extent. We apply a qualitative research design including semi-structured interviews reinforced with the secondary data from the project reports and websites. The findings of the study indicate that the driving actors may change in the project phases in urban living labs depending on the required tasks and the competence level of the actors. The roles may be shared by different actor types and change depending on the project requirements.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Managing B2B customer journeys in digital era : Four management activities with artificial intelligence-empowered tools

Business-to-business (B2B) customer interactions and customer journeys increasingly occur in digital spaces, often aided with diverse digital and artificial intelligence (AI)-empowered tools. This requires more in-depth understanding of how to manage such journeys and interactions, particularly with AI-empowered tools that enhance B2B companies' diverse and crucial marketing management operations, ranging from forecasting to managing relationships. To reach this research goal, this paper integrates the current scattered understanding of B2B customer journeys and their management into AI research and presents a two-phase empirical study. First, through an integrative literature review, this study analyzes the relevant contemporary B2B management activities for managing customer journeys and identifies four key management activities: analyze, design, engage, and guide. Second, through mapping over 150 digital tools under 16 marketing management–tool categories and identifying and analyzing AI functions within those tools, the study examines how AI supports companies in the B2B customer journey management activities. The study makes contributions to B2B digital marketing, management and sales research, as well as customer journey management. It also provides guidance for B2B marketers and AI tool technology developers on how AI-empowered tools can be applied and developed to support B2B marketing management, particularly B2B customer journeys.publishedVersionPeer reviewe