Managing Service Innovations in Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer Contexts

Managing Service Innovations in Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer Contexts

EzhilKumar, Mythili (TU Delft Technology, Policy and Management)

Verburg, Robert (mentor)
Verbraeck, Alexander (graduation committee)
Das, Patrick (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

2019-08-16

With the rapidly growing service economy, firms must address the fundamental needs of the customers to sustain their competitive advantage. The role of the customer is being increasingly stressed by both academia and practice. However, an important implication from this is to make a distinction between the business customer and the general consumer. The underlying premise of this thesis- that a business-to-business innovation is different from a business-to-consumer innovation stems from the age-old B2B/B2C divide which has received a lot of attention from the marketing literature. This thesis is a three-phased research- with the first phase identifying the differences between service innovations in the business-to-business and business-to-consumer contexts. This phase was carried out through a literature review followed by expert interviews to further enhance the understanding of business-to-business and business-to-consumer service innovations in practice. The results indicated a substantial number of differences along different dimensions such as : market characteristics, innovation processes, the challenges these innovations face and the critical success factors amongst other operational differences. With definitive differences established between the two contexts, the foundation for the next phase was laid. Multiple authors have called for contingency innovation management for better performance based on the context of innovation. While prior work has been done from the contexts of radical-incremental, process-product, explorative-exploitative innovations, there has been meagre attention to the dichotomy of business-to-business and business-to-consumer. Based on the findings from Phase 1, it was posited that a general approach to innovation management in business-to-business and business-to-consumer innovations will not fit. To study and observe this phenomenon in detail, a case-study at ING Labs (the innovation accelerator of ING Bank) was carried out. Six case studies with cases from business-to-business and business-to-consumer contexts were chosen, and the results were analysed following a cross-case analysis. The controls that were being studied were based on the stage-gate control framework consisting of output controls (project timelines and project budget control) and process controls (deliverables and gate evaluations). In the context of ING, the results indicated that controls followed a quasi-fit or a partial-fit with different contexts.In the initial Validation Phase, irrespective of their contexts, the initiatives did not face much challenges. As they progressed, in the Implementation Phase, the business-to-business initiatives particularly face context-specific tensions. However, considering the number of contingencies that further emerged from the research, it can be said that a \textit{ideal fit} between the controls and initiatives would be impractical if not impossible to achieve. In the third phase, recommendations were derived from expert interviews and literature for the tensions that were identified at the intersection of control and innovation.

Service Innovation
Business-to-Business
Business-to-Consumer
Innovation management
Management Controls

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4aef2dc0-ddeb-4198-af19-83303fcabbd1

2019-08-30

Student theses

master thesis

© 2019 Mythili EzhilKumar