INTERORGANIZATIONAL ROUTINES AND CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS TRANSFORMATION IN INNOVATION COLLABORATION

1

• INTERORGANIZATIONAL ROUTINES AND CUSTOMER
  RELATIONSHIPS TRANSFORMATION IN INNOVATION
  COLLABORATION

2
Outline of the study

• Background
• Purpose
• Methods
• Theoretical framework
• Conduction of research in the knowledge-intensive
  engineering industry
• Results, conclusions and further research topics

3
Background of the study

• Increased significance of knowledge-intensive
  business services (KIBS) in innovation
• A need to clarify activities and driving forces
  of innovation collaboration in the KIBS companies
• A need for further studies on interorganizational
  relationships development from evolutionary
  economics and life-cycle management perspectives

4
Purpose of the study

• To increase the understanding of influencing
  forces and interorganizational routines in
  transformation towards customer-oriented
  innovation collaboration.
• Practically to promote KIBS companies succeeding
  possibilities in innovation management and to
  help to balance between exploration and
  exploitation in their transformation process of
  interorganizational relationships

5
Methodology

• A multi-method approach
• Literature review
• Semi-structured interviews
• Intra- and interorganizational workshops in
  engineering industry
• Workshop at GDSS (Group Decision Support System)
  Laboratory

6
Interorganizational relationships development a
theoretical framework
7
Theoretical background

• Absorptive capacity (Cohen Levinthal, 1990,
  Dyer Singh, 1998)
• Life-cycle and evolution perspectives (Rogers,
  1983)
• Exploitation and exploration of resources (March,
  1991)
• Evolutionary perspective on co-operation (Doz,
  1996)
• Innovation transformation (Powell, 1998)

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KIBS

• Innovative role in todays competitive
  environment
• carriers of innovation
• source of innovation
• fasilitator of innovation
• co-producer of innovation
• Multi-dimensionality of service innovation
• conceptual innovations
• client-interface innovations
• delivery system and organizational innovations
• technological innovations

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Case of the Engineering industry Forces driving
and restricting innovation collaboration were
categorized.
10
Areas of routines driving exploration and
exploitation were categorized in the case study.
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Stages in relationships lifecycle development in
the studied industry
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Proposals

• The execution of innovation collaboration
  requires more extensive usage of exploratory
  interorganizational routines than traditional
  arms-length type of relationships
• Effective collaboration transformation process
  requires continuous execution of routines that
  enable interorganizational relationships to
  contribute to the driving forces and
  prevents/slows down the restricting forces of the
  relationship change process
• Succeeding in collaboration transformation
  process requires the development of
  interorganizational learning and feedback
  mechanisms for contributing efficiently to the
  appropriate exploitation- and exploration-related
  routines.

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Results and conclusions

• Lack of routines for exploration seem to be
  essential bottleneck for the development of
  deeper, more long-term collaborative
  relationships (in the studied KIBS firms).
• In the current practices of the studied industry,
  the different types of myopia in learning, i.e.
  temporal, spatial and failure myopia can be seen
  as barriers for effective interorganizational
  learning mechanisms.
• On the basis of synthesis from the theoretical
  framework supported by empirical illustration, we
  formulated propositions and managerial
  implications for companies facing and overcoming
  the challenges related to the stages of
  transformation process towards innovation
  collaboration.
• Further studies focus on the empirical testing of
  the developed propositions, which is essential
  for analyzing the linkages between the several
  areas of the complex issue