Managing and Executing Innovation Effectively in Large-Scale ...

Master of Science in Industrial Management and EngineeringJune 2022

Managing and Executing InnovationEffectively in Large-Scale Distributed

Organisations: A Case Study

Victoria Jansson

Malin Kronvall

Faculty of Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology, 371 79 Karlskrona, Sweden

This thesis is submitted to the Faculty of Engineering at Blekinge Institute of Technology inpartial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Industrial Managementand Engineering. The thesis is equivalent to 20 weeks of full time studies.

The authors declare that they are the sole authors of this thesis and that they have not usedany sources other than those listed in the bibliography and identified as references. They furtherdeclare that they have not submitted this thesis at any other institution to obtain a degree.

Contact Information:Author(s):Victoria JanssonE-mail: [email protected]

Malin KronvallE-mail: [email protected]

University advisor:University lecturer / associate professor Johanna Törnqvist KrasemannDepartment of Industrial Economics

Faculty of Engineering Internet : www.bth.seBlekinge Institute of Technology Phone : +46 455 38 50 00SE–371 79 Karlskrona, Sweden Fax : +46 455 38 50 57

Abstract

Background. The need for innovation is clear since it can be viewed as one ofthe few lasting sources of competitive advantages for a firm. Firms with large sub-organisations need to be able to manage and execute new changes effectively, and tobe able to stay competitive the firm needs to change and be more innovative. Innova-tion is a big factor in economic prosperity. In addition to economic development, aninnovative process affects other aspects of an organisation and may even create newmarkets. The process, if correctly implemented and used, creates a more sustainableinternal environment.Objectives. This research aims to evaluate a proposed innovation process, investi-gate how a sub-organisation with already set ways of working can implement a newinnovation process, what factors may affect the implementation and what engagesand motivates the employees within the sub-organisation. What is it that makes thechange hard for some and what needs to be done for them to feel motivated andengaged.Methods. In this thesis we did a case study at a software firm which is divided intolarge-scale global sub-organisations. We used interviews in a chosen sample group,a survey was sent out to the whole sub-organisation, and a literature review andbenchmarking were conducted. The data analysis was to categorise the answers andcompile the data.Results. The proposed process is well thought through, and it is based on designthinking and agile principles. Implementation of an innovation process requires astrategic plan, and the findings were Kotter’s 8 steps which is a change model. Timeis the biggest obstacle for employees. The factor that motivates and encourages theemployees the most is to create value for the firm where they work and to be recog-nised. Gamification is a type of tool that can help engage the employees.Conclusions. For a large firm it may be beneficial to have a strategy to allocatetime to innovation. An innovation process needs to have clear instructions and itshould be iterative since many firms work in an agile way it needs to be able tofit into the organisation type. A multinational large firm requires a fixed strategywhen wanting to implement a new process and a strategy for change and engagingthe employees is one possible way to execute and manage change and innovationeffectively.

Keywords: Innovation, Large-Scale Organisations, Implementation Strategy, Moti-vation , Process

i

Sammanfattning

Bakgrund. Behovet av innovation är tydligt, eftersom det kan ses som en av defå bestående källorna till konkurrensfördelar för företag. Företag med stora sub-organisationer måste kunna hantera och genomföra nya förändringar på ett effektivtsätt, och för att förbli konkurrenskraftiga måste företaget förändras och bli merinnovativa. Innovation är en stor faktor för ekonomiskt välstånd.

Syfte. Denna forskning syftar till att utvärdera en föreslagen innovationsprocesssom gavs av företaget där studien gjordes. Undersöka hur en underorganisation medredan fastställda arbetssätt kan implementera en ny innovationsprocess, och vilkafaktorer som kan påverka implementeringarna och vad som engagerar och motiverarmedarbetarna i underorganisationen.

Metod. En fallstudie gjordes på ett mjukvaruföretag som är uppdelat i storskaligaglobala underorganisationer. Vi använde intervjuer från en vald urvalsgrupp, enenkät skickades ut till hela underorganisationen och en litteraturgenomgång ochbenchmarking gjordes. Dataanalysen innebar att kategorisera och sammanställadata.

Resultat. Resultaten visade att även om stora mjukvaruföretag arbetar med in-novation så görs det inte effektivt. Den föreslagna processen är genomtänkt, denkräver tydliga instruktioner och färdiga mallar för att medarbetarna ska kunna ar-beta med processen. För att implementera en ny process behöver ledningen engageramedarbetarna och för att det ska ske kan ett gamification-verktyg vara fördelaktigt.

Slutsatser. Den största blockeraren idag för innovation är bristen på tid, det kanvara fördelaktigt att ha en strategi för att avsätta tid till innovation. En innova-tionsprocess behöver ha tydliga instruktioner, den bör vara iterativ eftersom mångaföretag arbetar på ett agilt sätt och den bör kunna passa in i organisationstypen. Attimplementera en ny process kräver en strategi för förändring och engagera medarbe-tarna är ett möjligt sätt för att företaget ska kunna göra det effektivt.

Nyckelord: Innovation, Storskalig Organisation, Implementeringstratergi, Motiva-tion, Process

iii

Acknowledgments

We would like to start by thanking our supervisor from BTH, Johanna TörnqvistKrasemann, for all the support and guidance. Without your feedback and help, wewould still be trying to find structure in our thoughts.

Dr Ricardo Britto, you have helped us with your support and passion for innovation.In addition, we would like to thank the whole innovation network for all the helpthroughout this master thesis. With your help, we got great insight and let us gathervaluable information and insights into the subject of innovation

After five years of hard work and a lot of new knowledge we would like to thank all thelecturers and all of our student-friends that made the time fly and for unforgettablememories

We would also like to thank all of our friends and family that supported us whentimes were challenging and for all the good times we have had together

I would like to thank Malin Kronvall fromthe bottom of my heart, for all the supportand all the things that we have overcomeover the last five years. Not only have westudied and helped each other throughoutour studies, but you have also become oneof my closest friends. I wish you all thebest and I look forward to many moreadventures and memories together!

Thank you!

Victoria Jansson

Victoria Jansson, I would like to expressmy appreciation for this journey. All thefun we’ve had throughout these five years.It has been amazing to go through thesefive months to have you by my side andovercome this thesis. The encouragementand fruitful collaboration have been vitalfor the success of this thesis. I’m lookingforward to creating many more memorieswith you as one of my closest friends!

Thank you!

Malin Kronvall

v

Contents

Abstract i

Sammanfattning iii

Acknowledgments v

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Problem Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2 Purpose and Research Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.2.1 Context of study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.3 Delimitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.4 Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 Theory framework 7

2.1 Innovation Management Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.2 Innovation Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.2.1 Agile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.2.2 Design Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2.3 Organisational change theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.3.1 Implementation Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

vii

viii Contents

3 Method 13

3.1 Method Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3.1.1 Qualitative Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3.1.2 Different method used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3.2 The context of the Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3.2.1 The proposed innovation process to the case firm . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3.3 Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.3.1 Benchmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.3.2 Literature review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3.3.3 Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3.3.4 Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

3.4 Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

3.5 Threats to Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

3.5.1 Construct Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

3.5.2 Internal Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

3.5.3 External Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

3.5.4 Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

3.5.5 Interview and Survey bias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

3.6 Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4 Results and Analysis 25

4.1 Findings of the current situation in the software industry . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.1.1 How do firms work with innovation today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.1.2 Size matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

4.1.3 The Current Situation in the case firm regarding innovation process 27

4.2 How to evaluate a process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

4.2.1 What the literature say . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Contents ix

4.2.2 Evaluation of Proposed Innovation Process from case firm . . . . . . 29

4.3 Factors that enable innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

4.3.1 Motivation factors according to the interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

4.3.2 Motivation factors according to the survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

4.4 How to implement a process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.4.1 Gamification as a tool of implementing a process . . . . . . . . . . . 34

5 Discussion 35

5.1 Evaluation of Proposed Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

5.2 Implementation of Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

5.2.1 Implementation strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

5.3 Impact on the result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

6 Conclusions and Future Work 39

6.1 Recommendation for future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

A Supplemental Information 45

List of Figures

1.1 Flowchart of the different activities when introducing a process . . . . . . . 4

2.1 ISO 56002:2019 Innovation Process, adapted from (ISO56000:2020, 2020) . . 8

2.2 Description of the individual phases from design thinking, adapted from(Doorley et al., 2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2.3 Kotters’ eight steps, inspired by (Kotter, 1995) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

3.1 Schematic figure showing the workflow of the research . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3.2 Methods used in different activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3.3 Case study research design process, adapted from (Runeson et al., 2012) . . 15

3.4 Procedure of literature review, adapter from (Torres-Carrión et al., 2018) . . 16

3.5 Proposed innovation process to implement in sub-organisation, adapted fromthe Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

4.1 Innovation Process Model, adapted from (Koukis & Koulioimpas, 2015) . . 26

4.2 Factors for motivation and blockers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

4.3 Lack of clear instruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

xi

List of Tables

4.1 Explanation of which role and country each ID has . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

4.2 Ways of working with innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

4.3 Feedback on proposed process from interviews. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

4.4 Motivation factors result from survey in rating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.5 Categories for what can boost innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

A.1 Interview questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

xiii

Chapter 1

Introduction

The need for innovation is clear since it can be viewed as one of the few lasting sources ofcompetitive advantages for a firm (Tushman & O’Reilly III, 1996; Dess & Picken, 2000).According to Žižlavsky (2013), the key in an organisation should be innovation and theinnovation process, for the company to be able to create new and innovative outputs.There exist a lot of different definitions of innovation, often dependent on the purpose forthe research (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010). The definition used for this research is:

Innovation is: production or adoption, assimilation, and exploitation of a value-added novelty in economic and social spheres; renewal and enlargement ofproducts, services, and markets; development of new methods of production;and establishment of new management systems. It is both a process and anoutcome (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010, p.1155).

When making a decision it is beneficial to divide the great problem into smaller parts (Saaty,1994). Johnson, Whittington, Regnér, Angwin, and Scholes (2014) define three levels ofstrategy: corporate-level, business-level, and operational. Corporate-level is the strategywhich affects the whole organisation, such as how resources are allocated, acquisitions ofnew business and diversity of products or services. Business-level strategy is regarding howthe business competes with its competitors in the specific market, in this level issues suchas innovation are typically concerned. Lastly, operational strategies are the components ofan organisation that effectively deliver the corporate- and business level strategies in termsof resources, process and people.

In this research, corporate-level is regarding if the firm should have innovation in-house oroutsource innovation through acquisitions of start-ups. Examples of firms with in-houseinnovations are Klarna and Ericsson, they have their innovation and R&D within the firm(Klarna, 2021; Ericsson, 2022). Volvo Cars, on the other hand, acquires startups andnew businesses to get innovation without taking the risk that innovation and developmentimpose (Saaty, 1994; Volvo, 2020). This will not be discussed in the research since it isalready decided that innovation should be in-house. The focus will be on the business-leveland operational strategies and they will be described in more detail in chapter 2, both levelsfocus on finding different perspectives and principles to guide the evaluation of a processand implementation of the process.

1

2 Chapter 1. Introduction

Firms want to increase sales by having new innovative products and there exists evi-dence that efficient innovation creates more sales and generates more profits, accordingto Hernandez-Vivanco, Cruz-Cázares, and Bernardo (2018). There is research findings thatmanagement needs to integrate a systematic way for innovation in order to innovate moreand if they do this they can create innovation efficiency (Hernandez-Vivanco et al., 2018).Innovation within an organisation is driven by innovation management according to Hidalgoand Albors (2008). It has been proven in many cases that innovation has a strong impacton the economic growth of an organisation (Hernandez-Vivanco et al., 2018). In addition,innovation can help organisations to remain competitive (Tidd, 2006).

This research aims to evaluate a given innovation process and find a strategic way of imple-menting an innovation process within the organisation without a clear way of working withinnovation. The researchers want to understand what factors may affect the implementa-tion and what engages and motivate the employees in the sub-organisation. What is it thatmakes the change hard for some and what needs to be done for them to feel motivated andengaged? According to Buchanan and Huczynski (2019) and Singh (2016) the employeeneeds to feel involved with the change and the new process must fulfil some kind of purpose.It can be an economic purpose or social fulfilment. For management, it is important tofind motivators and blockers, if the employees are engaged in the organisation there is agreater likelihood of improved productivity and that can imply an increase in profits for theorganisation (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2019; Singh, 2016). When looking at the implemen-tation of a new process in an already existing organisation, it is crucial to have knowledgeof the already existing organisation procedures and general knowledge about organisationalbehaviour. Organisational behaviour theory covers three aspects of an organisation andthey are macro (environmental), meso (group) and micro (individual) factors (Buchanan &Huczynski, 2019). Only the meso level will be considered in this master thesis.

1.1 Problem Discussion

The problem found today with large-scale organisations and innovation is that they lack"how" and not "what" according to Denning (2020). In Why Big Firms Find It HardTo Innovate, Denning (2020) argues that large firms do not have the strategic focus andtherefore do not know how they should innovate even though they have the ideas for it.Denning (2020) also argues that if the company is stubborn or unable to see the changesin the market it will kill the business, and therefore it will lead to the hard choice ofinnovation or die. According to Kuntz and Gomes (2012) large-sized organisations havedifferent problems when implementing an innovation process compared to the problemsmedium-sized, small and start-ups firms face. The definition of large firms differs dependingon who set the definitions but one of the most commonly found around different institutesis that a large firm is a firm with over 500 employees and that individual sites need tohave at least 100 employees (Brown, Hamilton, Hamilton, & Medoff, 1990). Due to thatmaking changes in large-sized organisations requires a major effort and needs to be moreplanned and thought through (Kuntz & Gomes, 2012). The reason why this research isimportant is to find a strategic way of implementing an innovation process, so that largemultinational firms may produce more innovations by working systematically, with a newinnovation process (Bingham, 2003).

1.2. Purpose and Research Question 3

Mortara and Minshall (2011) writes in their research that in a multinational large-size firm,the implementation of a new innovation process is dependent on three things: the needfor innovation, the timing and the organisational culture. It is highlighted that there is aneed for more extensive research on the subject of large multinational firms. The tangiblelink between theory and actual implementation is missing (Mortara & Minshall, 2011). Astudy by Schneckenberg (2015) shows that managements need to find a way to balance thecomplexity of their resources in order to create new innovations. Management needs tochange the organisational culture and facilitate open knowledge sharing to create a moreinnovative company. Schneckenberg (2015) also found that the innovation process is hardto implement in a complex multinational organisation. However, it is something managersneed to manage since innovation is a key contributor to competitiveness (Schneckenberg,2015). Both studies implied that further research is needed of finding the right way fromtheory to implement an innovation process in an already established multinational firm.

There exists extensive literature on innovation, process, implementation, motivational fac-tors, and organisational change however all the different subjects are studied separately.This research will combine different research subjects in order for the literature to get moreapplicable and useful for firms when needing to change. The aim is to combine business-level and operational strategy, what strategy to use and how to implement it to make thetheory even wider. According to Mortara and Minshall (2011) and Viki (2018) managementin large firms have realised they need to change to a more innovative way of working to beable to stay competitive. The effort needed to change an already established way of workingand process is enormous (Kuntz & Gomes, 2012; Viki, 2018). Since innovation and the newoutput is not often within line with the already existing products it is even harder to changefor the new innovative way of working (Viki, 2018). This identifies a gap between theoryand practice and that the combination of several research subjects needs to be combinedin order to get an understanding of the complex task of changing an organisation.

1.2 Purpose and Research Question

The purpose of this master thesis is to identify an approach for first evaluating an innovationprocess and then effectively and strategic implementing an innovation process in a largemultinational firm. The objective is to study a sub-organisation within a large firm, byanalysing the proposed innovation process and looking at what motivates and what preventsemployees to work with innovation. To fulfil the purpose, a case study is done on a sub-organisation of a software firm. Different motivational factors and factors that prevent theemployees today to innovate will be investigated in a real-life setting which makes it anempirical research.

This research will contribute to the existing literature on how large firms can implement anew innovation process and engage their employees in their organisations. The questionsare stated in a way that fulfils the purpose of the master thesis. The research question is:How should a global organisation implement an innovation process? The question is dividedinto three research questions(RQ) to make it more manageable:

• RQ1: How do large software development firms work with innovation today?

• RQ2: How can an innovation process be evaluated?

4 Chapter 1. Introduction

• RQ3: How can a process be implemented strategically to be able to execute innovationeffectively?

1.2.1 Context of study

The company which is used as the case firm is Ericsson, which is a Swedish software companywith over 100 000 employees around the globe(Ericsson, 2022). Ericsson is one of the leadingcompanies in the information and communication technology industry (Ericsson, 2022). Inthis thesis, Ericsson will be mentioned as the company to make the research more generalto other large software firms.

Today the Company is divided into several sub-organsiations across different sites aroundthe world. This research is done within one of the sub-organisations of the Company.The sub-organisation which is studied is at eight sites. Within the sub-organisation, eachsite has its own way of working with innovation, some are formal and written down andsome are more informal. As seen in figure 1.1 the Company wants to introduce a newinnovation process and evaluate the choice of process and lastly implement the process.The scope chosen for this research is the focus of the dashed rectangle, the evaluation of analready chosen innovation process and the preparation for implementing the process. Atthe beginning of the study there exists a proposed innovation process developed for the theCompany , so what is asked by the Company is to evaluate the innovation process and seeif there can be any improvements. After the process has been evaluated the second part isto find a strategic way of implementing the process. For the implementation to succeed itis required engagement from the employees. There needs to be a way for the Company toengage their employees and motivate them to be working more with innovation.

Figure 1.1: Flowchart of the different activities when introducing a process

1.3 Delimitation

The scope of this research is to investigate an already produced innovation process and howto implement it in an organisation. The study is done in a sub-organisation within a firmused as a case study.

1.4. Outline 5

The selected scope will not include cultural differences, which might affect the data since theCompany is a global company and the interviews and survey will be answered by employeesin different countries. In behavioral theory micro and macro levels are excluded.

The evaluation of the innovation process is limited to feedback from 14 employees from thecase firm via interviews. In addition, by doing a literature review of the innovation processand comparing it to what other reviews of the innovation process have found.

The implementation of the process is limited to finding what motivates and what blocksemployees to work with a new process and innovation. The survey was limited to thesub-organisation that were investigated.

1.4 Outline

The remainder of this thesis is as follows:

Chapter Two: Theoretical frameworkThis chapter presents relevant theories about the subjects of innovation and organisationalbehaviour. This is based on relevant books, papers, and articles.

Chapter Three: MethodThe methodology chapter describes the method selection, research design, and how thedata collection was collected and analysed. The chapter ends with threats of validation andethics.

Chapter Four: Results and AnalysisResults are presented from the data collection and are analysed.

Chapter Five: DiscussionThis discussion chapter includes a discussion of the results and what it implicates in futurework.

Chapter Six: Conclusion and Future WorkIn this chapter the conclusions are displayed and what, according to us, future researchersshould keep researching about.

Chapter 2

Theory framework

This theory framework contains all the necessary theories and literature for the researchsubject an to be able to have a framework.

2.1 Innovation Management Today

Innovation management is a key factor when it comes to firms’ competitiveness, and theglobal competition between firms and the economy (Hidalgo & Albors, 2008). Manage-ment faces different challenges today and they are allocating resources, in terms of humansand money, and acknowledging that the organisation consist of humans that have differentneeds. Managers need to create an organisational structure that enhances innovation andnetworking. In addition, managers need to create an environment that handles the com-plexity of both incremental and radical innovation (Hidalgo & Albors, 2008). The definitionof an organisation used in this research is that there is a limited number of people and theyare working towards a collective goal with a set-out performance strategy (Buchanan &Huczynski, 2019).

Today there is one big cluster of ISO standards under the designation of ISO 56000, ISOis a shortening for the International Organisation for Standardization. The ISO 56000was developed by the Technical Committee of the organisation in Innovation management(ISO/279). They developed the (ISO 56002:2019) in order to “help businesses effectivelyrespond to change in order to maximize opportunities for growth and development whilereducing associated risks” (ISO, 2019, p.5). According to Hyland and Karlsson (2021) theprofession as an innovation manager can further make the position "heavier" and morewell-recognised, within the organisation, if they certify it via the latest ISO standard, ISO56002. In 2019 ISO 56002 standards were published regarding innovation management, andthe definition is:

Innovation management can include establishing an innovation vision, innova-tion strategy, innovation policy and innovation objectives, and organizationalstructures and innovation processes to achieve those objectives through plan-ning, support, operations, performance evaluation and improvement (ISO56000:2020,

7

8 Chapter 2. Theory framework

2020).

2.2 Innovation Processes

In ISO 56000:2020 a process is defined as "set of interrelated or interacting activities thatuse inputs to deliver an intended result” (ISO 56000:2020, p. 9). Different researchershave presented similar definitions of the term process, Carr and Johansson (1995) describesprocesses as connected sets of activities that accept an object as input, make changes toit and then leave it out as output of the process. A more rough definition is presented byKohl et al. (2020): "transformation of an input into an output".

It is important to know that ISO 56002, which is part of the ISO 56000 series, only pro-vides guidance at a general level and does not mention how task should be preformed(ISO56000:2020, 2020). However, in the publication of ISO 56002 standard the innova-tion process is described as seen in figure 2.1 with the steps identify opportunities, createconcepts, validate concepts, develop solution, and deploy solution

Figure 2.1: ISO 56002:2019 Innovation Process, adapted from (ISO56000:2020, 2020)

2.2.1 Agile

The agile development or methods comes from a need to handle rapid change and software(Larman & Basili, 2003). Agile development or methods have common characteristics suchas the processes of specification design and implementation are interleaved. In addition, thesystem is developed in a series of increments and extensive tool support is used to supportthe development process (Sommerville, 2016). Agile development or methods have theirfoundation in the agile manifesto that is:

2.2. Innovation Processes 9

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helpingothers do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and toolsWorking software over comprehensive documentationCustomer collaboration over contract negotiationResponding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, er value the items onthe left more (Manifesto for Agile Software Development , 2001).

The agile way of working is iterative, with sprints that are constructed the same way withscrum meetings, estimations of user stories, backlog planning and evaluation (Larman &Basili, 2003). The user stories are the tasks that are to be done during the sprints, thesprints are time-framed, often a few weeks. The idea is to create a refactoring process,meaning to develop in shorter periods and then evaluate and then improve. In addition, ondoing this until the task has been solved (Sommerville, 2016; Larman & Basili, 2003).

2.2.2 Design Thinking

Design thinking is a problem-solving method where the focus is the users. Lewrick, Link,and Leifer (2018) describes it as the mindset with a focus on the people, it is drivenby curiosity, to accept complexity, visualize and show, and lastly experiment and iterate.Another important aspect is co-creation, networked collaboration, development processawareness and lastly varying mental states. As seen in figure 2.2 the design thinking processconsists of 5 steps and they are empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test (Doorley,Holcomb, Klebahn, Segovia, & Utley, 2018). The step empathize focuses on the foundationof human-centred design and the need to build empathy for the users by learning theirvalues. The next step, define, is when you unpack the findings into the needs, insights andscope of a meaningful challenge. Then it goes on to ideate and is the step where it is timeto generate radical design alternatives. In step 4 it is time to build or create a prototype,and in the early stages, it should be kept at an inexpensive and low resolution. The laststep in this process is to test where it is time to gather feedback and continue to learn fromusers. This process is both a linear and non-linear process with a more flexible fashion.

Figure 2.2: Description of the individual phases from design thinking, adapted from(Doorley et al., 2018)


2.3 Organisational change theory

There exsist a prominent challange to manage change well in an organisation (Buchanan &Huczynski, 2019). Change in an organisation may be in different forms such as structure,process, culture or other forms. Different changes, depending on how much it affects theorganisation, have different impacts on the organisation (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2019).There is also organisational culture set up by the management of a firm, that can makechange harder or easier. The definition used for organisational culture is a set of values,beliefs and assumptions shared by the members of the organisation.

Conditioning plays a big part in the effect of performance and motivation in the workplace.Learning and training are crucial for today’s firms and their employees. Both to increaseperformance and motivation but also for the individual and the personal development.Conditioning is a behaviour modification or enhancement, the ethical parts need to beconsidered here (Aydemir, 2015). Classical conditioning means that a person’s naturalresponse is connected with an unnatural trigger of sorts. An example of this is when childrenget gold stars when performing good results. The gold star then triggers a positive reaction,a natural response, in the child. Classical conditioning is also often used in marketing andcommercials, to create a positive reaction when seeing or hearing a commercial. This thenaffects the consumers’ behaviour (Aydemir, 2015). This conditioning is when an individual’sbehaviour or action is reinforced and then the behaviour or action occurs again since theindividual got a confirmation or reinforcement of their behaviour. They could be reinforcedwith primary reinforcements like the ones needed for survival, like food, water etc. Or withsecondary reinforcements like gifts, money or other (Aydemir, 2015).

2.3.1 Implementation Strategy

It is challenging for management to change and model a large firm since its operationsand sells in different environments, the activities that the firms need to be constant over allsites even if the environment is different according to Teece (2014). The environments oftenvary and there may exist a need to create new or adapted markets, a multinational firm’sdynamic capabilities must be amplified and more leveraged than a firm that is only locatedin one nation with fewer ambitions (Teece, 2014). Kotter (1995) has an eight-step modelon how an organisation can make strategic changes. The eight steps are, as seen in figure2.3, the following (Kotter, 1995): first, the highest management needs to create a sense ofurgency and that the change is necessary and important for the future of their business,the second step is for top management to set together a group or team that has power anddrives the new changes. It can consist of good leaders, people that are early adopters andthat are interested in the subject. According to Teece (2014) it is important where to locatethe new process in order to capture and guard the intellectual property a multinational firmhas. The third step according to Kotter (1995)is that the team needs to create a commonvision and strategy for all employees that are affected by the change which is the thirdstep. The fourth step is then for the team to choose a strategy, prepare documentation andspread the common vision to the employees. The fifth step is then to get rid of obstacles,create tools to help the organisation adapt, and encourage the employees to risk and try thenew changes. The sixth step is to create part-time goals in order to fulfil the big goal andmake rewards for the sub-goals it is a way to anchor the wins with the change. The seventh

2.4. Summary 11

step is to improve the new tools or process to work even better and build credibility for thenew change. Institutionalize the new change is the eighth and final step of the strategicmodel and it connects the new wins with the new changes made. In order to consolidatethe change, it makes sure the new changes are embedded in the culture of the organisation.

Kotters’ eight steps of transformation or change have been used in different firms andorganisations to drive change and have been proven to work (Buchanan & Huczynski,2019). This is a method widely used by firms when they want to conduct a large changeto the organisation. It is used when the organisation is large, since then a lot of employeesneed to be on board with the change and it is required to be strategically and efficiently.

Figure 2.3: Kotters’ eight steps, inspired by (Kotter, 1995)

2.4 Summary

The summary aims to highlight the points needed for the rest of the research, the theorysays the following:

• Innovation management is a key factor when it comes to competitiveness. Man-agement faces different challenges today, and they need to create an organisationalstructure to enhance innovation.

• Innovation process in ISO 56000 publication has five steps and is about finding op-portunities, understanding them and then finding a solution.


• Agile and design thinking is iterative methods when developing or working in projects

• When implementing a process it is important to have an implementation strategy

• Kotter’s eight steps is a model to transform or change an organisation

Chapter 3

Method

This chapter describes the method selection, research design, the data collection and howthe data was analysed. It ends with threats of validation to the work and ethics.

3.1 Method Selection

In this section, the choice of research method will be motivated and argued. Differentactivities have been made during the period of the master thesis, it has been a pre-study,literature review, interview, survey, benchmarking and data analysis.

The pre-study involved different stages where the first was to get a broad understandingof the subjects that were intended to study by reading literature. The second step was tostate all definitions of important concepts. The third decision was what methods to use forthe research questions to be answered.

The activities literature review, interview and benchmarking were done in parallel to eachother. They required a lot of reading on the subjects, testing and preparations for theinterviews. The survey was built upon the answers given from the interviews, they includedpreparations in terms of testing the questions and then collecting data.

The last activity that was done was data analysis, a time plan including all the activitiescan be seen in figure 3.1.

13

14 Chapter 3. Method

Figure 3.1: Schematic figure showing the workflow of the research

3.1.1 Qualitative Research

According to Ghauri, Grønhaug, and Strange (2020) the qualitative method emphasises onunderstanding, with a focus on the respondent. The thought of qualitative research is tounderstand and observe the targeted population in its natural environment. It is a goodand commonly used research method when wanting to understand an organisation (Ghauriet al., 2020). The objective of this research is to understand the sub-organisation and itscurrent processes to be able to implement a new process that will make the employees ofthe sub-organisation more innovative.

3.1.2 Different method used

When methods were selected they were used for different activities in the process of thisresearch. In figure 3.2 the activities done can be seen and which methods were used forthese activities. All methods will be discussed further later in the report. When findingdefinitions and conducting a pre-study the methods used were benchmarking and literaturereview. When mapping the current situation the methods used were literature review andinterviews, and the same methods were used when evaluating the process. For mappingthe motivational factors the choice of methods made were literature review, interview andsurvey. Lastly, literature review and benchmarking were used when analysing the result.

Figure 3.2: Methods used in different activities

3.1. Method Selection 15

Case Study

To be able to study the sub-organisation in a real-life context a case study was conducted.The case study method is preferred when the researchers need to have insight within theorganisation (Ghauri et al., 2020). According to Yin (2009) and Runeson, Host, Rainer,and Regnell (2012) case study should be considered as a method when handling researchquestions regarding why or how something is. The reason for choosing to do a case studywas to focus and observe on a single unique case in its own environment. Case studiesare often used when studying an organisation and when identifying different variables orfactors that effects it (Ghauri et al., 2020; Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2019). The casestudy in this research was of a large firm, with both sites and customers all over the world,in the software market. The objective was to understand the complex problem of howto implement an innovation process efficiently and strategic in a sub-organisation withina large-scale organisation. Runeson et al. (2012) describes the case study research designprocess as shown in figure 3.3 and the steps are design, preparation, collection, analysis andreport.

Figure 3.3: Case study research design process, adapted from (Runeson et al., 2012)

A case study was used to be able to get a first-hand observation of an organisation thatcould help answer the research question, on how a global organisation can implement aninnovation process. The chosen method was to do a qualitative interview and a quantitativesurvey. These methods were chosen to get a better perception and understanding of theorganisation, through personal interviews and detailed answers. To validate the answersfrom the interview a survey was sent out to the whole organisation. Due to the time frame,it would have been preferred to take already existing data, but there were no existing dataon the researched subject meaning that it needed to be collected. An experimental methodwas also excluded due to the type of research question.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is when comparing values of the firm to the leading firm in the same oranother industry (Stevenson, 1996), it is basically learning from others and not inventingthe wheel again (Lankford, 2002). According to Bogan and English (1994) the three primarytypes of benchmarking are process benchmarking, performance benchmarking, and strategicbenchmarking. In this research, process benchmarking is used, which relates to the day-to-day operations of the organisation with the task to improve one or many processes.


When choosing benchmark as a method the primary reason to use it was the need to notinvent the wheel again. By looking at how other firms innovate or handle the blockersregarding innovation the Company can learn from the leaders in related industries. Thismethod helps us understand how firms in the industry work with innovation and processes,and therefore benchmarking is used to answer RQ1, on how large software firms work withinnovation today.

Literature review

A literature review is a method used when trying to understand a subject and learn morefrom existing research. It is important to do a systematic review of scientific literature in aspecific area to identify research questions and to be able to answer them (Torres-Carrión,González-González, Aciar, & Rodríguez-Morales, 2018). The methodology mentiond byTorres-Carrión et al. (2018) is divided into three main phases: planning, conducting thereview and reporting the review. The planning phase contains the identification of the needfor the review and development of a review protocol. The conducting of the review phasecontains identification of research, selection of primary studies, study quality assessment,data extraction and motoring, and data synthesis and monitoring. The research starts from"MY" current state of the problem, personal/individual knowledge of the problem and thegoal of the literature review process is to land in "THE" current state of the problemthrough literature. As seen in figure 3.4 the start, as stated, is in the researchers’ currentstate of the problem research and then research questions are formed and a concept map isconducted. Then it is time to find a gap, has this research question already been answered?If yes, then the research question needs to be systematic reviewed, and if not the processwill land in the current state of the problem research.

Figure 3.4: Procedure of literature review, adapter from (Torres-Carrión et al., 2018)

The reason literature review was selected as one of the methods used as data collection inthis research was to be able to answer all of the research questions. It was a good way toget a broad view and knowledge of all the topics that needed to be studied. We could covera lot more knowledge of the area by reading other papers and studies instead of conductingour own experiments.

3.1. Method Selection 17

Interview

The interviews were constructed in a semi-structured way. A semi-structured interviewis when the researchers have a few questions predetermined, but still have the option toclarify if anything is unclear or add a question if it is relevant during the interview (Ghauriet al., 2020). In-depth questions are when the questions of the interview are used moreas a road map, and the purpose of this type of question is to get a deeper knowledge ofthe subject (Ghauri et al., 2020). For interviews the way the questions are formulated andpresented is important. If they are in the "wrong" order the answers may be affected orbiased, therefore the order is important to consider (Ghauri et al., 2020). It is often goodto test the question beforehand on a test group and for the interviewers to practice theirinterview skills, according to Saunders et al. (2019) and Ghauri et al. (2020).

This type of interview was to be able to be more flexible and have a conversation-likeway with the respondents and get more detailed knowledge. Getting more knowledge byasking the respondents directly over teams would give a greater chance to have more in-depth answers rather than written questions. It would also save some time, rather thanchasing the respondents with written questions a meeting was booked. The respondentsare physically in different countries making it hard to have physical face to face meetings,therefore all meetings were held via Microsoft Teams. This method is intended to answerwhat they thought about the proposed process and what factors motivate the employees.This is under the scope of RQ1 and RQ2 on how firms work with innovation today and howto evaluate a process.

Survey

According to Ghauri et al. (2020) the survey method involves collecting data by askingquestioners different questions, either doing it face to face, via telephone or via forms. Asurvey is a good data collecting method if the researcher wants to question a large population(Fink, 2003; Ghauri et al., 2020). When constructing a survey the order of questions hasa great impact on the respondent’s (Ghauri et al., 2020). Fink (2003) argues the need todefine the purpose of the survey, the analysis unit which will be used and the researcheremphasises the importance to have a representative sample of the population related to theresearch problem. According to Ghauri et al. (2020) a survey is a good method to use whenthe researchers need to understand the cause and effect of a subject. When conducting asurvey it is important to understand the problem and the subject to be able to formulaterelevant questions (Ghauri et al., 2020).

The objective of the survey was to gather data from a large population on motivationin order to, later on, be able to describe how to implement a new process. It was themost time-efficient way to collect data, by sending out a form with questions to the wholepopulation that the research affects. The survey was done after the data was collectedfrom the interviews meaning that we had information and data on the subject that wewere investigating, and therefore deemed a survey as a good data collection method. Thismethod is used for answering the motivational factors and what blockers there are, whichis within the scope of answering RQ3 on how to implement a process to be able to manageand execute innovation effectively.


3.2 The context of the Case

The firm selected for the case study is a Swedish software firm with global and large-scalesub-organisations with different products within the telecommunication industry. In thisthesis, the case is how to make the whole sub-organisation more innovative. The sub-organisation is located in Sweden, Brazil, Germany, Canada and India, and consists ofapproximately 1600 employees. The sub-organisation is mostly focused in Sweden, Braziland India.

There is not one collective way of working with innovation across the sub-organisation.They have an internal accelerator, called Ericsson One for Ericsson employees, where thosewith a pioneering new business idea can focus on their innovative business ideas. There isa newly started innovation network within the sub-organisation, where the purpose is tocreate one common way of working with innovation and to promote innovation.

Ericsson has a long history of innovation and high-technology solutions, and the current or-ganisational structure of the sub-organisation contained all the required attributes neededto investigate our research question. Within the sub-organisation, different developmentteams follow the agile practice. The development teams’ tasks are business use cases, prod-uct customisation, maintenance and product improvement. Every task has an estimatedtime frame of certain sprints and it has an expected result.

3.2.1 The proposed innovation process to the case firm

Every step is very well defined, it can be seen in figure 3.5, and it starts with identifyingideas, and then adding them to a backlog for registration. The step after, initiate, is to geta better understanding of the issue at hand. What needs are fulfilled and what challengescan be faced later in the process. The following step includes a decision point, evaluateinternally and evaluate externally, it is an evaluation of the idea which has to be approvedby certain stakeholders if it is worth continuing with the idea or stopping it. There exist aframework for how to evaluate the idea, but it will not be further described in this research.If it was approved the next step is to even further deepen the knowledge about the areaand its objectives, called define and ideate. At this stage, a decision of what budget andresources are to be used needs to be approved. After the approval, the step is to buildprototype of the idea. Here approval for the structure and all the development plans areneeded. After the prototype is okay the, define target architecture, is the step where thearchitecture of the product is developed and then approved by the right board. After that,the updating of the plan is done, called update direction architecture. The last step of thisprocess is called, refine and deploy tool/process. This step involves refining the productand deploying it. It also includes that the stakeholders who planned to use the productshave agreed to use the early version. All the steps described can be seen in the flow chartbelow, where the decision points are also visualised, to create a better understanding of theprocess.

3.3. Data Collection 19

Figure 3.5: Proposed innovation process to implement in sub-organisation, adaptedfrom the Company

The process in figure 3.5 has been colleague reviewed once but has not been approved by acommittee. The material, in which the process was presented, included clear instructions,templates, links and the purpose of the process.

3.3 Data Collection

This section describes the data and the choices made regarding the data and how it washandled after it had been collected. The data was collected in two different ways andwith four different types of methods. The first type is included literature review andbenchmarking, while the later type of methods is interviews and survey. For the personalinterviews, the sample size was constrained to a specifically chosen group of 14 individuals.The budget of time-weighted heavily when the group for the interviews was chosen. Forthe survey it was a much larger group of people, the survey was sent out to the whole sub-organisation to get an overall picture of the opinions of the employees. In total 60 peopleanswered the survey given a response rate on 3,6%

3.3.1 Benchmark

When collecting data through benchmarking there was a need to find out how other largeglobal firms work with innovation. Through their official channels, journals and papers,that discuss their strategy regarding innovation were studied. The articles and paperswere found via the database summon accessed via BTH and through Google scholar. Theinformation on the global and large firms was found on their homepages and in debatearticles covering innovation and the strategy they have chosen.


3.3.2 Literature review

The selected subjects that we used in our literature review were innovation processes,innovation management, implementation strategy, and factors for motivation. Some ofthe keywords searched for were motivation, implementing process, gamification, evaluationof the process, innovation management. To find these subjects we used the BTH databaseSummon and Google Scholar to find articles and books.

3.3.3 Interview

To be able to gain as much knowledge as possible from interviews a lot of time was spent onpreparation before the interviews were held. First, of constructing questions with correctformulations, the questions was based on what the literature said about innovation andmotivational factors. A test group of 5 people was interviewed to be able to try the questionsand to practice holding interviews. The test group consisted of two persons with greatexperience in conducting their own interviews, one person in the sub-organisation and twowith experience with working with innovation. After each test interview, the questions werereviewed and improved.

As mentioned in 3.2 the sub-organisation is located in Sweden, Brazil, Canada, Germanyand India with approximately 1600 employees. Therefore the whole population is 1600, andthe sample size is 14 people non-random selected. The reason these people were chosen asrespondents to the interview was because of their membership in the innovation networkin the sub-organisation. The innovation network represents all 5 sites, however, somerepresentatives represent more than their site. Here all the risks were considered andevaluated when choosing persons to interview. The first critical part was choosing thenumber of respondents, when we found the innovation network that stretched over all thesites of the sub-organisation we choose to interview them. They all had a great interestin innovation and we assumed they had a different experience with actually working withinnovation. That in itself was a risk of biased answers since they all were assumed to beworking with it. However, they were the right person to interview since they had all theinformation on how each site works with innovation.

When starting the interviews a request of recording the interview was asked to be able toprocess the data afterwards. The purpose of the recordings was to be able to create anunbiased result and to be able to go back and listen again to the answers. Other importantinformation was presented before the actual interview was held. This was done so thatthe respondents felt comfortable and built credibility for the study. The interviews wereheld by us, and we decided to take turns holding the interviews to make it simpler for therespondents. Meanwhile one held the interview, and the other took notes to capture notonly what they said but what they meant.

After the interviews were conducted, a transcription of the recordings was done to be ableto understand the data better. The transcription was done by using Microsoft Word andthe function dictate to get the recordings into text, and thereafter the text was processed,and the result was documented.

3.3. Data Collection 21

3.3.4 Survey

The purpose of the survey was to find the factors which motivate and what factors pre-vent employees to work with innovation. The whole sub-organisation was the populationused for the survey and is at the meso level. The survey was created after the data fromthe interviews were processed, the questions were based on the results from the interviewsand previously studied literature. One of the theories the questions were based on wasHerzberg’s theory about motivation with hygiene and motivation factors. Herzberg arguesthat there exist hygiene factors that will not motivate the employees, but if the need isn’tfulfilled the employees’ motivation will be negatively impacted. The factors Herzberg de-fines as hygiene factors are: company policy and administration, supervision, interpersonalrelationship, working condition, salary, status, and security. On the other hand, Herzbergdefines motivation factors that will impact the motivation positively and these factors areachievements, recognition of achievements, work itself, responsibility, advancement, andgrowth. When defining the hygiene factors Herzberg argues the need to take into accountthe culture if it is a country that is in a worse position. For example, will salary be botha motivation and hygiene factor, a base salary will only impact negatively if it is not ful-filled but a higher salary will increase motivation (Herzberg, 2005). The way the questionswere formulated was tested before the survey was sent out to the whole population. Thequestions were then revised and improved to capture the right data. The survey was donevia Microsoft forms, that was due to that the Company uses that tool when conductingsurveys. The idea was that it created a familiarity feeling and a sense of recognition for therespondents. The survey included statements, multiple answers, and free text questions,the survey questions can be seen in the appendix at the end of the paper.

In the survey, there were several questions asked with a scale from strongly agree to stronglydisagree. The questions were asked to gather data on what factors motivate or blockemployees to work with innovation. The questions were based on the results from theprevious interviews that were conducted. The reason this was done was for us to eitherconfirm or deny the findings from the interviews.

By sending out the survey to the whole population, all employees from sub-organisation,everyone had a chance to answer, but we realised beforehand that there was a great risk ofonly a few people would take time and answer our questions. That would mean that theanswers were biased, since only the people interested enough to read the newsletter and wethen assume that they are interested in innovation would answer. We, therefore, asked theinnovation network to send out the survey to their teams if they had any and then if wedid not get any answers they could choose about 5 persons whom we could make contactwith personally and ask them to answer our survey. That was only in order for us to getthe number of answers that we needed to have in order for us to analyse the data anddraw some conclusions. There was also a clear risk of obliquely distributed answers, in twoaspects. The first aspect is that it was only the same type of role or only employees fromthe same team that would answer. The second aspect was that it was a risk that only afew of the sites would answer the survey, meaning that the answers are not representativeof the different sites.

The survey was sent out to the innovation network participants, that sent the survey totheir teams. It was also sent out to the whole sub-organisation via a newsletter, that is senteach month. The aim was to get circa 10% of the sub-organisation to answer but learnedquickly the difficulty of sending the survey impersonal through a newsletter. The lack


of answers made us change tactics, and send out personal messages through their businesscommunication platform to fewer selected persons. In the end, a total of 60 people answeredthe survey and the answer frequency was circa 90% of the selected employees.

3.4 Data Analysis

When analysing the data it is important to understand what kind of research it is, how thedata is gathered and how it should be analysed (Ghauri et al., 2020). Firstly, an analyseof the data gathered from the literature review and benchmarking were done. Then thefindings were categorised to get an overview of the data and then try to summarise theinformation on the selected subjects. Then the findings were analysed and connected tothe data from interviews and surveys.

The data from the interviews were categorised, firstly it was categorised regarding theirway of working, their role and an id was given to each respondent. The other data whichwere categorised was the feedback regarding the proposed innovation process. The cate-gories were selected to gain knowledge and understanding from the data collected from theinterviews.

The data collected from the survey were designed to be rated and be able to calculate anaverage, minimum and maximum value to be able to see and understand the motivationfactors of the employees. The data was analysed through a pie chart to see the employees’opinions on motivation.

Due to the type of research question and data collected it was not an option to makestatistical callculations since it would not give a deeper knowledge of the data.

3.5 Threats to Validity

When collecting data several factors can threaten the validity and credibility of the data.The validity of a study regards how trustworthy the result from the research can be and towhich extent the result has been affected by bias (Runeson et al., 2012). In all researches,there is a need for validity and in qualitative research, there are different types of validitythat usually are emphasized. In this research, we used Runeson et al.s (2012) classificationscheme which is used by other, i.e. Yin (2015). The scheme is made for flexible design stud-ies and distinguishes between four aspects of viability: construct validity, internal validity,external validity, and reliability.

3.5.1 Construct Validity

A threat to constructed validity can be if the researcher and interviewed persons have notinterpreted the interview questions in the same way (Runeson et al., 2012). In order tominimize the risk of this threat, we interviewed a diverse group of people to validate ourquestions. Having semi-structured questions allowed the respondent to ask questions when

3.5. Threats to Validity 23

they did not understand, or the interviewer the ability to clarify if something were unclearor the respondent did not answer the asked question (Runeson et al., 2012).

3.5.2 Internal Validity

The internal validity is the aspect of concern when causal relations are examined, andthe unawareness from the researcher’s of the factors that may affect the investigations. Itcan also be the factors which the researchers cannot control the effect of (Runeson et al.,2012). By reading and studying others’ research and theories we tried to prevent this asmuch as possible, to create awareness and be prepared if something unexpected would havehappened. We started to understand the current situation by interviewing the employees inthe sub-organisation to gain a better understanding. The most important factor where weworked with internal validity was when understanding the interview bias. The test groupbefore interviewing the employees were to learn to react natural and have as clear questionsas possible.

One clear risk of validity that we could identify before the data was collected was that theemployee behind the process was involved in the thesis. That is a risk that we were awareof, and since we were aware of the risk it was handled and we would report the findingsthat we found even though they were negative or positive or non-conclusive.

3.5.3 External Validity

External validity is about the ability to generalise the findings in the case study, and howinteresting it is to other people outside of the organisation in the case (Runeson et al.,2012). By connecting and comparing the results with other research and theories we wereable to validate our results. Through this, the results was made generalised and use-ablefor large organisations with a similar environment as the case firm.

3.5.4 Reliability

In this research, reliability is defined as how accurate and consistent a result is over timeand how well it represents the total population (Golafshani, 2003). If the research has highreliability it is applicable to firms for a long time (Golafshani, 2003). The problem withthis definition is that it is hard to predict how applicable the research will be in a fewyears. Meaning that it is hard to evaluate if the work is reliable within the time frame. Bycomparing the results with other general theories and papers, assumptions can be madethat it will at least with today’s theories and knowledge can be generalise-able and reliablefor at least a certain time period.


3.5.5 Interview and Survey bias

When collecting data through interviews the interviewer might influence the responder,ways to counteract these influences is to know what factors might influence (Saunders etal., 2019). By acting and reacting neutrally to their responses, not uninterested but nottoo enthusiastic, and by having a posture that is both open and signals that we listened.This way the influence was minimised on the respondents. According to Ghauri et al.(2020) the risk of bias can also be from the response, they consciously or subconsciouslydisclose information from the answer. The risk of missing information by asking a questionthat is too broad or too narrow is also something to take into account when consideringbias (Saunders et al., 2019; Ghauri et al., 2020). A survey may be biased in the way thequestions are asked, formulated and in what order they are asked (Saunders et al., 2019;Ghauri et al., 2020). By testing the questions beforehand on several people we minimisedthe biased answers to the best of our abilities.

3.6 Ethics

As researchers, we need to evaluate the objects that are researched if they have any potentialor actual cause to harm anybody. We had a responsibility to make sure to not cross anyethics violations (Ghauri et al., 2020). The data that was handled was not in any way anethical violation, but we had a responsibility to make sure that no firm information wasleaked. We had to sign non-disclosure agreements and the supervisor from the case firm hadto approve the material that we shared with others and the final result that was published.

Chapter 4

Results and Analysis

This chapter contains the result from the benchmark, literature review, interviews andsurvey. The result is further analysed in this chapter as well.

4.1 Findings of the current situation in the softwareindustry

In the following section, the findings from the literature and interviews will be presented.

4.1.1 How do firms work with innovation today

When understanding how to innovate and tackle the difficulties that come with innovation,it is a good idea to look at how other big companies have succeeded in the aspect ofinnovation. According to Ahmed (2021) Apple is the leader in innovation year 2021, thenGoogle, Amazon and Microsoft. Therefore, when deciding how to innovate there is no needto invent the wheel again and instead take a look at how the leaders do. Apple, Google andMicrosoft are the firms selected to investigate since they are in the software developmentindustry.

Apple made an organisational change when Steve Jobs came back in 1997 as CEO again,where they laid off all their general manager of all units and combined the different func-tional departments of the business units into a functional organization (Podolny & Hansen,2020). Podolny and Hansen (2020) goes on and discusses Apple’s choice for leaders, andthe three characteristically leaders they. The first are in-depth expertise that gives themthe ability to participate meaningfully in all tasks performed in their duties. Second, anin-depth study of the details of these features. Lastly, willingness to join discussions aboutother responsibilities during the overall decision-making process.

As seen on the Googles website they have eight principles embedded in the culture andthey are (Workspace, n.d.):

25

26 Chapter 4. Results and Analysis

1. Think 10 times bigger

2. Launch the product, then keep listening to the feedback

3. Share everything you can

4. Hire the right persons

5. Use the 70/20/10 model

6. Look for ideas everywhere

7. Use data, not opinions

8. Don’t focus on the competitors, focus on the users

These principles are the reason Google keeps innovating and is the market leader. They fo-cus on collaboration and encouragement for their employees to innovate and work together.The 70/20/10 model is where 70% is dedicated directly to Google’s core business, 20% isrelated to Google’s core business and the last 10% are unrelated to Google’s core business.

According to Microsoft’s website, they focus on three main aspects of innovation: innova-tion for lasting impact, innovation for action, and innovation with responsibility in mind.Microsoft was one of the earlier companies which modernized the top-down approach toimprove innovation (Mehta, 2021). Microsoft knew not only leaders had good ideas, andthe need to harvest the good ideas from all parts of the company. The creation of theMicrosoft Garage was with the idea of creating support, help and space for employees torealize their ideas (Mehta, 2021).

For a company it is important to work with innovation and innovation process to createinnovative products or outputs (Žižlavsky, 2013). If the innovation process is fully func-tional it should have created a sustainable market or a sustainable internal process for theorganisation. In figure 4.1 the three steps in an innovation process model can be seen andthey are searching, select and implement. According to Tidd and Bessant (2020) this isthe underlying process of innovation and is common to all firms. It should also handle thetransaction from the product development and launch management to the operation andmaintenance management (Žižlavsky, 2013).

Figure 4.1: Innovation Process Model, adapted from (Koukis & Koulioimpas, 2015)

4.1. Findings of the current situation in the software industry 27

4.1.2 Size matters

According to Tidd and Bessant (2020) the size of the firm will impact the innovation processand how innovation is managed. The size of the organisation affects how the organisationalstructures look, the bigger the firm is the more complex it becomes and the need forstructures becomes greater (George & Jones, 2012). Large firms use a structural way toorganise the change of going towards a more innovative mindset (George & Jones, 2012;Chesbrough & Brunswicker, 2013). The hardest part of innovation in a large firm is thechange from ordinary product development to following an innovation process. Managersin large firms consider the cultural mindset as important as the formal standards when itcomes to innovation (Chesbrough & Brunswicker, 2013).

According to Lindegaard (2019) there are several differences regarding innovation in smallfirms compared to large firms. These risks are risk management, decision making and itsspeed, resources, processes, the number of rules or habits and the ability to be able to breakthem, and the definition of innovation. When looking at large firms and comparing themto small firms it is important to understand that the term ’small’ firm is broad, and itcan mean anything from the hairdresser on your street to a tech start-up in Silicon Valley.How small firms innovate differs, but advantages and disadvantages can be seen in overallmarkets. The authors Tidd and Bessant (2020) argue that the bigger a firm is the moredifficult it is for the managers to have perfect knowledge of what goes on inside the firm.They continue to argue that small firms possess advantages regarding their size, such as theability to react faster and in rapid decision-making. The limits exist as well, and mostlythe limits are regarding resources (Tidd & Bessant, 2020).

4.1.3 The Current Situation in the case firm regarding inno-vation process

When discussing the current situation in the Company’s sub-organisation regarding innova-tion processes it is important to understand that the view of innovation may differ betweenindividuals. When the respondents described what innovation was for them, the wordingdiffered but the meaning was the same: innovation is solving a problem in a new way. Itcan be a problem as in making a product better or it can be a new product or process.

The way of working with innovation differed between teams and sites, but the answerscould be categorized and the categories, as seen in table 4.2, are: managing the team andencouraging innovation, clear instruction and a rough process, embedded in the culture,and workshops and activities to enrich innovation. In table 4.1 which role the respondenthas and which country their site is located in.

As seen in tables 4.2 and 4.1 when employees with a role as a developer were asked aboutthe way of working with innovation the answers were that the way of working is embeddedinto the culture. Meanwhile, if the employee was a manager the way of working withinnovations where focused on management and how to convey clear instructions. Whatwe gathered from the interviews was that a big part of innovation and the way of workingwere about managing a team and encouraging innovation, and workshops and activities toenrich innovation. It can be seen that India, Germany and Sweden have workshops andactivities as their many ways of working with innovation while Brazil mostly answered clear


Table 4.1: Explanation of which role and country each ID has

ID Role Country1 Managers India2 Manager Sweden3 Manager Brazil4 Manager Sweden5 Architect Brazil6 Developer Brazil7 Manager Sweden8 Manager India9 Manager Germany10 Manager Sweden11 Architect India12 Development India13 Manager India14 Developer Brazil

instructions or rough processes excising.

Table 4.2: Ways of working with innovation

ID Way of working

1,2,3,4 Managing the team and encouraging innovation5,7,14 Clear instructions, rough process6,12 Embedded in the culture

8,9,10,11,13 Workshops and activities to enrich innovation

4.2 How to evaluate a process

In this section, the focus is on how to evaluate a process. Firstly, a dive into the literatureto find why and how to evaluate the process. When understanding that, an evaluation ofthe proposed method is shown in 3.2 with data gathered in interviews.

4.2.1 What the literature say

According to Kylèn (2008) there are always one or more stakeholders that want the eval-uation to be done. However, there might be different reasons why the evaluation is to bedone (Kylèn, 2008). In this case, it is from the positive basis to evolve, hopefully, improveand keep up with the changes in the market, or even be market leaders. The purpose of theevaluation is to learn and the company gets our point of view on a process. The reason forevaluating a process is to study and improve a course of events that are pre-set. Evaluating

4.2. How to evaluate a process 29

effectiveness is often a question about the allocation of resources and what step to do atwhat stage, so that the resources are allocated as good as possible (Kylèn, 2008). Theresources can be money, personnel, machines and other things. In our case, it is money andknowledge allocation.

It is complex to evaluate a process, to evaluate their needs to be some kind of measurements,and what could be measured in a process that has not yet been implemented and workedin. According to Boly, Morel, Camargo, et al. (2014) the input can be measured in manydifferent ways, one common is in terms of resources put into R&D. For output there couldbe performance measurements, the number of patents or other measurements, that can bemeasured and evaluated if the process is adequate for the organisation (Boly et al., 2014).

4.2.2 Evaluation of Proposed Innovation Process from casefirm

An innovation process has been developed as a proposal for the sub-organisation. To fullyunderstand the process the given material were studied and in the interviews feedback onthe process were asked for. The purpose of the process is to provide a systematic and clearguide for the planning and execution of technology leadership, projects and innovation.The process covers all the main steps or decision points from defining an idea to the partof industrialization, and what stakeholders should participate at which stage. The wholeprocess should follow the agile way of working, such as stand-ups and time-boxing.

From the interviews, data and feedback were gathered about the process meant to helpcome up with innovations. The respondents only got to look at the flow chart presentedabove, and then give feedback. The process has more information, documentation and loopsthat can not be seen in the flow chart. Therefore the feedback given during the interviewscan be seen as unfair. The answers, as seen in table 4.3, were given by respondents and onerespondent often gave more than one answer. The most common answer was that it had toomany gates and stages. It needed to be more iterative and more agile. Together, those twoaspects were the most frequent feedback given in the interviews. The feedback about lackof feedback at the end of the process, the argument given in the interviews was regardingdemotivating for not knowing why it didn’t happen or why it failed. The other feedbackthat was given was the need for defining the target and prototype earlier in the process andalso clarification of where the idea comes from. Another concern was the difficulty with theone-size-fits-all type of process and also the need for "define and ideate" was questionedsince most people have a clear view of this in this state. Lastly a suggestion for a stage withso-called "external coaching" meaning coaching from colleagues and friends with things orsubjects outside their expertise.


Table 4.3: Feedback on proposed process from interviews.

Result from interview Amount of time answered

Too many gates and stages 6Need to be more iterative 4

No feedback-loop in the end 2Define target and prototype

too late in the process 1

Difficult to have one-size-fits-alltype of process 1

Clear step for where the ideas come from 1Is it necessary to have “define and ideate” since most have

an idea when they start looking at this process? 1

Need for “external coaching”, help from colleagues andfriends with things outside of expertise 1

During the interviews, it could be seen that the overall feedback from Brazil and India waspositive, and this might be a cultural difference between the countries. This is outside ofthe scope of this research and will therefore not be investigated, but is still an interestingfinding from the interviews.

4.3 Factors that enable innovation

When discussing motivation it is important to understand the different ways of using theword motivation. According to Buchanan and Huczynski (2019), the use of motivation ineveryday language can be categorized in three ways: the goal that people have, the mentalprocess that lead people to pursue particular goals, and the social processes through whichsome individuals try to change the behaviour of others. It is important to understandthe difference and how to use the different types of motivation when wanting to changeor implement something new. Management needs to engage and keep the motivation ofthe employees through a change, like implementing a new process. If management wantsto have an organisation that fulfils the worker’s needs and a dynamic environment it isimportant to know what motivates the members (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2019).

Work motivation is, according to George and Jones, defined as the psychological factors inan employee that show through behaviour, effort level and persistence when facing differentobstacles. Intrinsic motivation, according to Ryan and Deci (2000), is important and presentin every individual, which stimulates the desire to overcome challenges, be creative and,most importantly, learn. Intrinsic motivators are a behaviour that is performed for theirown sake since they fulfil an inner motivational factor. Extrinsic motivators are tasks thatare done to avoid consequences or acquire social and material rewards. An example is toget a raise in the salary or a better position in the organisation (George & Jones, 2012;Singh, 2016; Ryan & Deci, 2000). Management should build their organisational culturewith intrinsic motivators but also use extrinsic motivators such as money to even furthermotivate the employees.

4.3. Factors that enable innovation 31

4.3.1 Motivation factors according to the interviews

Factors which motivate the employees to innovate were retrieved from the interview but inthe end, it is an intinsic motivation element that some people like it and some people do not.It depends on who you are as a person and what interests you. The factors of motivationwhich were found were rewards, money, and recognition. The blockers that were found inthe organisation were lack of time, there may be a lack of innovation in the organisationalculture and some people do not find it interesting. The employees only have the time forthe core business. When asked how to solve the time issue the response was that theyneeded to get an agreement with their manager to set some time for innovation. It alsoshowed that the work of innovation needs to be planned, meaning that it can not happenspontaneous, due to the time issue. The blocker that there is a lack of informational mindsetin the culture could be observed in one of the sites where the employees felt that there isnot a culture of sharing ideas with each other, which may benefit innovation. To overcomethis blocker management needs to make it clear and show the employees that it is okay toshare ideas and allowed to fail with their ideas. According to Singh (2016) to motivate andengage the employees the management needs to focus on building a deep organisationalculture. Where the employees get respect, trust, recognition and an individual plan forgrowth and development in order for them to feel motivated and engaged (Singh, 2016).The last blocker was that some people just find it interesting and like to innovate and somedo not. That is connected to intrinsic and inner motivation, it is something that fulfils aninner enjoyment (Singh, 2016).

4.3.2 Motivation factors according to the survey

In total 60 people answered the survey, which is a response rate of 3.6 %, and figure 4.2shows the number who responded while the analyse of the data will be in percent. Thefirst question asked was if they feel motivated to work with innovation if they get supportfrom their managers and 58% of the respondents answered that they strongly agree and31% said that they partly agree. This means that 89% of the respondents feel that they getmotivated to work with innovation when they get support from management. That can beseen in the figure 4.2a.

One of the blockers found in the interviews was the lack of time to work with innovation.The question asked in the survey was if the employees feel motivated but do not have thetime to innovate 30% experience that they strongly agree and approximately 37% experiencethat they partly agree. The majority experienced that they have the motivation to innovatebut lack the time to do it. See in figure 4.2b.

The lack of support from managers is evenly distributed between the scale as seen in figure4.2c, except strongly agree there only 8.3% strongly agree that the lack of support frommanagement prevents them from innovating. Support and security from management is ahygiene factor for the employees in any firm (Herzberg, 2005) and it is a factor that affectsthe motivation and the creativity of the employees. From the results, it can be seen thatfew feel that they do not have the right support from management and that it affects theirability to innovate.

One aspect that was highlighted during one of the interviews was the opinion that some


people like to innovate and some do not, and that is due to their personality or interestand had nothing about the organisation or management. The last scale question was if itwas due to a lack of creativity that they do not work with innovation and the result can beseen in figure 4.2d. Here 52% answered that they strongly disagree and 20% said that theypartly disagree. Here it is a clear majority that disagrees partly or strongly, meaning thatthey are creative and therefore work with innovation.

(a) Support from manager (b) Lack of time, motivator

(c) Lack of support (d) Not a creative person

Figure 4.2: Factors for motivation and blockers

To be able to understand what incitement motivates employees to work with innovation,the respondents in the survey were asked to rate their answers from 0 to 10 where 0 was nomotivation at all and 10 was the main factor for motivation. The incitement for motivationthat was asked, as seen in table 4.4, were money, recognition, to be published and to createvalue to the Company. In total a factor could get 600, if all 60 respondents gave the factor10 points. The most important factors, according to the result of the survey, were to createvalue with an average of 7,92 with a total of 475. The least important factor was money withan average of 5,45 with a total of 327. The average for motivations from being published is6,32 with a total of 379 and lastly, recognition has an average of 7,75 with a total of 465.All the answers have a maximum of 10 and a minimum of 0.

4.4. How to implement a process 33

Table 4.4: Motivation factors result from survey in rating

Result from survey Total Max Min Average

To create value tothe Company motivates me

to work with innovation475 10 0 7,92

Recognition motivates meto work with innovation 465 10 0 7,75

To be published motivatesme to work with innovation 379 10 0 6,32

Money motivates meto work with innovation 327 10 0 5,45

As seen in table 4.5, the answers from the survey on the questions "What can boost inno-vation in the Company", one of the respondents did not give an answer and therefor thereis a total of 59 answers, and the answers were categorised into 6 categories. The categoriesare time, culture, management, increase in salary, recognition & reward, and activities toencourage. The most common answer, for example, is an answer "Me and my team mem-bers are over loaded with work. Even if we have some innovative ideas, we don’t get timeto implement those". The way of boosting innovation, according to the answers from thesurvey, is by giving them time and the ability to work with their innovative ideas. The sec-ond most mentioned is activities to encourage innovation, such as use-cases and hackatons.The third answer were culture, meaning creating an organisational culture which engageand boost innovation, and it can also be dependent on management which were the fourthmost answered category. The two least mention categories were recognition and reward,and increase of salary. These can also be seen in table 4.4, were money also were the leastanswered option.

Table 4.5: Categories for what can boost innovation

Category Times answeredTime 29

Activities to encourage 10Culture 9

Management 7Recognition & reward 3

Increase of salary 1

4.4 How to implement a process

According to Zheng, Yang, and McLean (2010) knowledge management have a great im-pact on organisation culture and effectiveness. Meaning that if the management handlesknowledge about the market and its employees they can impact the culture and the effec-tiveness of the organisation (Zheng et al., 2010). It is also a key factor in innovation success(Büschgens, Bausch, & Balkin, 2013). When looking at an organisation’s culture it can


be tracked to the founders and strong leaders (Schein, 1992). If there are strong leadersthere is a bigger chance for the new values of an innovation process to be implemented inthe organisational culture. Just as Kotter (1995) mentioned in the second step of imple-menting a new process it is important to establish a strong group of leaders that drives theimplementation.

When implementing a process it is also important to have clear instructions, and whenconsidering the ISO 56000 standard. One part is the ISO 56000 standard consists of clearinstructions and that it should be clear where to find the processor instructions regardinginnovation. Therefore we asked if there was a lack of instructions regarding the innovationprocess and if that had any effect on if they innovate or not and the result can be seen infigure 4.3. Here 30% answered that they strongly agree, meaning they experience that itis a clear lack of instructions and it affects the way they innovate. Only 1.6%, meaningone respondent, strongly disagree. Then it is fairly evenly distributed between part agree,neither and partly disagree.

Figure 4.3: Lack of clear instruction

4.4.1 Gamification as a tool of implementing a process

One finding to help implement a process with clear instruction and to remove obstaclesis gamification. Gamification is a way of motivating and engaging people through gameelements, mechanics, features, design, and structure in a non-game environment or context(Alsawaier, 2018; Hamari, Koivisto, & Sarsa, 2014; Kapp, 2012; Zichermann & Cunning-ham, 2011). The game mechanism, which is mostly used in gamification, are avatars,badges, points, levels, leader board, virtual rewards, and storyline or quests but it is notlimited to these mechanism (Kapp, 2012). According to Alsawaier (2018) literature study,it could be seen that many studies indicate that gamification will increase the engage-ment and involvement in learning for students (Alsawaier, 2018). According to Lombriser,Dalpiaz, Lucassen, and Brinkkemper (2016) gamification achievements are dependent onwhat types of game elements and mechanics there are in the game. They showed that thereis an increase in the requirements production and that it was of a higher quality and morecreative. The gamification element of the individual leader-board and the chance of win-ning different prizes created a positive reaction regarding the incentives and competition.Gamification is touching upon conditioning, where an individual’s behaviour is reinforcedpositively and will therefore most likely repeat the behaviour (Aydemir, 2015). If the em-ployees get rewards or the use of a gamification tool is reinforced positively it is more likelyfor the employees to use it again since it was a positive experience.

Chapter 5

Discussion

This chapter aims to discuss the findings of this master thesis and the implications forresearch and practice.

5.1 Evaluation of Proposed Process

It can be seen from figure 3.5 that the process comes from, design thinking. The process hasthe typical characteristic of a design thinking method with the steps: empathize, define,ideate, prototype, and test (Doorley et al., 2018) as seen in figure 2.2. The agile anditerative way of working can also be seen in the process, with the ability to handle changeand there is no need to go linear instead it goes in loops and cycles.

The feedback given in the interviews shows the importance of displaying the process in aclear way and the need for more information. When implementing a process it should comewith more instructions than only a flow chart of the process. The way of collecting thedata by only showing the picture of the flow chart might have given a distorted view to therespondents regarding the process and how it should be worked with. The balance betweentime consumption and clarity was made, but in hindsight, it could be balanced better withmore understanding of the process and where it came from to better answer questions orclarify the process. This answers research question two regarding the evaluation of theproposed innovation process.

As seen in the chapter 4 the current way of working with innovation is depending on whatrole the person had or which site they work at. The developers saw it as a part of theculture and identity of the firm, meanwhile, the managers experienced it was to conveyclear instructions and engage the employees. To have the ISO 56002 standard it must be aclear process used throughout the sub-organisation with clear instructions and easy to findfor everyone. As stated before there is clearer instruction than shown in this research andalso shown in the interviews, but the biggest problem will be to implement it throughoutthe whole sub-organisation.

There was a risk of the author of the process getting involved with the evaluation of theprocess, but it was nothing that affected the work or the evaluation.

35

36 Chapter 5. Discussion

5.2 Implementation of Process

When analysing the data, time was found to be the factor which prevent the employees frominnovating the most. The structure and the way they work is not allowing the employeesin the organisation to innovate. This is the problem with large organisations, they have anestablished way of working and the time spent is only spent on the core business. Thatis why it is hard to innovate, the innovations they want are not in line with their regularproducts and are therefore not included in the schedule. One way to prevent the lack oftime issue is to set aside a certain amount of time each week or something similar, worktime unrelated to the core business, and as seen in chapter 2, both Google and Apple workwith time-planing to give the employees the time and ability to work with innovation a fewhours a week. They also structure the organisation in a way that encourages innovation(Podolny & Hansen, 2020), meaning they do not have too many layers with managers. Themanagers work by trying to engage and motivate the employees to innovate more. Thiscould also be seen at Microsoft, by modernising the structure and allowing everyone towork with innovation and presenting new ideas. Here it can be seen how other firms inthe software development industry work with innovation today, and this is connected toresearch question 1.

When looking at motivation the result showed that the majority of the employees feelmotivated when they get support from management. When asked if the lack of supportprevented them from innovating, they thought that it did not matter or that it had noinfluence on the innovation. This confirmed that some people like to innovate and findsit interesting and that is the biggest motivational factor. Some people just find it funand interesting meanwhile some do not like it at all and would rather work with the corebusiness. This also confirms the hygiene factors, support will only give a negative effect ifit is not there. When the employees were asked and answered the lack of support didn’tprevent them it can be seen as the support is there and therefore not a problem.

Some extrinsic factors affect motivation like money, recognition is valued high and creatingvalue for the organisation is also valued high. These are needed together with intrinsicfactors to create an organisational culture and to engage and motivate (Singh, 2016). Theintrinsic motivation an employee has can be seen in that even though there is a lack ofsupport from management the employees innovate, this is due to interest and the need tochallenge, develop and be creative (Ryan & Deci, 2000). The managers need to build aculture where all the needs are fulfilled like recognition, personal growth and other things(Singh, 2016). When making time for the employees it is important to create an environmentwhere it is encouraging and make a plan for the individuals who want to innovate. It canbe to create teams, workshops or other activities that activate and challenge the employees.A tool that has game elements and mechanisms may engage, and create a consistencyin the organisation that innovation is something that is a fundamental part of the corebusiness. However, not only something that is done extra on the side. Gamification canhelp create more creative, qualified and unique requirements if there are game elementsinvolved. The advantage of the better-developed requirements can lead to better userstories in the backlog. The better the user stories are the better the estimations are andtherefore often more customer-friendly and more satisfying for the customers (Lombriser etal., 2016).

Different activities were implied to be helpful and appreciated when employees wanted

5.3. Impact on the result 37

to innovate more. Hackathons were truly engaging, the activity and the game elementsof solving a problem together with others with leader boards for the best solution aregenuinely effective. To further strengthen this engagement for an organisation to innovatemore it is important to do it more consistently and more organised. Rather than a oncea year occasion. The factor lack of time for innovation could be handled so that a themeof a hackathon could be to develop a gamification tool. Then it is an activity that boostscreativity and still provides a tool to the organisation. By having a tool that activates theemployees it becomes a more natural or obvious part of the organisation. It would boostcreativity and collaboration between colleagues if the tool has a feature for working togetherand not only competing with each other. This is one part of the answer to research questionthree on how to implement a innovation process.

5.2.1 Implementation strategy

From observations that have been made during the period of the master thesis is that firmsuse Kotter’s eight steps to change the organisation. The first step was to create a senseof urgency for the new change of more innovation. It is brought up by different levels ofmanagement around the sub-organisation. For the second step, creating a group of personsthat has some influence that will drive the change. It could be seen as the innovationnetwork or a group of managers that drives the change. They drive and lead changes, theylay the foundation and create all the materials needed for the rest of the organisation’s needsto innovate. That is step three in the process of change, that the driving group creates theone common vision for all the employees. The next step is to spread the vision, and that hasbeen done by monthly letters sent out to the whole sub-organisation. There are activitieslike inspiration talks and in the newsletter, they try to connect the wins to the innovationinvestment they have done. The hard part for them is to take away the obstacles, whichis time. There is a clear lack of time to innovate, and there are no tools at the presentfor boosting engagement in the sub-organisation. Part-time goals may be to have a certainnumber of ideas in the backlog or the number of applied patents or something similar. Theimprovement stage applies to all the part like the process, the templates and any possibletools they may have. This to keep improving all the time which makes it more engaging forthe employees. It is also important to recognise the employees that contribute with goodideas to others both to show that it pays off and that the ideas are not forgotten. Theyneed to be highlighted and explained where they go if the employees feel like their ideasonly "disappear" in a tool or a backlog that decreases their motivation. This is the secondpart of the answer to research question three.

5.3 Impact on the result

We could see that it was hard collecting the data that was needed since few responded. Thesurvey was distributed to the whole organisation but only approximately 3,6% participated.That itself shows that the priority is not on innovation and news regarding innovation, butrather on the core business. Therefore the motivation and engagement need to increaseamong the employees, via the managers that promote innovation in different ways.

When choosing to only interview the innovation network it had a clear advantage since

38 Chapter 5. Discussion

they had experience of working with innovation that the rest of the sub-organisation didnot have. The disadvantage of them being too involved and familiar with the process wasconsidered, but we did not find that a problem. The observations that we have done arethat they all gave true answers and all said their honest opinions and gave good feedback.We could see some cultural differences in the answers overall but that is not of the scopeof this master thesis. The biggest risk with the survey was that only employees that areinterested in innovation and innovation would answer it, we are aware that the answers maybe biased in that sense. It is one factor that we could not remove or counteract but only beaware of. We saw a tendency that some of the sites had a much higher response rate thanother sites. Here we can see that the number of employees is greater at the sites with moreanswers, meaning that the distribution of the answers is evenly distributed to the numberof the employees at the site.

Chapter 6

Conclusions and Future Work

In this thesis, we evaluated a process and explored how to implement an innovation process.To be able to do this, we have investigated innovation management, innovation process,implementation strategy, and motivation. A case study at a software firm was conductedto gain knowledge about innovation and motivation. In total 14 interviews and a surveywith 60 answers were conducted to better understand the situation today at the firm. Aftercollecting the data and analysing of literature to relate the findings from the case studywere done to be able to answer our research questions:

RQ1: How do large software development firms work with innovation today?

There exist different problems with innovation today, where the factor that is preventingfirms to innovate is the lack of time. Using a strategy for allocating time would makeit easier for the employees at a firm to develop innovative ideas instead of dedicating allthere time on the core business, this would probably increase innovation in a large softwaredevelopment firm. Today Google have a strategy where they use the so-called 70/20/10model, where 70% is dedicated to core business, 20% is related to core business, and 10%is to work with new ideas.

Today in the case firm there are ways of working with innovation, some written down andsome more informal. It differs between sites, teams and roles, and the case would benefitfrom implementing a process and have every employee working with innovation in the sameway.

RQ2: How can an innovation process be evaluated? The reason to evaluate is to learn bystudying and improving a course of events. Evaluating effectiveness is often a question abouthow to allocate resources. Often a process is evaluated by put input into the process andevaluation the output, but the complexity comes when the process is not yet implementing.

The given process was evaluated on how some input was process and what output it gener-ated. First it is important to understand where the process comes from and how it shouldbe used. There should be clear instructions, it should be easy to find, and all employeesshould be able to use it. On a deeper level it should be iterative and not linear, softwaredevelopment firms often work agile and iterative and therefore, it has a greater significancewhen developing an innovation process. The given process follows all the steps in design

39

40 Chapter 6. Conclusions and Future Work

thinking and the agile way, making it a good process to work with theoretical. The nextstep is to try it on a workshop a team.

RQ3: How can a process be implemented strategically to be able to execute innovation effec-tively?

When wanting to change a large scale organisation in a strategic and effective way it isimportant to follow a strategic model so that all parts of the organisation is included.Kotter’s eight steps a changing model is to be considered when implementing a new process.In this strategic model it is important to have something that motivates and engages theemployees to work in the new process, here gamification is a suitable element. If a tool canbe developed where all the steps in the process can be "played" it would encourage andmotivate the employees to innovate more. Time is factor that prevents the employees towork with innovation, but if there are hackathones or workshops to create the gamificationtool it would benefit the firm and it would still be done effectively and not waste unnecessarytime.

6.1 Recommendation for future work

For future researchers, it would be wise to consider further focus on gamification and itseffects on an organisation. It will probably be a huge business area that will develop andimprove organisations and engage employees in the future. It is clear that there is anincrease in research on the subject but it requires much more research. Often only theresearch area of benefits towards customer satisfaction is researched. Gamification can beused when transforming the organisation, but there is needed more extensive research onwhat types of game elements are good and engaging for firms. Since there are distinctionsand differences between firms depending on the size, it is important to understand that largeorganisations have different needs than small organisations. Meaning that the gamificationneeds to be developed and adapted depending on the structure, size of the organisation andthe purpose of the gamification tool.

Another interesting aspect would be to investigate the difference in culture when workingwith a global company and trying to implement a process. Will the culture affect how wellit is implemented, what kind of feedback is given and how people work with it?

References 41

References

Ahmed, A. (2021). Apple, google, amazon: These are the most inno-vative companies over time. Retrieved 2022-05-26, from https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2021/04/apple-google-amazon-these-are-most.html

Alsawaier, R. S. (2018). The effect of gamification on motivation and engagement.The International Journal of Information and Learning Technology . doi: 10.1108/IJILT-02-2017-0009

Aydemir, A. (2015). Conditioning in organizations. Internatioanl Journal of Devel-opment Research , 6 , 6592–6601.

Bingham, P. (2003). Pursuing innovation in a big organization. Research TechnologyManagement , 46 (4), 52–58.

Bogan, C. E., & English, M. J. (1994). Benchmarking for best practices: Winningthrough innovative adaptation. HR Magazine , 39 .

Boly, V., Morel, L., Camargo, M., et al. (2014). Evaluating innovative processes infrench firms: Methodological proposition for firm innovation capacity evalua-tion. Research Policy , 43 (3), 608–622. doi: 10.1016/j.respol.2013.09.005

Brown, C., Hamilton, J. T., Hamilton, J., & Medoff, J. L. (1990). Employers largeand small. Harvard University Press. doi: 10.2307/25143607

Buchanan, D. A., & Huczynski, A. A. (2019). Organizational behaviour (10th ed.).Pearson UK.

Büschgens, T., Bausch, A., & Balkin, D. B. (2013). Organizational culture and inno-vation: A meta-analytic review. Journal of product innovation management ,30 (4), 763–781. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12021

Carr, D. K., & Johansson, H. J. (1995). Best practices in reengineering: what worksand what doesn’t in the reengineering process. McGraw-Hill Companies.

Chesbrough, H., & Brunswicker, S. (2013). Managing open innovation in large firms.Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation at California University, Berkeleyin US and Fraunhofer Society in Germany .

Crossan, M. M., & Apaydin, M. (2010). A multi-dimensional framework of organi-zational innovation: A systematic review of the literature. Journal of manage-ment studies , 47 (6), 1154–1191. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.2009.00880.x

Denning, S. (2020). Why big firms find it hard to innovate. Retrieved 2022-01-28,from https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2020/01/12/why-big-firms-find-it-hard-to-innovate/

Dess, G. G., & Picken, J. C. (2000). Changing roles: Leadership in the 21st century.Organizational dynamics , 28 (3), 18–34. doi: 10.1016/S0090-2616(00)88447-8

Doorley, S., Holcomb, S., Klebahn, P., Segovia, K., & Utley, J. (2018). De-sign thinking bootleg. (https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_in/learn-more/creating_a_culture_of_innovation.html)

Ericsson. (2022). About us. (https://www.ericsson.com/en/about-us)Fink, A. (2003). The survey handbook. sage.George, J. M., & Jones, G. R. (2012). Understanding and managing organizational

behaviour (International Edition ed., Vol. 6). Pearson Education Limited.


Ghauri, P., Grønhaug, K., & Strange, R. (2020). Research methods in businessstudies (Vol. 5). Cambridge University Press.

Golafshani, N. (2003). Understanding reliability and validity in qualitative research.The qualitative report , 8 (4), 597–607. doi: 10.46743/2160-3715/2003.1870

Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does gamification work?–a literaturereview of empirical studies on gamification. In 2014 47th hawaii internationalconference on system sciences (pp. 3025–3034). doi: 10.1109/HICSS.2014.377

Hernandez-Vivanco, A., Cruz-Cázares, C., & Bernardo, M. (2018). Openness andmanagement systems integration: Pursuing innovation benefits. Journal ofengineering and technology management , 49 , 76–90. doi: 10.1016/j.jengtecman.2018.07.001

Herzberg, F. (2005). Motivation-hygiene theory. Organizational behavior one: Es-sential theories of motivation and leadership, eds JB Miner, ME Sharpe Inc,New York , 2 (4), 61–74.

Hidalgo, A., & Albors, J. (2008). Innovation management techniques and tools: areview from theory and practice. R&d Management , 38 (2), 113–127.

Hyland, J., & Karlsson, M. (2021). Towards a management system standard forinnovation. Journal of Innovation Management , 9 (1), XI–XIX. doi: 10.24840/2183-0606_009.001_0002

ISO56000:2020. (2020). Innovation management — fundamentals and vocabulary.(https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:56000:ed-1:v1:en)

Johnson, G., Whittington, R., Regnér, P., Angwin, D., & Scholes, K. (2014). Ex-ploring strategy (10th ed.). Pearson UK.

Kapp, K. M. (2012). Games, gamification, and the quest for learner engagement.Training and Development , 66 (6), 64-68.

Klarna. (2021). Get to know our product management competence. Retrieved2022-05-03, from https://www.klarna.com/careers/life-at-klarna/get-to-know-our-product-management-competence-better/

Kohl, H., et al. (2020). Standards for management systems. Management for Pro-fessionals .

Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change. harvard business review , 2 (1), 1–10.Kuntz, J. R., & Gomes, J. F. (2012). Transformational change in organisations: A

self-regulation approach. Journal of Organizational Change Management . doi:10.1108/09534811211199637

Kylèn, J.-A. (2008). Att utvärdera. Liber AB.Lankford, W. M. (2002). Benchmarking: Understanding the basics. The Coastal

Business Journal , 1 (1), 57-62.Larman, C., & Basili, V. R. (2003). Iterative and incremental developments. a brief

history. Computer , 36 (6), 47–56.Lewrick, M., Link, P., & Leifer, L. (2018). The design thinking playbook: Mindful

digital transformation of teams, products, services, businesses and ecosystems.John Wiley & Sons.

Lindegaard, S. (2019). Innovation: The 7 key differences between big and smallcompanies. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/innovation-7-key-differences-between-big-small-stefan-lindegaard/

Lombriser, P., Dalpiaz, F., Lucassen, G., & Brinkkemper, S. (2016). Gamified re-quirements engineering: model and experimentation. In International working

References 43

conference on requirements engineering: foundation for software quality (pp.171–187).

Manifesto for agile software development. (2001). Retrieved from https://agilemanifesto.org/

Mehta, K. (2021). The future of innovation – how microsoft created 70,000 innova-tors. Retrieved 2022-05-26, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/kmehta/2021/03/09/the-future-of-innovation--how-microsoft-created-70000-innovators/

Mortara, L., & Minshall, T. (2011). How do large multinational companies im-plement open innovation? Technovation , 31 (10-11), 586–597. doi: 10.1016/j.technovation.2011.05.002

Podolny, J. M., & Hansen, M. T. (2020). How apple is organized for innovation.Harvard Business Review , 98 (6), 86–95.

Runeson, P., Host, M., Rainer, A., & Regnell, B. (2012). Case study researchin software engineering: Guidelines and examples. John Wiley & Sons. doi:10.1002/9781118181034

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation ofintrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American psycholo-gist , 55 (1), 68. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68

Saaty, T. L. (1994). How to make a decision: The analytic hierarchy process.Interfaces , 24 (6), 19–43.

Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2019). Research methods for businessstudents (8th ed.). Pearson education.

Schein, E. H. (1992). Organizational culture and leadership (Vol. 2). John Wiley &Sons, Inc.

Schneckenberg, D. (2015). Open innovation and knowledge networking in a multi-national corporation. Journal of Business strategy . doi: 10.1108/JBS-08-2013-0066

Singh, R. (2016). The impact of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators on employeeengagement in information organizations. Journal of Education for Libraryand Information Science , 57 (2), 197–206. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/90015218

Sommerville, I. (2016). Engineering software products 10th edition. Pearson.Stevenson, W. (1996). Productions/operations management (5th ed.). Irwin Pub-

lishing Company.Teece, D. J. (2014). A dynamic capabilities-based entrepreneurial theory of the

multinational enterprise. Journal of international business studies , 45 (1), 8–37. doi: 10.1057/jibs.2013.54

Tidd, J. (2006). A review of innovation models. Imperial College London , 16 .Tidd, J., & Bessant, J. R. (2020). Managing innovation: integrating technological,

market and organizational change. John Wiley & Sons.Torres-Carrión, P. V., González-González, C. S., Aciar, S., & Rodríguez-Morales, G.

(2018). Methodology for systematic literature review applied to engineeringand education. In 2018 ieee global engineering education conference (educon)(pp. 1364–1373). doi: 10.1109/EDUCON.2018.8363388

Tushman, M. L., & O’Reilly III, C. A. (1996). The ambidextrous organizations:


Managing evolutionary and revolutionary change. California management re-view , 38 (4), 8–29. doi: 10.2307/41165852

Viki, T. (2018). Why large companies continue to struggle with innovation.Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/tendayiviki/2018/11/04/why-large-companies-continue-to-struggle-with-innovation/?sh=7213126767b4

Volvo. (2020). Innovation is in our dna. Retrieved 2022-05-03, from https://group.volvocars.com/company/innovation

Workspace, G. (n.d.). Creating a culture of innovation: eight ideas that work atgoogle. Retrieved 2022-04-05, from https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_in/learn-more/creating_a_culture_of_innovation.html

Yin, R. (2009). Case study research (Vol. 4). SAGE Publications.Zheng, W., Yang, B., & McLean, G. N. (2010). Linking organizational culture,

structure, strategy, and organizational effectiveness: Mediating role of knowl-edge management. Journal of Business research , 63 (7), 763–771.

Zichermann, G., & Cunningham, C. (2011). Gamification by design: Implementinggame mechanics in web and mobile apps. " O’Reilly Media, Inc.".

Žižlavsky, O. (2013). Past, present and future of the innovation process. InternationalJournal of Engineering Business Management , 5 , 47. doi: 10.5772/56920

Appendix A

Supplemental Information

Table A.1: Interview questions

Question number Question1 How long have you worked at Ericsson?2 What’s you day-to-day task?3 What does innovation mean to you?4 What is you way of working with innovation today?5 What do you think motivates people to work with innovation?6 What factors do you think prevents people to work with innovation?7 What is your overall view on the shown process?8 Why do you think it is important to innovate?

Below is the questions asked in the survey and the answer options.

Question Answer option

1. How many years have you worked atEricsson?

a. 0-4 b. 5-9 c. 10-19 d. 20+

2. What site do you mainly work at? a. Chennai b. Gurgoan c. Karlskrona d. Frank-furt e. Indaiatuba f. Sao Paulo g. Toronto

3. Main Role? a. Line Manager b. Program manager c. Prod-uct Owner d. Developer e. Architecture d.Other

4. Select the statements that fit you mostcorrectly (scale from completely false –completely true, 5 steps)

I find it rewarding working with innovation b.I feel motivated to work with innovation whenI get support from management c. I am moti-vated but I don’t have the time to work withinnovation

5. Money motivates me to work with in-novation

0-10 points

6. Recognition motivates me to work withinnovation

0-10 points

7. To be published motivates me to workwith innovation

0-10 points

45

46 Appendix A. Supplemental Information

Question Answer option

8. To create value to Ericsson motivatesme to work with innovation

0-10 points

9. Select the statements that fit you mostcorrectly (scale from completely false –completely true, 5 steps)

a. I’m not a creative person, therefore I don’twork with innovation. b. Lack of support frommanagement prevents me from innovating c. Iam motivated but I don’t have the time to workwith innovation d. If I only had the support frommanagement I would innovate more e. I do notinnovate due to a lack of clear instructions

10. What can support or boost innovationin the sub-organisation?11. What would make you use an innova-tion process in order to innovate?12. Anything else you would like to addor point out?

Faculty of Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology, 371 79 Karlskrona, Sweden

Managing and Executing Innovation Effectively in Large-Scale ...

Documents

Transcript of Managing and Executing Innovation Effectively in Large-Scale ...