Innovation domains Dimensions of controlled & uncontrolled and internal & external

Abstract

In this harsh digitalised business landscape firms are feeling an increased pressure and demand from the environment to keep up with the fast changing pace of innovation. As a response, incumbent firms are engaging themselves in different kinds of innovation domains in order to capture innovations and generate ideas that better meet user needs and desires in a strategic manner that forms new value. Past research has focused on how firms capture innovations in a single innovation domain, but no known research has had a holistic perspective where they focus on firms engagement in all identified innovation approaches together. The authors of this thesis has created a conceptual framework that combines the innovation domains into a single model. It represents the innovation domains in two dimensions: controlled & uncontrolled and external & internal. The model has been used as a guide for the data collection, and as a lens for the interpretation of the collected data. The data has been gathered from qualitative semistructured interviews as well as from qualitative secondary data sources. The theoretical contribution of this thesis is the created framework and its development with two new innovation domains, and the practical contribution consist of the models illustrating the incumbent firms adoption and balance of the innovation domains.