Actor Ecosystem Readiness: Understanding the Nature and Role of Human Abilities and Motivation in a Service Ecosystem

Fueled by technological advances, service delivery today is increasingly realized among multiple actors beyond dyadic service encounters. Customers, for example, often collaborate with peers, service employees, platform providers, or other actors in a service ecosystem to realize desired outcomes. Yet such multi-actor settings pose greater demands for both customers and employees given added connectivity, changing roles, and responsibilities. Advancing prior dyadic readiness conceptualizations, this article lays the theoretical ground for an ecosystem-oriented understanding of readiness, which we refer to as actor ecosystem readiness (AER). Grounded in a six-stage systematic synthesis of literature from different disciplines, our AER concept unpacks the cognitive, emotional, interactional, and motivational conditions that enable a customer or an employee to navigate a service ecosystem effectively. Building on human capital resource literature, we propose a multilevel framework around five sets of propositions that theorize AER’s nomological interdependencies across ecosystem levels. In articulating the process of how AER results in higher-level ecosystem outcomes, we demonstrate how AER serves as a microfoundation of service ecosystem effectiveness. By bridging this micro–macro divide, our AER concept and framework advance multilevel theory on human readiness and critically refine the service ecosystem concept itself while providing managerial guidance and an extensive future research agenda

Service-dominant orientation:measurement and impact on performance outcomes

A firm's ability to offer better service and to co-create valuable customer experiences is critically important to achieving competitive advantage. Service-dominant (S-D) logic, along with resource and capability perspectives, provides the underlying theoretical reasoning for the relevance of such capabilities. However, despite researchers' recent contributions to marketing theory, empirical support for S-D logic and its implications is very limited at the strategic level. An open question, therefore, is what empirically constitutes a value co-creation capability, and what is its impact on important performance outcomes. Building on the conceptualization of an S-D orientation as a portfolio of value co-creation capabilities, this research first operationalizes and validates an S-D orientation measure through a multi-study approach across different contexts. The authors then apply the measurement instrument to an automotive retail setting to investigate the outcomes of S-D orientation in terms of both customer- and firm-related performance metrics. Results provide the first empirical demonstration of the importance of S-D capabilities, and thus S-D logic, for firms. (C) 2014 New York University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Addressing the design-implementation gap of sustainable business models by prototyping:A tool for planning and executing small-scale pilots

Next to the redesign of industrial products and processes, sustainable business model innovation is a strategic approach to integrate environmental and social concerns into the objectives and operations of organizations. One of the major challenges of this approach is that many promising business model ideas fail to reach the market, which is needed to achieve impact. In the literature, the issue is referred to as a “design-implementation gap.” This paper explores how that critical gap may be bridged. In doing so, we contribute to sustainable business model innovation theory and practice. We contribute to theory by connecting sustainable business model innovation with business experimentation and strategic design, two innovation approaches that leverage prototyping as a way to iteratively implement business ideas early on. Using a design science research methodology, we combine theoretical insights from these three literatures into a tool for setting up small-scale pilots of sustainable business models. We apply, evaluate, and improve our tool through a rigorous process by working with nine startups and one multinational company. As a result, we provide normative theory in terms of the sustainable business model innovation process, explaining that piloting a prototype forces organizations to simultaneously consider the desirability (i.e., what users want), feasibility (i.e., what is technically achievable), viability (i.e., what is financially possible), and sustainability (i.e., what is economically, socially and environmentally acceptable) of a new business model. Doing so early on is functional to bridge the design-implementation gap of sustainable business models. We contribute to practice with the tool itself, which organizations can use to translate sustainable business model ideas defined “on paper” into small-scale pilots as a first implementation step. We encourage future research building on the limitations of this exploratory study by working with a larger sample of companies through longitudinal case studies, to further explain how these pilots can be executed successfully

Addressing the design-implementation gap of sustainable business models by prototyping: A tool for planning and executing small-scale pilots

Next to the redesign of industrial products and processes, sustainable business model innovation is a strategic approach to integrate environmental and social concerns into the objectives and operations of organizations. One of the major challenges of this approach is that many promising business model ideas fail to reach the market, which is needed to achieve impact. In the literature, the issue is referred to as a “design-implementation gap.” This paper explores how that critical gap may be bridged. In doing so, we contribute to sustainable business model innovation theory and practice. We contribute to theory by connecting sustainable business model innovation with business experimentation and strategic design, two innovation approaches that leverage prototyping as a way to iteratively implement business ideas early on. Using a design science research methodology, we combine theoretical insights from these three literatures into a tool for setting up small-scale pilots of sustainable business models. We apply, evaluate, and improve our tool through a rigorous process by working with nine startups and one multinational company. As a result, we provide normative theory in terms of the sustainable business model innovation process, explaining that piloting a prototype forces organizations to simultaneously consider the desirability (i.e., what users want), feasibility (i.e., what is technically achievable), viability (i.e., what is financially possible), and sustainability (i.e., what is economically, socially and environmentally acceptable) of a new business model. Doing so early on is functional to bridge the design-implementation gap of sustainable business models. We contribute to practice with the tool itself, which organizations can use to translate sustainable business model ideas defined “on paper” into small-scale pilots as a first implementation step. We encourage future research building on the limitations of this exploratory study by working with a larger sample of companies through longitudinal case studies, to further explain how these pilots can be executed successfully.Accepted Author ManuscriptMarketing and Consumer ResearchCircular Product Desig

More is not always better: The impact of value co‐creation fit on B2B and B2C customer satisfaction

Organizations increasingly rely on customer involvement in the value creation process (i.e., co-creation) to enhance customer satisfaction and differentiate themselves from competitors. While past research has largely indicated that more co-creation is beneficial, some have suggested yet not empirically validated that excess co-creation may negatively impact customers. Applying the service-dominant logic, two studies (B2B and B2C customers) offer insight into the appropriate levels of the co-production and value-in-use dimensions of co-creation. For both B2B and B2C customers, polynomial regression and surface plot analyses indicate an inverted U-shaped relationship between value co-creation and satisfaction, establishing that more co-creation is beneficial only up to a point. As such, we inform managers of factors that can cause the relationship between co-creation and satisfaction to peak and then turn negative. Further, customer expertise and process enjoyment moderate this relationship for B2C (but not B2B) customers, thereby offering ways to mitigate the negative effects of excess co-creation for end-customers. The studies also highlight the importance of value co-creation “fit” between the customer\u27s expected and experienced levels of co-creation. Interestingly, positive misfit (i.e., excess co-creation) retains a stronger negative influence on customer satisfaction than negative misfit (i.e., insufficient co-creation) for both B2B and B2C customers