Roles of Capabilities and Leader Characteristics in SME Digital Innovation

Digital technology (viewed as the combination of information, computing, communication, and connectivity technology) is impacting on the marketplaces that SMEs operate in. Yet, little is understood about how these businesses are adapting to, and adopting, digital technologies and creating digital innovation. Technology can be viewed as an opportunity for SMEs through which to engage in competitive behaviour, cost reduction, audience extension and intelligence gathering. European Commission recognises the SMEs form the backbone of the European economy Qualitative data were gathered from 45 interviews with SME leaders across four European countries and 5 industry sectors. This paper reports on the findings from a research project investigating digital preparedness of European SMEs and specifically the characteristics and capabilities of SME leaders in adopting digital innovation. Insight is outlined through the scope of the research which integrates different countries, sizes of SMEs and industry sectors to provide an holistic view of European SME leader perceptions. General consensus was evident as to the characteristics and capabilities required to create digital innovation in a competitive environment and a tentative framework has been created. This paper contributes to scholarship by providing a more comprehensive view of current European perceptions by SME practitioners concerning the profile of an SME leader undertaking digital innovation. Management implications include that any evaluation of SME digital innovation preparedness should look beyond capabilities and skills sets and include intangible aspects of character such as leaders’ attitudes towards technologies.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Turning ideas into products:subjective well-being in co-creation

New services, like fabrication spaces, 3D printer rentals and virtual marketplaces, have made it easier for empowered consumers to co-create innovative products without almost any involvement of traditional companies. Adopting a consumer-grounded view, this work takes a step forward from the existing service literature by investigating the link between psychological motives and happiness in co-creation. Specifically, the study measures how community affiliation, personal growth, and utilitarian motives are predictors of subjective well-being. The results illustrate that community affiliation and personal growth motives predict high scores of subjective well-being, while utilitarian motives do not. In addition, empowered consumers who co-create with others are happier than consumers who create alone. This indicates that direct interactions are not only a powerful platform for service co-creation, but are also predictors of subjective well-being. We discuss the implications for traditional companies and for decision makers regarding the benefits offered by digital fabrication services

“What being healthy means to me”: A qualitative analysis uncovering the core categories of adolescents’ perception of health

BackgroundStudies exploring adolescents' perception of health are still scarce in the international literature. Through a qualitative analysis, this study aims to explore the core categories or themes evoked when adolescents describe what it means to be healthy and unhealthy.MethodsA convenience purposive sample of 34 15-year-old students from three different upper secondary schools took part in a 2-hour group discussion session. During the session, two conceptual projective techniques, the collage creation and the think-aloud technique, were used to elicit perceptions and descriptions of the typical healthy and unhealthy adolescent. Perceptions and descriptions voiced by adolescents were analysed through content analysis, and the key concepts that emerged were grouped so that core categories or themes could be identified.ResultsThe analysis revealed five core categories that adolescents used to describe what being healthy or unhealthy meant to them: physical appearance, personal commitment and goals, possessions and space, use of free time, and social belonging.ConclusionsInstead of those approaches that focuses solely on the avoidance of risk, the identified core categories or themes might be the basics around which health promotion programmes in adolescence should be built. Engaging students in planning for their future and assisting them in mapping out crucial steps to meet their personal goals, including life, academic, and career goals, is a suitable way to address issues that are meaningful to adolescent health

"I am who I am": Sharing photos on social media by older consumers and its influence on subjective well-being.

We are faced with an ageing population whose longer lives need to be lived well. Extant marketing scholarship has largely neglected older consumers’ behavior in relation to the social media realm and its influence on well-being. This two-stage qualitative study investigates subjective well-being, exploring whether and how sharing photos on social media increases the dimensions of self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. The findings indicate that photo-sharing is a powerful behavior in augmenting older consumers’ well-being as it enables individual self-reflection, self-representation and transforms the individual experience into a collective one. Contributions include; that photo-sharing acts as a bridge in creating, reinforcing but also breaking bonds among older consumers, also a tension exists between the desire for autonomy and the need for relationships with others, and finally that the digital self exists as a component of subjective well-being in older consumers

Social media representations of innovation by non-users: everyday problem solving

This exploratory study extends the conceptual space of open innovation. We build on previous work recognising opportunities to contribute to a firm's innovation processes, particularly ideation, from the external environment. Initially, scholarship focused on users’ intimate knowledge of a firm’s products and services such as suppliers and lead users. More recently, affordances of digital technologies have broadened the scope of contributors to include, for example, crowdsourcing. We go a step further and consider the often-overlooked group ‘non-users’. Specifically, employing a novel two-stage approach incorporating network visualization based on 7607 Instagram #innovation posts supplemented by qualitative analysis, we explore the contribution non-users might make to firms’ innovation activities. Findings suggest that nonusers conceptualise innovation as problem solving but represent it through ludic and utopic narratives. The value of non-users in the innovation process is not in addressing specific technical problems but in offering a new lens through which to appreciate the phenomenon of innovation itself

Conceptualising a digital orientation: antecedents of supporting SME performance in the digital economy

Digital technologies have dramatically changed the organisation and marketing environments. Whether this presents an opportunity or a challenge for small and medium organisations depends on how these organisations approach it, strategically. Specifically, organisations that are guided by a combination of market, learning and entrepreneurial orientations are well-positioned to take advantage of the opportunities presented by digital technologies because they adopt attitudes and behaviours that support the generation and use of market insight, proactive innovation and openness to new ideas. We call this combination the digital orientation (DO), and present a set of propositions that facilitate its development. This paper creates value both through the conceptualisation of the DO and the outlining of the implications for strategic marketing management of understanding the strategic factors supporting or hindering the performance of small and medium enterprises in the digital economy