FACILITATING EMPLOYEE-DRIVEN DIGITAL INNOVATION THROUGH THE USE OF HACKATHONS – A CASE STUDY

Open innovation has challenged and redefined the way organizations approach innovation and interact with stakeholders in the business environment. The democratization of work life has led to an increasing degree of inclusion of ordinary employees in the innovation processes, known as employee-driven innovation. Research on employee-driven innovation has up until now strongly focused on the characteristics and prerequisites for this form of innovation to arise. To a lesser extent, research has looked at how to facilitate the process of employee-driven innovation within organizations. Hackathons have emerged as a structured way to approach innovation in many organizations, especially software companies. In this study, we use a major international software company as a case study to look at the extent to which hackathons can facilitate employee-driven innovation, and especially digital innovation. We name this employee-driven digital innovation for two reasons: 1) because innovation processes are digitally mediated and 2) because the innovation products are also digital. Finally, based on theory from employee-driven innovation, we provide guidelines on how hackathons should be designed to increase the effects of hackathons as an enabler of employee-driven digital innovation

Is Motivation always the Key? – Antecedents of Employee-Driven Digital Innovation

Understanding the factors that can explain innovation has received a lot of attention among researchers in the last decades. During the same period, different approaches to innovation have also seen the light of day, among them employee-driven innovation and digital innovation. In this study our aim is to look at a concept that merges these two types of innovation and see how motivation affects employee-driven digital innovation. In our research model we look at how intrinsic, social, and internalized extrinsic motivation affects employee-driven digital innovation, and how variables like strategy and organizational culture can act as explanatory and moderating variables

Tower of Babel Bias: Is There More to Learn about Employee-Driven Digital Innovation?

With its origins in medical sciences, systematic literature reviews (SLRs) have gained popularity and widespread acceptance in a variety of disci-plines. The systematic processes ensure an exhaustive inclusion of all relevant material and strength of conclusions. Three approaches are known to improve the comprehensiveness of SLRs: 1) extending the search with snowballing of references and citations, 2) including “grey literature” (multi-vocal reviews), and 3) verifying the list of included studies with field experts. In this paper, we explore another strategy – inclusion of studies written in languages other than English, the usefulness of which is debated. Our goal is to understand whether the Tower of Babel Bias (exclusion of articles based on language) introduces important gaps in evidence. The results of multilingual extensions an existing SLR on employee-driven innovation that included articles written in Russian language show that the extension provides unique insights and perspectives not elucidated in the research published in English, namely the employee innovativeness. We conclude that multilingual literature reviews may be time-consuming endeavors with very limited return on the invested time but may as well result in enriching the understanding of the topic of interest from a unique perspective, especially with respect to regional peculiarities. Finally, we discuss the challenges related to performing a multilingual review

Utilising the innovation potential - A systematic literature review on employee-driven digital innovation

For a long time, research into the exploitation of the innovation potential of ordinary employees has focused on concepts such as intrapreneurship, internal corporate venturing or corporate entrepreneurship. Recently, a new concept that embraces the same principles has emerged: employee-driven innovation. As a result of the digital shift in society affecting both private and public companies, digital innovation has attracted increased attention, as another concept under the innovation umbrella. Researchers are trying to establish models that can explain how digital innovation affects organisations and societies, both in terms of processes and outcomes. In this paper we perform a systematic literature review with the aim of establishing the state-of-the-art link between employee-driven innovation and digital innovation as a coalescent approach to innovation. Through a review of contributions from the period 2015-2019, we have identified 13 primary studies that have been included in our research. Based on these primary studies, we elaborate existing research streams, identify knowledge gaps, and pose new research questions that could lead to further research related to the concept of employee-driven digital innovation

EMPLOYEE-DRIVEN DIGITAL INNOVATION IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS – A CASE STUDY

In this paper, we examine the phenomenon of employee-driven digital innovation in a public-sector context. Using a qualitative research design, we aim to identify institutional, organizational and individual drivers and barriers to employee-driven digital innovation, with a Norwegian municipality as our focal point of study. The research was conducted by interviewing eleven employees with different connections to four digital innovation projects in the municipality. The aim of this research is to establish the innovation drivers and barriers that exist in the public sector in relation to employee-driven digital innovation, in order to increase insight into these innovation processes for both academics and practitioners

Employee-driven digital innovation: A systematic review and a research agenda

As the digital shift in society affects both private and public organizations, the role of digital innovation is critical if digital transformations are to succeed. Research has developed models to explain how digital innovation affects organizations and societies. During the last ten years, employee-driven innovation has emerged as a new approach to explain innovation. Through this systematic literature review, we offer insight into the intersection between employee-driven innovation and digital innovation, and we coin the term employee-driven digital innovation. We review 58 studies published at this research intersection since 2010. The findings show a research field of growing interest that is divided into two main streams of research, one focused on the outcomes of employeedriven digital innovation and the other on the use of digital tools to support employee-driven innovation processes. We describe this research area, identify critical research gaps and propose future research directions

Employee-driven digital innovation: A systematic review and a research agenda

As the digital shift in society affects both private and public organizations, the role of digital innovation is critical if digital transformations are to succeed. Research has developed models to explain how digital innovation affects organizations and societies. During the last ten years, employee-driven innovation has emerged as a new approach to explain innovation. Through this systematic literature review, we offer insight into the intersection between employee-driven innovation and digital innovation, and we coin the term employee-driven digital innovation. We review 58 studies published at this research intersection since 2010. The findings show a research field of growing interest that is divided into two main streams of research, one focused on the outcomes of employee-driven digital innovation and the other on the use of digital tools to support employee-driven innovation processes. We describe this research area, identify critical research gaps and propose future research directions