While knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) play an important role in industrialized economies, little research has focused on how best to support their design. The emerging understanding of service as a process of value cocreation – or collaborative value creation – can provide the foundations for this purpose; however, this body of literature lacks empirically grounded explanations of how value is actually cocreated and does not provide adequate design support for the specific context of KIBS. This research thus first identifies generative mechanisms of value cocreation in KIBS engagements; it then develops a design framework from this understanding; finally, it elaborates a modeling technique fulfilling the requirements derived from this design framework. A multiple-case study of two academic research and development service engagements, as a particular type of KIBS engagement, was first undertaken to identify generative mechanisms of value cocreation. Data was gathered through interviews, observation, and documentation, and was analyzed both inductively and deductively according to key concepts of value cocreation proposed in literature. Data from a third case study was then used to evaluate the ability of the modeling technique to support the analysis of value cocreation processes in KIBS engagements.
Empirical findings identify two contextual factors; one core mechanism; six direct mechanisms; four supporting mechanisms; and two overall processes of value cocreation, aligning and integrating. These findings emphasize the strategic nature of value cocreation in KIBS engagements. Results include an empirically grounded design framework that identifies points of intervention to foster value cocreation in KIBS engagements, and from which modeling requirements are derived. To fulfill these requirements, a modeling technique Value Cocreation Modeling 2 (VCM2) was created by adapting and combining concepts from several existing modeling approaches developed for strategic actors modeling, value network modeling, and business intelligence modeling.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/65679 |
| Date | 22 July 2014 |
| Creators | Lessard, Lysanne |
| Contributors | Yu, Eric |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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