Browsing by Author "Korhonen, Janne M."

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Constructed solutions to constructed constraints - Resource scarcities and technological change
(2017) Korhonen, Janne M.
School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (article-based)
Is necessity the mother of innovation, and if so, why many extremely urgent problems such as climate change or cheap electricity storage still remain unsolved? Why even extraordinary incentives often fail to generate technological change that would solve the problem in hand? This thesis examines the relationship between resource scarcities, in particular energy and raw materials, and technological change. Drawing on and developing the literature on resource scarcities, constraints and innovation, the study presented here helps us to understand how perceptions of scarcities influences technological change, and how scarcities may even reproduce themselves through technological decisions influenced by such perceptions. Scarcities are found to be very much a question of power between those who would use the resources and those who control the resource use. Amartya Sen's concept of ''entitlement'' or its developments (e.g. Daoud's ''quasi-scarcity'') are found to be necessary for understanding how technology developers - technologists - actually respond to constraints and scarcities. In short, the technological responses to resource scarcities, such as the development of less resource intensive technologies, are heavily determined by how much power the technologists possess relative to resource controllers. This power, or entitlement to a resource, depends not only on the importance of the industry or the resource, but also on the perceptions of technology. In cases where scarcity-altering novel innovations are perceived to be within relatively easy reach, the technologists have less power and lower entitlement to the scarce resource. These findings are based on and illustrated by two case studies in history of technology. The main case study examines the history behind one mining company's decision to develop a radically novel ''flash smelting'' copper furnace as a response to post-Second World War electricity shortage in Finland. This development, by state-owned copper producer Outokumpu, slashed energy requirements for copper smelting, and became almost the standard method for copper smelting, one point producing as much as 60 percent of world's primary copper. The second case study looks at the development of jet engine cooling systems in the Second World War Germany as a result of Germany's lack of access to nickel, a strategic metal necessary for, among many other uses, high-temperature jet turbine components. As such, this thesis contributes not only to the emerging ''ingenuity'' and ''scarcity, abundance and sufficiency'' research streams, but also to the history of technology and to the history of post-war Finland, particularly the so-called ''war reparations period'' (1944-1952).
How radical is a radical innovation? An outline for a computational approach
(2012) Kasmire, J.; Korhonen, Janne M.; Nikolic, Igor
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa
Radical innovations prompt significant subsequent technological development and exhibit novelty and "architectural" innovation, i.e. rearranging the way design elements are put together in a system. Thus, radical innovations often serve as the foundation for new technological systems, industries or domains and are seen to involve significant conceptual breakthroughs, through either luck or genius. The much more common incremental innovations are perceived as mere improvements to existing technologies. Decreasing returns from incremental innovation are understood to motivate a search for a new radical innovation to provide a platform for more incremental innovation. However, deeper study shows that the conceptual "distance" a radical breakthrough travels is far shorter than would initially appear. On closer inspection, several innovations with undoubtedly radical effects comprise several small inventive steps that appear self-evident, even logical, to the developers. This conundrum appears to stem from conflating a radical effect with a radical development. What's more, this view of radical innovation views inventions as isolated from the broader currents of technological development. An alternative view sees innovations as embedded in a co-evolutionary socio-technical landscape, where inventions develop in a technological environment and become building blocks for further inventions. Although only inventions adopted for use can be called innovations, "inactive" inventions can also serve as building blocks. In this view, (almost) all steps to innovation are incremental, but the system's self-organized criticality (SOC) allows spontaneous radical effects. This work explores the importance of an evolutionary and SOC view of invention and innovation through agent based models. We develop a simple model capable of simulating the build-out of technologies in a series of simulation experiments. Although all inventions develop incrementally, the model behaviour is expected to exhibit SOC so that some inventions trigger much higher rates of subsequent development than others. Thus, the results are expected to support an evolutionary view of technological development where a radical effect is a consequence of the entire interdependent landscape rather than of the radical development of a specific innovation. The model should be of interest to several research streams concerned with simulating and studying R&D activities.
A practical decision framework for sourcing product development services
(2009) Korhonen, Janne M.
Helsinki University of Technology | Master's thesis
Kuluneina vuosina yritykset ovat enenevässä määrin hankkineet tuotekehitysosaamista ulkopuolisilta spesialisteilta, ulkoistaen tuotekehityksensä kokonaan tai osittain. Vaikkakin ilmiö on hyvin dokumentoitu, on sen teoreettista taustaa tutkittu vain vähän. Olemassa olevat ulkoistamismallit ja päätöksenteon apuvälineet perustuvat suurelta osin valmistuksen ja logistiikan kaltaisten yrityksen funktioiden tutkimukseen. Näiden tulosten soveltamista tuotekehityksen ulkoistamiseen rajoittaa se, että ko. tapauksissa ulkoistamisella pyritään usein pääasiassa kustannussäästöihin. Lisäksi aikaisempi tutkimus jättää usein henkilökohtaisten suhteiden merkityksen vähemmälle huomiolle. Näistä syistä olemassa olevat ulkoistamismallit sopivat heikosti tuotekehityksen ulkoistamiseen, mutta kirjallisuudessa ei ole myöskään selkeitä "työkalupakkeja" liikkeenjohdon päätöksenteon tueksi. Tämä diplomityö yhdistää kolmen tutkimussuunnan (ulkoistamisen päätöksenteko, tuotekehitys, ja palveluntarjoajien valinta) löydöksiä ja kehittää vastauksia kahteen pääasialliseen tutkimuskysymykseen: 1) milloin tuoteominaisuus on niin tärkeä yrityksen kilpailukyvylle, ettei sen suunnittelua tule missään tapauksessa ulkoistaa, ja 2) kuinka päättää mitä tuotekehitysprosessin osia voidaan ulkoistaa tietylle palveluntarjoajalle? Tutkimusmetodi on pääasiassa konseptuaalisen teorian kehittämistä laajaan kirjallisuuskatsaukseen perustuen. Tutkimuksen tulokset korostavat luottamuksen ja henkilökohtaisten suhteiden merkitystä tuotekehityksen ulkoistamisessa. Systemaattinen lähestymistapa nähdään vaatimuksena onnistuneelle ulkoistamiselle. Yhtenä tuloksena tunnistetaan kolme perusstrategiaa, joita tuotekehitystään ulkoistavat yritykset seuraavat. Tutkimuksen tuloksia pyritään jalkauttamaan yrityksiin kehittämällä käytännöllisiä tarkistuslistoja ja toimintamalleja, joiden avulla tuotekehityksen ulkoistamista voidaan tarkastella järkiperäisesti. Lisäksi tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan löydösten käytännön merkityksiä eri toimijoiden kannalta. Työssä raportoidaan myös tulokset 60 teollisuusyritystä käsittävästä kyselytutkimuksesta. Tutkimuksen tulokset antavat syytä olettaa, että tuotekehityksen ulkoistaminen Suomessa noudattelee yleisesti ottaen Euroopassa vallalla olevia käytäntöjä.