The impact of knowledge management capabilities on innovation contest outcomes
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
Authors
Date
2019
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Information and Service Management (ISM)
Language
en
Pages
96 + 4
Series
Abstract
The increasingly dynamic, global competitive environment and faster technological progress create pressure for organizations to improve their innovative performance. Open innovation activities such as innovation contests are challenging the view according to which innovation would be best managed inside the organization. Due to advancements in ICT, acquiring external knowledge is no longer the main challenge. The challenge is rather adopting and exploiting the acquired knowledge to create innovation. The purpose of this thesis is to study knowledge management capabilities that enable the exploitation of ideas acquired in an innovation contest. The theoretical framework in this thesis creates a novel link between the theory of absorptive capacity and the challenges identified in crowdsourcing and innovation contest literature by identifying three knowledge management gaps in the innovation contest process: between contest development and stakeholder involvement, between knowledge acquisition and evaluation & selection and between evaluation & selection and assimilation & transformation. This research was conducted by qualitative semi-structured interviews with five organizations that have organized innovation contests and one innovation contest expert. The sample included private, public and non-profit organizations. The data was analyzed with thematic analysis to identify the key challenges and organizational capabilities based on the theoretical framework. The findings suggest that the ability to understand organizational objectives and current capabilities and premises create the basis for implementing innovation contests. The capability of network building and contribution quality management enable reaching industry outsiders as participants and acquiring valuable knowledge that through processes for cross-functional knowledge sharing can be assimilated, further developed and exploited to improve innovative performance. Furthermore, internal and managerial commitment and open innovative culture are identified as enablers for initiating and maintaining open innovation activities in the long-term. Besides requiring a set of knowledge management capabilities, organizing an innovation contest is also recognized to have the potential of improving the capabilities and the organization’s innovative performance over time.Description
Thesis advisor
Rossi, MattiKeywords
innovation, open innovation, innovation contest, knowledge management, absorptive capacity