Tools and Brokers: Implementing the Innovation Ecosystem at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines

Tools and Brokers: Implementing the Innovation Ecosystem at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines

Esquinas Buenache, Adrián (TU Delft Industrial Design Engineering)

Kortuem, G.W. (mentor)
van Engelen, J.M.L. (graduation committee)
van der Veer, Arlette (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Integrated Product Design

2022-06-13

KLM is the flag carrier and biggest airline in the Netherlands. The contribution to climate change of the airline industry requires urgent changes in innovation to be sustainable. At the organisation, innovation is multidisciplinary, and needs of cross-divisional activity. The innovation team is the team responsible for overseeing the innovation processes that actually take place in the different divisions.

In 2019, the innovation team started to be aware of the opportunity of innovating as an ‘ecosystem’, with frequent transfers of knowledge and cross-divisional synergies. After several efforts, the assignment of this thesis stated the need for a digital product that can interactively represent the actors involved in the different ecosystems within the company. The assignment came with an implicit set of assumptions and a research phase followed to provide better understanding of the context of the assignment.

A number of insights were gathered as a result of the research phase. First, it is not only understandable but imperative for organisations to innovate in networks given the competitiveness and complexity of the current business environment. Second, employees at the organisation, as a result of the activity of the industry, are partially focused on execution and barriers among departments have raised. Third, the culture at the organisation shows formality and structure, valuing efficiency and with productivity residing in the individual and in the respective department.

If the innovation ecosystem concept is to be supported by the innovation team, efforts should address the inefficiency of lateral collaboration. Moreover, the efforts should influence the different areas of the organisation, such as the shared values, systems or staff. Apart from the insights gathered from the research phase, this thesis developed a set of practical interventions that aim to foster collaboration while facilitating the implementation of the innovation ecosystem.

The first intervention comes after the redefinition of the original assignment. Designing a tool that represents the actors can help, but only if matched with interventions in other areas. After an iterative design process, a tool that allows the actors within an ecosystem to see others’ involvement was built using Power BI. The second intervention required a reorganisation of the knowledge-management system used for innovation. The intervention provided a new information architecture and layout for knowledge to be easily retrieved, and presumably collaboration within the ecosystem fostered. Finally, the last intervention identified a set of cultural brokers who can connect groups of employees with an innovation purpose. Studies on social networks and innovation show the brokers own a competitive advantage within the networks: they are more creative and can help bridge structural holes. Brokers can be nurtured when a cross-divisional need exists and the innovation requires to close the gap.

Finally, after developing the interventions, the innovation team is recommended to define the governance of the ecosystems in place. Defining governance will help align expectations towards collaboration and knowledge sharing from the stakeholders involved, and is a first crucial step before continuing with implementation efforts after the thesis. Once governance is defined, the organisation is provided with guidance on how to continue with implementation tasks, by starting a pilot project and including a manual of the designed tool to assist users during their learning.

Innovation
Ecosystem
Collaboration
Systems
Organisation

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:bde89b99-5cbf-41ed-83cf-76086d78f086

Student theses

master thesis

© 2022 Adrián Esquinas Buenache