Innovation is sometimes referred to as the engine of growth, which is especially true in competitive environments. Organizations who have the capability to innovate possess a sustainable competitive advantage, which means that they have a competitive edge over their competitors. In the field of studies about innovation, “open innovation” has become a popular and important approach to stay competitive. Open innovation is both a cost and resource effective approach to innovate, as well as being helpful for solving some of the most critical challenges, as sustainability, healthcare, climate change, financial stability, etc. To fully benefit from the open innovation approach, past studies have concluded that the dynamic capabilities are of great importance. This study has focused on the dynamic capability of sensing, as all innovation projects must make use of it, regardless of the outcome. To better understand the dynamic capability of sensing, this capability could be divided into some key activities and other capabilties. Past studies have also suggested that there is a need for more research and understanding of the underlying micro-foundations of the dynamic capabilities in open innovation. Therefore, we aimed to investigate: “How are different tools and techniques used to utilize the dynamic capability of sensing and its related capabilities in open innovation?” This study was conducted through a qualitative multiple case research method. The data was collected through six semi-structured interviews with project managers and other initiators of open innovation projects. Previous studies in this field assisted us in the construction of the interview guide, which contributed with deductive elements to this predominantly inductive study. The projects included in our study either resulted or were about to result in different kinds of innovations, the organizations behind them were either in the public or the private sector, and all of them had a social or/and environmental sustainability focus. The findings of this study derived from a template analysis, which consisted of both preliminary themes, which were based on past literature, as well as some inductive and new themes, which was unique for our study. The results showed that there was a total of 60 tools and techniques (some overlapping) that were used in the six cases analyzed. Many of the identified tools and techniques could be recognized from past research in this field, but many of them were also new for this study. From these findings, we could see that these tools and techniques belonged to four different clusters, which related to the sensing capability. The four clusters (highest-level themes) were: Macro analysis, Project analysis, Realization, and Other tools and techniques. The first three clusters could be divided into different phases, based on when these activities occurred in relation to the timeline of the project. These phases contained 14 different categories of activities, which the tools and techniques were sorted into, namely: Trends, Market information, Internal needs analysis, Customers, External innovation, Opportunities, Threats, Resources and capabilities, Partners, Information sharing, Trial and error, Working practices, Filtering process, and Common industry knowledge. The common thing of all tools and techniques identified was that they were used for a similar purpose: To gather information, process information and/or plan a response.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-226863 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Fredriksson, Carl, Laine, Anton |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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