In this paper the focus is on the strategy formulation processes, specifically supportive methods and structures, which address various managerial issues concerning discontinuous technologies and radical innovation in the early phase of strategic decision-making. In three in-depth case studies...

Mit einem Umsatz von etwa 20 Mrd. € für das Geschäftsjahr 2000/2001 und mehr als 80.000 Mitarbeitern in 56 Ländern der Erde ist die Bertelsmann AG heute das internationalste Medienunternehmen der Welt. Vor allem in den vergangenen 15 Jahren ist das Unternehmen überproportional expandiert....

Manufacturers usually benefit by dividing their innovation processes into distinct phases in order to ensure that the development activities are performed efficiently in an appropriate sequence. Users usually do not apply such structured processes. They follow a more intuition-driven approach....

Information gathering from sources outside the company plays a critical role in most innovation projects. Particularly, it seems promising to approach external market experts to develop an indepth understanding of current use problems, changing customer needs and trends for new product...

Within this paper we examine the strategic perspective of the emerging phenomenon of performance-oriented systems (e.g. car-sharing, cloud computing). Based on twenty-seven system examples from four industries, we derive six founding propositions that delineate their strategic characteristics...

Integrating lead users into the product development process is a promising source of innovations. While the lead user approach is clearly established in academia, the implementation into management practice is ambiguous. Conducting a literature review of 255 articles in business press we show...

In the light of depleting natural resources and growing awareness for responsible consumption, Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) has emerged as one of the key concepts redefining product characteristics and assigning a new role to environmental responsibility of companies. It reframes the general goal of...

The trend of population aging is affecting an increasing number of countries around the world, especially advanced economies. One consequence of a growing population share of aged persons is a shift in consumer needs, reflected by a rising number of products and services designed particularly...

The existing research on the behavior of user innovators has focused almost exclusively on younger users. In light of the demographic shift and the increasing importance of the Silver Market segment (customers 55 years plus), we analyzed whether important determinants of user innovator behavior...

In this study we examine the effects of exogenous vs. endogenous governance rules on a virtual community handling an innovative task. Specifically we investigate the relationship between the two modes (exogenous vs. endogenous) and factors such as motivation, conflict and justice. We conducted...