Structuring the Jungle of Capabilities Fostering Digital Innovation

Driven by digitalization, the business environment is changing at an increasing pace. To be able to react to this, organizations must gain competitive advantages through Digital Innovation (DI). This special form of innovation requires a reorganization and further development of the resource and capability base of an organization. The existing literature shows a proliferation of definitions and a jungle of individual capabilities with regard to DI. Based on a structured literature review and a qualitative analysis of existing capabilities, the paper presents a DI Capability Model. By structuring layers, areas and associated capabilities, the model provides the first holistic view in the literature. It will serve as a basis for a targeted scientific discourse and a valuable orientation model for the development of a capability composition to foster DI in organizations.</p

The Five Diamond Method for Explorative Business Process Management

Explorative business process management (BPM) is attracting increasing interest in the literature and professional practice. Organizations have recognized that a focus on operational efficiency is no longer sufficient when disruptive forces can make the value proposition of entire processes obsolete. So far, however, research on how to create entirely new processes has remained largely conceptual, leaving it open how explorative BPM can be put into practice. Following the design science research paradigm and situational method engineering, we address this research gap by proposing a method called the Five Diamond Method. This method guides explorative BPM activities by supporting organizations in identifying opportunities from business and technology trends and integrating them into business processes with novel value propositions. The method is evaluated against literature-backed design objectives and competing artifacts, qualitative data gathered from BPM practitioners, as well as a pilot study and two real-world applications. This research provides two contributions. First, the Five Diamond Method broadens the scope of BPM by integrating prescriptive knowledge from innovation management. Second, the method supports capturing emerging opportunities arising from changing customer needs and digital technologies.Explorative business process management (BPM) is attracting increasing interest in the literature and professional practice. Organizations have recognized that a focus on operational efficiency is no longer sufficient when disruptive forces can make the value proposition of entire processes obsolete. So far, however, research on how to create entirely new processes has remained largely conceptual, leaving it open how explorative BPM can be put into practice. Following the design science research paradigm and situational method engineering, we address this research gap by proposing a method called the Five Diamond Method. This method guides explorative BPM activities by supporting organizations in identifying opportunities from business and technology trends and integrating them into business processes with novel value propositions. The method is evaluated against literature-backed design objectives and competing artifacts, qualitative data gathered from BPM practitioners, as well as a pilot study and two real-world applications. This research provides two contributions. First, the Five Diamond Method broadens the scope of BPM by integrating prescriptive knowledge from innovation management. Second, the method supports capturing emerging opportunities arising from changing customer needs and digital technologies

The Business Process Design Space for exploring process redesign alternatives

Purpose – Process redesign refers to the intentional change of business processes. While process redesign methods provide structure to redesign projects, they provide limited support during the actual creation of to-be processes. More specifically, existing approaches hardly develop an ontological perspective on what can be changed from a process design point of view and they provide limited procedural guidance on how to derive possible process design alternatives. This paper aims to provide structured guidance during the to-be process creation. Design/methodology/approach – Using design space exploration as a theoretical lens, we develop a conceptual model of the design space for business processes, which facilitates the systematic exploration of design alternatives along different dimensions. We utilized an established method for taxonomy development for constructing our conceptual model. First, we derived design dimensions for business processes and underlying characteristics through a literature review. Second, we conducted semi-structured interviews with professional process experts. Third, we evaluated our artifact through three real-world applications. Findings – We identified 19 business process design dimensions that are grouped into different layers and specified by underlying characteristics. Guiding questions and illustrative real-world examples help to deploy these design dimensions in practice. Taken together, the design dimensions form the “Business Process Design Space” (BPD-Space). Research limitations/implications – Practitioners can use the BPD-Space to explore, question, and rethink business processes in various respects. Originality/value – The BPD-Space complements existing approaches by explicating process design dimensions. It abstracts from specific process flows and representations of processes and supports an unconstrained exploration of various alternative process designs

A Project Portfolio Management Approach to Tacklingthe Exploration/Exploitation Trade-off

Organizational ambidexterity (OA) is an essen-tial capability for surviving in dynamic business environ-ments that advocates the simultaneous engagement inexploration and exploitation. Over the last decades,knowledge on OA has substantially matured, coveringinsights into antecedents, outcomes, and moderators of OA.However, there is little prescriptive knowledge that offersguidance on how to put OA into practice and to tackle thetrade-off between exploration and exploitation. To addressthis gap, the authors adopt the design science researchparadigm and propose an economic decision model asartifact. The decision model assists organizations inselecting and scheduling exploration and exploitation pro-jects to become ambidextrous in an economically reason-able manner. As for justificatory knowledge, the decisionmodel draws from prescriptive knowledge on projectportfolio management and value-based management, andfrom descriptive knowledge related to OA to structure thefield of action. To evaluate the decision model, its designspecification is discussed against theory-backed designobjectives and with industry experts. The paper alsoinstantiates the decision model as a software prototype andapplies the prototype to a case based on real-world data

Structuring the Jungle of Capabilities Fostering Digital Innovation

Driven by digitalization, the business environment is changing at an increasing pace. To be able to react to this, organizations must gain competitive advantages through Digital Innovation (DI). This special form of innovation requires a reorganization and further development of the resource and capability base of an organization. The existing literature shows a proliferation of definitions and a jungle of individual capabilities with regard to DI. Based on a structured literature review and a qualitative analysis of existing capabilities, the paper presents a DI Capability Model. By structuring layers, areas and associated capabilities, the model provides the first holistic view in the literature. It will serve as a basis for a targeted scientific discourse and a valuable orientation model for the development of a capability composition to foster DI in organizations.</p

Digital Innovation and Business Process Management: Opportunities and Challenges as Perceived by Practitioners

In this report, we summarize a large-scale online workshop series focusing on the connection between digital innovation and business process management. The workshop series—which contained four sessions in total that each lasted for an hour and involved on average of 120 practitioners and several academics—focused on complementing the primarily conceptual claims in this research area with in-depth insights from organizational practice. Each workshop shed light on specific aspects that appear important in the digital innovation and BPM context. We collected data from discussions during the sessions and from two surveys. Based on our findings, we identify three research directions to advance research at the intersection between digital innovation and BPM. We suggest that researchers 1) explore BPM’s role in digital innovation, 2) scope digital innovation activities in BPM projects, and 3) examine how to align organizational structures to support BPM-driven digital innovation activities. We point to several concrete avenues for future empirical research in this field