We created and delivered a generic process to create and consolidate sustainable business models for new, technology-based service ideas, for instance involving new 5G telecommunication capabilities. The process describes five overarching steps (see figure below) and is complemented by a number of resources and templates that contain further support and instructions.
1. Collect business-related ideas (e.g. on market gap and technology readiness) using an idea profile template
2. Select sustainable business design patterns to enhance the sustainability-orientation of your idea
3. Facilitate collaborative stakeholder workshop (using the MURAL board template of the Business Innovation Kit)
4. Document, analyse and synthesize results and implications drawing from related literature
5. Plan and enter validation and implementation
The process was developed and exemplified for three 5G telecommunication service ideas, namely Multimodal Mobility Services, vCDN (virtual content delivery network) services for railways, and On Demand Private Network for Industry 4.0 capabilities. See the 5GVictori website for (preliminary) results and further news of the project.
Innovating our Common Future is the motto of the ISPIM 2021 conference in Berlin. With our Special Interest Group (SIG) track of activities (see here for an introduction to the SIG track), we join worldwide leading innovation professionals from research and advanced practice. Together with our colleagues from Borderstep we are hosting this event and contributed Values-Based and Sustainability-Oriented Innovation Management focus theme of the conference.
Changing customer and stakeholder values and normative frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations create new challenges and opportunities for innovation. We call for demonstrations of innovative approaches and solutions for key societal challenges on local, regional and global levels and how these can create our common innovation future. More on our Special Interest Group please find here.
Henning discussed some of the common misconcenptions of values and the potentials of a values-based approach to sustainability innovation with colleagues of the insitute for innovation and sustainability. Here you find the presentation slides (with headlines in German).
We are pleased to announce an IJIM Special Issue on Managing Values for Innovation with Henning, Prof. Florian Luedeke-Freund and Prof. John Bessant, as guest editors. Innovation management researchers and practitioners increasingly attend to the role that values and normative orientations play for innovation and its management (Breuer & Lüdeke-Freund, 2017a, 2017b; Globocnik et al., 2020; Pedersen et al., 2018). In many cases, innovation cannot be well understood, designed or managed without recurring to the values of those involved (cf. Freeman & Auster, 2015). Newer streams of research, such as responsible, social and sustainable innovation, result from an explicit orientation towards values and normative orientations (e.g., Adams et al., 2016; Lubberink et al., 2017; Owen et al., 2013). Values of privacy, equity, justice, safety and further issues humans deeply care about can serve as sources, levers, and orientation marks for innovation. Notions related to this ‘normative turn’ include responsible innovation, social innovation, sustainable innovation and purpose-driven business, just to name a few (e.g., Owen et al., 2013; Rey et al., 2017; Stilgoe et al., 2013). This special issue focuses on managing, for example, personal, organisational or cultural values in relation to innovation, within and across individual organisations (networks) (Breuer & Lüdeke-Freund, 2017a, 2017b). Large companies like IBM have successfully worked with employee values to refresh their innovation activities and to foster intrapreneurship. Young companies like the online search engine Ecosia established an innovation culture based on core values. And social mission-driven businesses like Aravind Eye Care Systems developed new business models to turn their founders’ values and visions into reality. Depending on how values are managed, i.e. explored, understood and applied as sources, levers and orientation marks for innovation, they open up or foreclose opportunities for innovation research and practice. However, reviewing the current literature reveals gaps in terms of empirical cases, applicable methods for researchers and practitioners and theoretical frameworks. Only few studies investigated, for example, the impact of values on financial or innovation performance, or found indicators for a positive relationship between organisational values, business model innovation and corporate financial performance (e.g., Globocnik et al., 2020; Manohar & Pandit, 2014; Pedersen et al., 2018). Accordingly, our knowledge about the normative turn in innovation research and management and the correspondingly emerging values-based view on innovation is still scarce. As a consequence, a common language and perspective for framing, analysing and communicating about how values can be managed for innovation is missing. Invited contributions We invite researchers from various fields such as innovation management, business and management studies, cultural studies, organisational psychology, sociology or ethnography. We are interested in, for example:
- Empirical studies: Cases of values-based innovation in practise and evidence-based assessment of their impact.
- Innovation research methods: Analytical and empirical methods to elaborate upon the role of values in business organisations and their innovation projects and management.
- Innovation facilitation methods: How to work with values in innovation management and entrepreneurial settings. Success factors and failure in the design of facilitation methods and assessment of their impacts.
- Theoretical contributions: Theoretical frameworks explaining in how far values motivate and guide innovation and its management.
- Phenomenology: How do values impact and direct innovation and its management within individual firms or across organisations? How do organisations operationalize global values such as safety or privacy in order to initiate, manage or evaluate product, service or business model innovations? How do they recognize and integrate different stakeholders’ values (e.g. customers, innovation teams, external stakeholders etc.) into innovation processes?
- Methodology: How can we empirically investigate converging or diverging values among entrepreneurs or stakeholders of an innovation process (e.g. customers, employees, managers, society)? How to study values on different analytical levels (e.g. individual, organisational, institutional, societal or global), including comparative and quantitative studies and the assessment of values’ impacts on innovation on these levels?
- Facilitation Methods: How can new methods such as gamification facilitate the values-based creation of new products, services, business models or networks? How to reframe existing methodologies and methods (e.g. from ethnography or scenario management) to leverage the potential of values for innovation?
- Theory: Which theoretical concepts from business ethics, organisational psychology, sociology or ethnology contribute to understanding the roles and impact of values on innovation management? How to estimate, manage and measure the diverse impacts of values-based innovation (incl. e.g. ecological, social, cultural and economic impacts).
- Full paper submission: between 1st July and 31st October 2020
- Initial review: December 2020
- Revised papers: March 2021
- Second review: June 2021
- Revised papers: September 2021
- Handing in papers for final review by IJIM and production: November 2021
Values-based and sustainable innovation kick-off, presentations on human values in design and the lab-of-tomorrow, a panel discussion with Roman-Meier Andrae, Corie Wiren, Matthias Rauterberg, Sven Uwe Müller and Stefan Schaltegger, and The Road to ISPIM Berlin 2021 – from coping with the current crisis to caring for our common future - all video recordings from our new Special Interest Group on Values-Based and Sustainable Innovation at ISPIM Virtual 2020 are now online.
Innovating in Times of Crisis is the motto of the upcoming ISPIM Virtual Conference. We are featuring a new Special Interest Group with a dedicated track on Values-Based and Sustainable Innovation with some of the worldwide leading innovation specialists from research and advanced practice. As co-hosts of the conference we also contribute Values-Based and Sustainability-Oriented Innovation Management as focal topics.
Changing customer and stakeholder values and normative frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations create new challenges and opportunities for innovation. We call for demonstrations of innovation approaches and solutions for key societal challenges on local, regional and global levels and how these can create our common innovation future.
20200522_CSI_Game_Instructions_ISPIM
The current global crisis is shaking up everyone. Everybody’s life and every business is affected. While most people are still overwhelmed by the speed and diversity of related news and countermeasures, for some theorists these reactions already prove mankind’s ability for radical change based on scientific anticipation, values of solidarity and a primacy of politics and multilateralism over short-lived interests. However, will it allow us to look beyond the day into our common future?
The management view
Corporate managers are well aware from previous crises that new profits, but also heavy losses in market share, arise in phases of economic downturn, more so than in phases of growth. Most of them anticipate that many of these losses and gains will outlast the acute crisis situation, and that innovation is their best vaccination against such a crisis. Some suspect that today’s customer concerns and desires make tomorrow’s business models, and look for ways of their sustainability-oriented renewal.The customer view
Likewise, many customers take a crisis as a chance to review their routines, and to reflect upon what is important to them, what they are missing most during a lockdown, and what they care about in any case. Even though some individuals are seeking to turn back time and suspect evil forces behind the situation, many are dealing with the crisis creatively, as any crisis pushes our readiness to change and innovate.The social researcher's view
Social research points out that the resulting shifts in behaviour and values are tricky to detect. Close observation and well-informed interpretation are required to see how and why customers do what they do: Which previously weak signals now turn into mainstream? Which new behaviours and values emerge that lead to a depreciation of taken-for-granted routines and push the adoption of innovations? And which customer insights can be derived from what we have been missing most?Beyond the new normal
Most people are now striving to get back to what is called the “new normal”, and imagine it like the life before the crisis, just with a few acceptable handicaps. However, we need to get beyond just going back to get in touch with what we care about. Along with an increased readiness for change comes the risk of seeking innovation primarily in crisis management mode. Already managers and politicians are negotiating which types of (combustion, electric, hydrogen) car engine purchases should benefit from state funding to overcome the economic downturn due to the crisis – instead of clarifying a shared vision of sustainable mobility first. According insights (e.g. from Agora) and scenarios are already available. Such foresight might keep them from state funding of generic categories of economic actors (e.g. small versus mid-sized companies) and interest groups independent of their environmental performance. Based on this it would be easier to see that recovery plans for combustion engines are not the way forward, but that whole ecosystems involving new services, regional planning and infrastructures, legislation and tax models are crucial parts of the agenda. However, moving towards a desirable future, it may not suffice to meet minimal environmental requirements and thresholds. Instead, we should agree upon and strive for a positive impact in each industry and each firm.Advancing from coping to caring for our common future
The conference theme of values-based innovation and the headlines of the global innovation conferences – ISPIM 2020 (Innovating in Times of Crisis) and ISPIM 2021 in Berlin (Innovating Our Common Future) – indicate this shift in perspectives. They also point to a major challenge we are facing over the next few months: How to proceed from coping with the current crisis to caring for our common future. Accordingly, this question will guide closing panel this year (with Allen Alexander of University of Exeter, Joana Breidenbach of betterplace.org and Klaus Fichter of Oldenburg University & Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability). What distinguishes coping from caring? Would you agree to the following contrasting juxtapositions?
Actually, coping and caring are not either or, nor a sequence of activities – as this table may suggest. Instead, the ways in which we cope with crisis already reflects the ways we care for our future – the second perspective is just more comprehensive.
Upcoming isses for innovators
Moving on from coping to caring, how can we include sustainability-oriented goals into normative directives for companies and economic stakeholders, and transfer them into domain specific challenges, goals and innovation projects to achieve? How can we succeed with new business models that foster sustainable development? How can we continuously assess related activities against our normative goals? And how should we engage the stakeholders (especially customer and employees) in the process? The upcoming conferences 2020 online and 2021 in Berlin (both co-hosted by UXBerlin) address these and related questions. We will be happy to have you join us!Check out our short presentation on a values-based kickbock approach (so far in German only) to promote intrapreneurship and to develop your innovation culture. In times of change, all employees are asked to act entrepreneurially with creative ideas and foresight. Promoting intrapreneurship is an ideal way to build a sustainable innovation culture. The Adobe Kickbox promotes intrapreneurship with a supporting program of activities, but needs to be aligned with the priorities of your organization and the values of those involved.
Our latest Webinar on Values-Based Innovation Management: Concepts, Methods and Applications (by Prof. Dr. Henning Breuer & Prof. Dr. Florian Lüdeke-Freund) is now online. The Webinar introduces the basic concepts, exemplary methods and practical applications of values-based innovation management. We show why innovation cannot be sufficiently understood and appropriately managed without addressing different stakeholder values. We explain the heuristic, directive and integrative function of values, and demonstrate their potential to drive innovation on different management levels. Through three recent consulting projects we illustrate applied methods to work with values on different management level: - How to apply ethnographic research on customer values to frame and conduct ideation (operative management example from the digital economy). - How to model sustainability-oriented business based on a review of stakeholder values (strategic management example from workshops in the energy sector). - How to trigger innovation through redefining business vision, mission and purpose based on employee values (normative management example from the cleaning service industry). Participants are invited to contribute their own experiences and examples and to propose new challenges that might be addressed with a values-based approach.
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