Author: Kaveh Abhari
Abstract: Collaborative innovation (co-innovation) is becoming increasingly popular as an interdisciplinary research field. Social new product development or SPD is a form of co-innovation, through which a community of socially engaged individual actors participates in the different phases of new product development (NPD). Although co-innovation is a growing research domain, so far, much of the studies are focused on describing the phenomenon and its logic rather than an in-depth exploration of actor behavior in a relationship with the system attributes. Thus, the interest of this study is in understanding and modeling actor co-innovation behavior and its potential drivers in SPD networks. This goal leads to the following central research questions: (a) How can co-innovation behavior be conceptualized and operationalized in SPD network? (b) What are the key motivations affecting behavioral intention to co-innovation in SPD networks? (c) In addition to motivation, what are the other possible drivers of behavioral intention in SPD networks? And (d) What is the role of platform affordances in driving co-innovation behavior in SPD networks?
This research consists of two case studies and a survey study. The first study was a review of 22 cases of co-innovation network (CoIN), in particular their structures, components, and governance to support the literature review in building a more precise and realistic framework for the in-depth examination of SPD networks. Next, a successful case of SPD – Quirky.com – was reviewed in details. The second case study took a step further by deepening the understanding of these concepts to explain the relationships between co-innovation coordination, co-innovation platform components, co-innovation activities, actor behavior and its drivers in SPD networks. After the exploratory phase, the research model, hypotheses and instrument were developed in the light of the literature review, the theory of goal-directed behavior, and the data collected during the case studies. The instrument was empirically validated through two pre-tests and two pilot studies before the survey. Then, the proposed model was tested by Component-based Structural Equation Modeling through a two-part survey in which participants completed two questionnaires with one month difference, one on intention to co-innovation, motivation, past experience, perceived risk, and platform affordances, and one on their actual contribution to the network.
The study provides the following understanding that contributes to explaining why external actors join and add values to SPD and how this process can be enhanced: (a) SPD Networks can be differentiated from other types of CoINs based on their business model components including the platform ownership, innovation project initiation, ideation mechanism, actor relationship, commercialization procedures, and motivation system. (b) This study has revealed that the theoretical foundation of social innovation could be better explained by value co-creation models rather than open innovation paradigm. (c) The study has proposed and validated that three interrelated constructs can model actor co-innovation behavior: ideation, collaboration, and communication. (d) The study has identified the main driving forces behind co-innovation in SPD networks, namely motivation, actor past experience, risks, and co-innovation platform. (e) The survey has highlighted the role of all three classes of motivations, namely extrinsic, intrinsic, and internalized extrinsic motivations in driving co-innovation. Extrinsic motivations largely drive ideation behavior; intrinsic motivations are mainly associated with communication behavior, and internalized extrinsic motivations primarily affect collaboration behavior. (f) Among eight goal-based motivation factors tested, the findings have underlined the roles of monetary gain, learning and development, enjoyment-based motivation, and (reciprocal) altruistic motivation. (g) Risk is the significant hindering factor in co-innovation environment. Risk associated with ‘time’ is the most important factor compared with financial risk, intellectual property risk, and social risk. (h). Past learning experience, past financial gain and past hedonic experience are the most important types of experience that affect the actor continuous intention to co-innovation, mainly communication. (i) The study has suggested a new construct for co-innovation platform affordances based on the key co-innovation activities: platform ideation affordances, collaboration affordances, and communication affordances. (j) This study has addressed how actors’ intention to co-innovation can be influenced by the platform functional affordances. However, the effects are small, and they depend on actors’ co-innovation goals.
Chairperson: Elizabeth J. Davidson
Committee: Tung X. Bui, Rich Gazan, Bo Xiao, Robert Stodden