In their seminal theory on modularity in design, Baldwin and Clark (2000, Design Rules: The Power... more In their seminal theory on modularity in design, Baldwin and Clark (2000, Design Rules: The Power of Modularity. MIT Press) focus on the macro-level: They show that modularity limits the degree to which changes propagate throughout a complex system, as constituted by how interdependencies among all parts pattern into a nested design structure with shared parts at the top transmitting functionalities via central parts down to the bottom. In this paper, we shift the focus to the microlevel structures of interdependencies that reflect the local decisions of designers with limited rationality. Such decisions relate to five fundamental types of interdependence structures among three parts: the design motifs. Following Baldwin and Clark (2000, Design Rules: The Power of Modularity. MIT Press), we assume that value-seeking designers weigh costs and benefits when creating motifs. We develop a new design motif theory to understand the sources of macro-level modularity. We empirically explore...
2018 IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST), 2018
Social data charts – visual presentations of quantitative data about peer behaviors – may offer n... more Social data charts – visual presentations of quantitative data about peer behaviors – may offer new means to motivate individuals to participate in group goals. However, to do so these charts need to create a semantic response of ‘unity’ among the chart viewers in order to overcome the problems of social loafing where people act selfishly and undervalue the group’s goal. In this paper, we focus on two properties of social data charts that may affect a viewer’s perceptions of unity: (1) The skewness in the data structure – the statistical distribution of the social data, and (2) the proximity in the visual structure of the chart – the spatial organization of the data points. We performed a controlled perceptual experiment to examine the effect of proximity and skewness on four different semantic facets of perceived group unity: similarity, entitativity, rapport, and centrality. We exposed 179 participants on Amazon Mechanical Turk to different group charts using a 2 x 2 factorial des...
Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation, 2019
In this chapter, the authors examine interdependence within and between routines by focusing on a... more In this chapter, the authors examine interdependence within and between routines by focusing on an aspect of routines that has often been taken for granted: boundaries. Logically, boundaries are needed to individuate and separate the entities that are being related or compared. Using observations of passenger service on a trans-Atlantic flight, the authors demonstrate that boundaries of routines are fluid and multiple. By understanding boundaries, the authors are able to better understand interdependence between actions within one routine and between multiple routines. The authors discuss how understanding boundaries complements existing theoretical perspectives on routine dynamics.
The traditional norms of hierarchical government, expert-driven decision-making, institutional co... more The traditional norms of hierarchical government, expert-driven decision-making, institutional control, and centralization have begun to fade as the capacities of computation and communication technologies have increased, the costs of community engagement have declined, data have become increasingly available and accessible, and digital literacy and analytical skills have expanded. Further, stakeholders and publics are becoming more diverse, unequal, vocal and polarized. The rapid advance of technology and its widespread diffusion in everyday use has transformed who creates and has access to information and how we leverage information toward constructing knowledge and acting on evidence. Against this backdrop, this panel explores efforts to enable public values to flourish by promoting new forms of effective governance and exploring the changes necessary in technology, processes, institutional capacity and social norms to realize future innovations. Therefore, the purpose of this panel symposium is to eng...
Two-sided platforms are gaining increasing attention in practice and as the subject of IS and man... more Two-sided platforms are gaining increasing attention in practice and as the subject of IS and management research. We explore an assumption of research and practice: that a platform’s architecture needs to be decoupled so that producers can easily mix and match the platform’s design elements (APIs, code libraries, process models, etc.) into apps that perform well competitively, and insulate the platform from skewed outcomes and low market performance. However, in practice, complete decoupling is not just difficult but almost impossible. Based on more than two million runs of an exploratory NK model in which producers use a platform’s design space for the creation of apps, we generate several surprising insights. First, we show that tighter coupling may not necessarily be harmful depending on the producers’ design strategies and the amount of constraints placed on design elements. Second, we observe that if moderate to tightly coupled platforms with optimizing producers focused exclu...
Two-sided platforms are gaining increasing attention in practice and as the subject of IS and man... more Two-sided platforms are gaining increasing attention in practice and as the subject of IS and management research. We explore an assumption of research and practice: that a platform’s architecture needs to be decoupled so that producers can easily mix and match the platform’s design elements (APIs, code libraries, process models, etc.) into apps that perform well competitively, and insulate the platform from skewed outcomes and low market performance. However, in practice, complete decoupling is not just difficult but almost impossible. Based on more than two million runs of an exploratory NK model in which producers use a platform’s design space for the creation of apps, we generate several surprising insights. First, we show that tighter coupling may not necessarily be harmful depending on the producers’ design strategies and the amount of constraints placed on design elements. Second, we observe that if moderate to tightly coupled platforms with optimizing producers focused exclusively on being competitive, platform performance is lower compared to platforms with satisficing producers who put a lower priority of being competitive because of other interests. This is surprising since optimizers are better suited to cope with the inherent uncertainty of coupling. Finally, moderately coupled platforms can outperform platforms with loose coupling when constraints nudge producers into distant design moves while also isolating them from downside uncertainty. These three findings offer implications for multiple streams of literature on platform architectures.
Purpose This study aims to investigate the effects of project-level external knowledge search bre... more Purpose This study aims to investigate the effects of project-level external knowledge search breadth and search depth on the innovation performance of open innovation (OI) projects in large firms; it further considers these effects mediated by two forms of control mechanisms (process and outcome control) when the level of project complexity and the two stages of a project – early (problem definition) and late (solution development) – are taken into account. Design/methodology/approach Based on a survey of 187 managers responsible for an OI project, the authors use theory on behavioral-based control mechanisms to explore whether the effect of external knowledge search breadth and depth on OI performance is contingent on having the right levels of control mechanisms in place. Findings The results showed that the control mechanism mediates the relationship between external knowledge search breadth and depth and OI project performance. Furthermore, project complexity is an important mo...
Contemporary service organizations create value through multiple inter-organizational relationshi... more Contemporary service organizations create value through multiple inter-organizational relationships. The relationships between the service organization and its customer have been the dominating focus in literature on value co-creation in large service organizations. This paper introduces the novel phenomenon of value co-creation emerging around interpersonal and digital customer-to-customer (C2C) connections. With the advent of the Internet, social media, “digital native” customers, and the availability of big data and new analytical tools, service organizations are afforded to tap into existing social relationships among their customer base or even to ‘engineer’ novel connections. We present a theory-led model to explain how firms can create new sources of service value through “C2C connected value co-creation”. By extending Teece’s concept of complementary asset in the service context, this model subsumes two major building blocks: a firm’s potential for C2C connections and complementary service assets, namely the network capital, mirroring service resources, and advancing services resources of the connected customer. We present three strategies for C2C connected service value co-creation describing combinations of these building blocks: (1) embedding, (2) substituting, and (3) expanding. Multiple case examples illustrate our propositions. Our novel form of theorizing has implications for future research on management of information systems in service organizations.
In open collaboration, an economically important form of organizing technology development in onl... more In open collaboration, an economically important form of organizing technology development in online communities, both producers and users, either firm or independent users, invest their resources to develop and share technological problems as well as solutions freely accessible to the public. Existing literature draws ambivalent conclusions about whether and how the different actors engage in joint problem solving. Given potential conflicts of interest and variance in problem types, in terms of who shares the problem and how much generative efforts a problem demands, we know little about the role and nature of joint problem solving in open collaboration. Taking a dynamic view towards knowledge collaboration, this paper uses granular data about problem solving in OpenStack, a large and successful open source software development community, to examine joint problem solving in open collaboration. We show that not all problem types channel participation in the same way. Both producers and users prefer firm user problems. Secondarily, they also focus more on generative problems unless they are independent users. Our findings contribute to the theoretical puzzle about whether and when open collaboration is actually about “collaboration” and informs managers about opportunities for greater joint problem solving.
Civic challenges such as urban mobility and energy problems offer new corporate innovation opport... more Civic challenges such as urban mobility and energy problems offer new corporate innovation opportunities. However, such challenges are wicked and difficult to tame. They require novel solutions that account for and integrate contradictory perspectives within the local innovation ecosystem of firms, governments, and citizens. This article presents a successful civic innovation crowdsourcing project case study, in which multinational firm Bombardier encouraged a global civic crowd to co-create visionary solutions to the challenge of future mobility in crowded cities around the world. Bombardier recruited a global crowd of 900 individuals and facilitated the citizen development of more than 215 solutions of unique firm value. We explore the process and outcome of this crowdsourcing project and derive actionable design principles for a three-phased civic innovation crowdsourcing process including: (1) crowd construction, (2) crowd knowledge acquisition, and (3) crowd knowledge assimilation. This process enables the crowd to integrate members’ diverse and contradictory knowledge proactively at both the team and individual levels. Additionally, the crowd is able to balance extension of existing local solutions and exploration of path-breaking technologies and solution concepts.
El Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachusetts (MIT) lo bautizo como �Internet of Things� (IoT en in... more El Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachusetts (MIT) lo bautizo como �Internet of Things� (IoT en ingles, o �Internet de las cosas�). Supone una revolucion tecnologica que representa el futuro de la computacion y de las comunicaciones: los objetos mas cotidianos se conectaran entre ellos y con la red y nos ofreceran datos en tiempo real. Es la digitalizacion del mundo fisico, un nicho de negocio en el que cada vez se adentran mas empresas de forma decidida, conocedoras de que esta tecnologia las ayudara a conocer mejor a sus clientes. Porque unificando el Big Data, el Small Data y el �Internet de las cosas� obtendremos como resultado una poderosa herramienta de analisis del consumidor, ademas de que podremos redefinir de forma drastica el concepto de fidelizacion
Recent open innovation literature highlights the need for interactive relationships with external... more Recent open innovation literature highlights the need for interactive relationships with external knowledge sources. To improve opportunities for innovation along these relationships, some firms wa...
In their seminal theory on modularity in design, Baldwin and Clark (2000, Design Rules: The Power... more In their seminal theory on modularity in design, Baldwin and Clark (2000, Design Rules: The Power of Modularity. MIT Press) focus on the macro-level: They show that modularity limits the degree to which changes propagate throughout a complex system, as constituted by how interdependencies among all parts pattern into a nested design structure with shared parts at the top transmitting functionalities via central parts down to the bottom. In this paper, we shift the focus to the microlevel structures of interdependencies that reflect the local decisions of designers with limited rationality. Such decisions relate to five fundamental types of interdependence structures among three parts: the design motifs. Following Baldwin and Clark (2000, Design Rules: The Power of Modularity. MIT Press), we assume that value-seeking designers weigh costs and benefits when creating motifs. We develop a new design motif theory to understand the sources of macro-level modularity. We empirically explore...
2018 IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST), 2018
Social data charts – visual presentations of quantitative data about peer behaviors – may offer n... more Social data charts – visual presentations of quantitative data about peer behaviors – may offer new means to motivate individuals to participate in group goals. However, to do so these charts need to create a semantic response of ‘unity’ among the chart viewers in order to overcome the problems of social loafing where people act selfishly and undervalue the group’s goal. In this paper, we focus on two properties of social data charts that may affect a viewer’s perceptions of unity: (1) The skewness in the data structure – the statistical distribution of the social data, and (2) the proximity in the visual structure of the chart – the spatial organization of the data points. We performed a controlled perceptual experiment to examine the effect of proximity and skewness on four different semantic facets of perceived group unity: similarity, entitativity, rapport, and centrality. We exposed 179 participants on Amazon Mechanical Turk to different group charts using a 2 x 2 factorial des...
Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation, 2019
In this chapter, the authors examine interdependence within and between routines by focusing on a... more In this chapter, the authors examine interdependence within and between routines by focusing on an aspect of routines that has often been taken for granted: boundaries. Logically, boundaries are needed to individuate and separate the entities that are being related or compared. Using observations of passenger service on a trans-Atlantic flight, the authors demonstrate that boundaries of routines are fluid and multiple. By understanding boundaries, the authors are able to better understand interdependence between actions within one routine and between multiple routines. The authors discuss how understanding boundaries complements existing theoretical perspectives on routine dynamics.
The traditional norms of hierarchical government, expert-driven decision-making, institutional co... more The traditional norms of hierarchical government, expert-driven decision-making, institutional control, and centralization have begun to fade as the capacities of computation and communication technologies have increased, the costs of community engagement have declined, data have become increasingly available and accessible, and digital literacy and analytical skills have expanded. Further, stakeholders and publics are becoming more diverse, unequal, vocal and polarized. The rapid advance of technology and its widespread diffusion in everyday use has transformed who creates and has access to information and how we leverage information toward constructing knowledge and acting on evidence. Against this backdrop, this panel explores efforts to enable public values to flourish by promoting new forms of effective governance and exploring the changes necessary in technology, processes, institutional capacity and social norms to realize future innovations. Therefore, the purpose of this panel symposium is to eng...
Two-sided platforms are gaining increasing attention in practice and as the subject of IS and man... more Two-sided platforms are gaining increasing attention in practice and as the subject of IS and management research. We explore an assumption of research and practice: that a platform’s architecture needs to be decoupled so that producers can easily mix and match the platform’s design elements (APIs, code libraries, process models, etc.) into apps that perform well competitively, and insulate the platform from skewed outcomes and low market performance. However, in practice, complete decoupling is not just difficult but almost impossible. Based on more than two million runs of an exploratory NK model in which producers use a platform’s design space for the creation of apps, we generate several surprising insights. First, we show that tighter coupling may not necessarily be harmful depending on the producers’ design strategies and the amount of constraints placed on design elements. Second, we observe that if moderate to tightly coupled platforms with optimizing producers focused exclu...
Two-sided platforms are gaining increasing attention in practice and as the subject of IS and man... more Two-sided platforms are gaining increasing attention in practice and as the subject of IS and management research. We explore an assumption of research and practice: that a platform’s architecture needs to be decoupled so that producers can easily mix and match the platform’s design elements (APIs, code libraries, process models, etc.) into apps that perform well competitively, and insulate the platform from skewed outcomes and low market performance. However, in practice, complete decoupling is not just difficult but almost impossible. Based on more than two million runs of an exploratory NK model in which producers use a platform’s design space for the creation of apps, we generate several surprising insights. First, we show that tighter coupling may not necessarily be harmful depending on the producers’ design strategies and the amount of constraints placed on design elements. Second, we observe that if moderate to tightly coupled platforms with optimizing producers focused exclusively on being competitive, platform performance is lower compared to platforms with satisficing producers who put a lower priority of being competitive because of other interests. This is surprising since optimizers are better suited to cope with the inherent uncertainty of coupling. Finally, moderately coupled platforms can outperform platforms with loose coupling when constraints nudge producers into distant design moves while also isolating them from downside uncertainty. These three findings offer implications for multiple streams of literature on platform architectures.
Purpose This study aims to investigate the effects of project-level external knowledge search bre... more Purpose This study aims to investigate the effects of project-level external knowledge search breadth and search depth on the innovation performance of open innovation (OI) projects in large firms; it further considers these effects mediated by two forms of control mechanisms (process and outcome control) when the level of project complexity and the two stages of a project – early (problem definition) and late (solution development) – are taken into account. Design/methodology/approach Based on a survey of 187 managers responsible for an OI project, the authors use theory on behavioral-based control mechanisms to explore whether the effect of external knowledge search breadth and depth on OI performance is contingent on having the right levels of control mechanisms in place. Findings The results showed that the control mechanism mediates the relationship between external knowledge search breadth and depth and OI project performance. Furthermore, project complexity is an important mo...
Contemporary service organizations create value through multiple inter-organizational relationshi... more Contemporary service organizations create value through multiple inter-organizational relationships. The relationships between the service organization and its customer have been the dominating focus in literature on value co-creation in large service organizations. This paper introduces the novel phenomenon of value co-creation emerging around interpersonal and digital customer-to-customer (C2C) connections. With the advent of the Internet, social media, “digital native” customers, and the availability of big data and new analytical tools, service organizations are afforded to tap into existing social relationships among their customer base or even to ‘engineer’ novel connections. We present a theory-led model to explain how firms can create new sources of service value through “C2C connected value co-creation”. By extending Teece’s concept of complementary asset in the service context, this model subsumes two major building blocks: a firm’s potential for C2C connections and complementary service assets, namely the network capital, mirroring service resources, and advancing services resources of the connected customer. We present three strategies for C2C connected service value co-creation describing combinations of these building blocks: (1) embedding, (2) substituting, and (3) expanding. Multiple case examples illustrate our propositions. Our novel form of theorizing has implications for future research on management of information systems in service organizations.
In open collaboration, an economically important form of organizing technology development in onl... more In open collaboration, an economically important form of organizing technology development in online communities, both producers and users, either firm or independent users, invest their resources to develop and share technological problems as well as solutions freely accessible to the public. Existing literature draws ambivalent conclusions about whether and how the different actors engage in joint problem solving. Given potential conflicts of interest and variance in problem types, in terms of who shares the problem and how much generative efforts a problem demands, we know little about the role and nature of joint problem solving in open collaboration. Taking a dynamic view towards knowledge collaboration, this paper uses granular data about problem solving in OpenStack, a large and successful open source software development community, to examine joint problem solving in open collaboration. We show that not all problem types channel participation in the same way. Both producers and users prefer firm user problems. Secondarily, they also focus more on generative problems unless they are independent users. Our findings contribute to the theoretical puzzle about whether and when open collaboration is actually about “collaboration” and informs managers about opportunities for greater joint problem solving.
Civic challenges such as urban mobility and energy problems offer new corporate innovation opport... more Civic challenges such as urban mobility and energy problems offer new corporate innovation opportunities. However, such challenges are wicked and difficult to tame. They require novel solutions that account for and integrate contradictory perspectives within the local innovation ecosystem of firms, governments, and citizens. This article presents a successful civic innovation crowdsourcing project case study, in which multinational firm Bombardier encouraged a global civic crowd to co-create visionary solutions to the challenge of future mobility in crowded cities around the world. Bombardier recruited a global crowd of 900 individuals and facilitated the citizen development of more than 215 solutions of unique firm value. We explore the process and outcome of this crowdsourcing project and derive actionable design principles for a three-phased civic innovation crowdsourcing process including: (1) crowd construction, (2) crowd knowledge acquisition, and (3) crowd knowledge assimilation. This process enables the crowd to integrate members’ diverse and contradictory knowledge proactively at both the team and individual levels. Additionally, the crowd is able to balance extension of existing local solutions and exploration of path-breaking technologies and solution concepts.
El Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachusetts (MIT) lo bautizo como �Internet of Things� (IoT en in... more El Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachusetts (MIT) lo bautizo como �Internet of Things� (IoT en ingles, o �Internet de las cosas�). Supone una revolucion tecnologica que representa el futuro de la computacion y de las comunicaciones: los objetos mas cotidianos se conectaran entre ellos y con la red y nos ofreceran datos en tiempo real. Es la digitalizacion del mundo fisico, un nicho de negocio en el que cada vez se adentran mas empresas de forma decidida, conocedoras de que esta tecnologia las ayudara a conocer mejor a sus clientes. Porque unificando el Big Data, el Small Data y el �Internet de las cosas� obtendremos como resultado una poderosa herramienta de analisis del consumidor, ademas de que podremos redefinir de forma drastica el concepto de fidelizacion
Recent open innovation literature highlights the need for interactive relationships with external... more Recent open innovation literature highlights the need for interactive relationships with external knowledge sources. To improve opportunities for innovation along these relationships, some firms wa...
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