Improving exploration capability by interacting with start-ups
Year: 2017
Editor: Anja Maier, Stanko Škec, Harrison Kim, Michael Kokkolaras, Josef Oehmen, Georges Fadel, Filippo Salustri, Mike Van der Loos
Author: Buck, Lennart Sebastian; Nilsson, Susanne; Ritzén, Sofia
Series: ICED
Institution: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Section: Design Processes, Design Organisation and Management
Page(s): 417-426
Abstract
This paper describes and analyses an exploration-capability model that is currently being introduced in an automotive OEM. An increasingly high environmental dynamism as well as a new level of competition in the automotive industry call for an improved capability to explore and realise more radical innovations to complement the established OEMs exploitation skills and present focus on incremental innovation. The model that is target for the study offers the employees in the OEM five different forms of interactions with start-ups as a way to develop the capability to explore. The different forms of interaction are found to make use of different modes of balancing ambidexterity and to introduce different means to improve and establish individual, entrepreneurial skills, as well as influence the innovation culture of the OEM. The paper lays the foundation for future research by describing how and why an OEM is designing a new model to develop its exploration capability through interacting with start-ups by analysing the model in relation to theory, and presenting propositions that will act as a baseline for further studies.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Organizational processes, Management