OPEN INNOVATION,GENERATIVITY
lfintroductionAND THE SUPPLIER AS PEER:THE CASE
OF IPHONE AND ANDROID
BJÖRN REMNELAND-WIKHAMN *,z ,JAN LJUNGBERG y ,
subscribed
MAGNUS BERGQUIST y and JONAS KUSCHEL y
*School of Business,Economics and Law
University of Gothenburg,P.O.Box 610
S-40530G €o
teborg,Sweden y Department of Applied IT
新编剑桥商务英语University of Gothenburg,Forskningsgången 6
SE-41296Gothenburg,Sweden
land@handels.gu.
The diffusion of various forms of digital technologies has acted as a disrupting force in veral industries,promoting open and distributed innovation process.In this paper we argue that the supplier in open innovation networks tends to get a more active role as a creative peer producer,rather than merely a contractual deliverer.A comparative ca study of the mobile phone platforms iPhone and Android is ud to analyze this shift in innovative value creation.The notion of generative capacity is introduced to the rearch on open innovation,suggesting that it is generativity rather than openness that drives the platforms ’aggregated wealth.The two cas from the mobile phone industry illustrate that innovation initiatives can successfully approach generativity in different ways and that both openness and control are important to facilitate supplier contributions.
Keywords :Generativity;generative capacity;open innovation;peer production;mobile phone industry,supplier.
Introduction
Markets and industries are proclaimed to be in transition;from local to global (Levitt ,1983),from product-oriented to value-oriented (Porter ,1985),from product-focud to rvice-focud (Gummes
e_mailson ,1994),from analog to digital ‡Corresponding author.
International Journal of Innovation Management
汉译日翻译器Vol.15,No.1(February 2011)pp.205–
230
©Imperial College Press
mercy 张目DOI:10.1142/S1363919611003131
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206 B.Remneland-Wikhamn et al.
(Tapscott,1996),from supply-side driven to demand-side driven(Shapiro and Varian,1998),from clod to open(Chesbrough,2003).The advances in science and technology have brought promising new venues for industries and economies to create value,which also have made them more complex
as innovations contain specialized knowledge from various disciplines.Under the conditions,firms are said to benefit from acting within cross-organizational innovation systems(Cooke, 2001)and clusters(Porter,1998)rather than as sole competitors.New relations emerge as companies strive to meet up with the challenges of incread ur demands,higher R&D costs and shorter product life-cycles,which put the organization’s capacity to adapt and innovate into focus.
The diffusion of various forms of digital technologies experienced in modern economies has acted as a disrupting force(Christenn,2000),providing novel opportunities for distribution and transformation of knowledge across geo-graphical,physical and organizational boundaries.Mobile computing and com-munication technologies have started to merge with Internet generated rvices,a transition which has been accelerated by strong actors such as Google and Apple. The integration is paradoxically enhanced by a paration in ,hardware, operating systems and applications)among producers(Zittrain,2008),which creates possibilities for new actors to partake in value creation.Participating in the development of new applications does not require extensive knowledge in hard-ware,and vice versa.This is one important part of what Zittrain(2008)calls generative capacity or ,a technology’s capacity to enable the generation of new valuable us that are easy to distribute and in turn could be sources of further innovation.
The purpo of this paper is to analyze how generativity relates to open and distributed innovation.More specifically we address how generative capacity plays out in relation to value networks that are created to attract external actors to contribute with extensive value.Especially,the paper ts out to explore the propod shift in power relations among actors in such value networks,and investigate the new role of suppliers within distributed and‘open’innovation process.To discuss the areas,we will draw on a comparative ca study of two mobile rvice platforms–iPhone and Android.The mobile phone industry as well as the two cas are lected in order to highlight new forms of supplier involvement and the two cas have similarities but also differences in how they approach generativity in this matter.
In this paper,we suggest that the supplier within a distributed innovation process of IT artifacts will receive a more participatory and creative function. Suppliers in this context do not only produce parts of the product,they are con-tinuously involved in innovating,developing,marketing and branding the pro-ducts and rvices in relation to the shared platform,which at the same time
The Ca of iPhone and Android207 constitutes the evolution of the platform.We therefore argue that the generative forces are important to understand and utilize when moving toward an open and distributed innovation model.Hence,in value networks there is a need forfirms to reflect upon theboiling
成熟英语ir design for generativity in terms of organizational structure, intellectual property and technological infrastructure.
The paper begins with a general discussion pointing to the incread distri-bution of innovation activities in society due to digitalization and IT advance-ments.This is followed by an introduction to the concept of generativity(Zittrain, 2006,2008)which will be ud as a theoretical point of reference in the analysis of open innovation initiatives.The mobile phone industry is then shortly outlined and the two cas(iPhone and Android)are prented,followed by an analysis bad on Zittrain’s(2008)dimensions of generativity.The paper ends with a concluding discussion about the new role of suppliers within open innovation networks.
The Supplier as a Peer Producer
millionsofAlthough it has long been accepted that organizations act in open systems (Thompson,1967),strongly affected by the external ,Lawrence and Lorsch,1967)and its stakeholder demands(Freeman,1984),open innovation (Chesbrough,2003)has in recent years gained much attention in academic as well as industry ttings.The notion is sometimes criticized as being“old wine in new bottles”(Trott and Hartmann,2009)or under-theorized(Dahlander and Gann, 20
10),but the overall growing interest in collaborative organizing of innovation is difficult to disregard.Chesbrough defines open innovation as an organization’s purposive inflow and outflow of knowledge across its boundaries in order to accelerate innovation and expand market opportunities(Chesbrough,2003; Chesbrough et al.,2006)or strengthen the business model(Chesbrough,2006). The‘openness’thus refers to an exchange or bargain of ideas and intellectual property with external associates such as customers,suppliers,partners or com-petitors.Open innovation is contrasted with‘clod’innovation,wherefirms keep tight control over their R&D process in terms of both who can contribute to the value production and who are allowed to claim value from the generated results.In open innovation process,horizontal as well as vertical borders between various co-producing actors tend to fade.
On the consumer side,the blurring of boundaries has been captured by Toffler’s (1980)notion of‘prosumer’,which suggests that urs take an active part in developing the content of the innovation as co-producers.For instance,in some online ,online communities,virtual worlds,matchmaking rvices and other web2.0rvices)the urs’activities make up most of the platform’s
208 B.Remneland-Wikhamn et al.
英语四级写作技巧
total value.The opposite side of the value chain,the supplier perspective,has not been as much addresd in the open innovation literature.Briefly in rearch on supply-chain management,the suppliers have been suggested to have a unique position to innovate for incread end-ur value due to their expert knowledge in at least parts of the joint value proposal(Bessant et al.,2003).
The disruptive movement toward a digitalized economy has indeed enhanced cross-border value production,but also shifted power relations and control mechanisms among actors across the whole value chain.One example of this is when urs or customers are developing or modifying innovations in what von Hippel(2005)refers to as‘ur innovations’.The benefit of innovation initiatives being distributed and democratized is that urs can develop solutions more clo to what they want instead of only relying on imperfect agents to translate their needs.von Hippel highlights the‘lead urs’as the main external source for innovative and value-adding contributions and also ,Franke and Shah, 2003;Lettl et al.,2006;Pillar and Walcher,2006)have shown empirical evidence from various industries of urs’innovative initiatives.
An illustrative example of a voluntaristic production ,that urs or other developers on their own initiative contribute to innovation and develop-ment),is open source.The typical open source project is a looly coupled community,where work is totally delegated,relying on a high amount of v
oluntaristic contributions,but coordinated by one or a few developers.One of the most well known examples is the operating system Linux.The development of Linux is entirely distributed;anyone can download the code,contribute to it,nd it back,and if it is considered good enough it will be included in the core product. The contributors come from all over the world and most of them have never met face to face.The identities of the interacting persons in an open source community do not matter in principle(Demil and Lecocq,2006),but the reputation and status of a participating person may matter(Bergquist and Ljungberg,2001).
Open source can in its purified form be described as a production mode where the outcomes as well as the required knowledge resources are considered as common resources,and where the aim of the process is to contribute to public good.The way to accomplish this is through peer ,lf-lected and decentralized individual action(Benkler,2002,2006).What has happened over the last decade is that open source to a large extent has been intertwined with the commercial software market,leading to a plethora of new business models and new sorts of software suppliers.While individual developers contributing to communities do so by a complex t of social motivations,guided by the norms and values established in open source communities,firms engaged in open source tend to be driven by economical and technical ,Bergquist and Ljungberg,2001;Bonaccorsi and Rossi,2003).
The Ca of iPhone and Android209 The type of organizing and production process that is reprented by open source projects has been likened to a ,Demil and Lecocq,2006;Ljungberg, 2000;Raymond,1999),i.e.,a marketplace where people enter and leave,ll,buy and exchange goods.The characteristics of the bazaar is that actors are not coor-dinated by price mechanisms(as in markets),formal hierarchies(as infirms)or strong ties/long relations(as in networks);there are no lection of members or contracting parties;and there is no definitive delimitation of roles between urs and producers and no enforced work roles(Demil and Lecocq,2006).This community-bad production mode also rembles what could be described as a‘civic com-munity logic’(Boltanski and Chiapello,2005),emphasizing informal and personal relations,transparent peer production and software as common goods.
One attempt to explain the development towards a new production mode beyond the open source example is Benkler’s notion of‘commons-bad peer production’(Benkler,2002,2006).The predominant understanding of the orga-nizing of economic production is that individuals engage in productive activities either as employees infirms,following the directions of managers,or as indi-viduals in markets,following price signals(Coa,1937;Williamson,1975). Benkler(2006)describes commons-bad peer production as a third mode of production,where large aggregations of individu
als independently arching for opportunities to be creative.This new mode of production may not conquer the old modes,but rather tend to co-exist and rely onfirms and markets,resulting in blurred boundaries between value creation and value capture,in what could be described as a value ecosystem.Collaboratingfirms are enabled to capture, elaborate on and capitalize value created outside the company,but may also be obliged to contribute to value creation where the appropriation of invested resources are out of ,Chesbrough and Appleyard,2007;Dahlander and Magnusson,2005;Fitzgerald,2006;O’Mahony,2003;Ven and Verelst, 2008).This joint development of value creation is still an emerging phenomena where the borders between commons-bad and proprietary;open and clod;firms and communities;peer production and market are not always clear cut.The point here is that this development towards peer production(commons-bad or not)opens up a new role for the supplier as a ,a developer or contributor that decides to contribute by his/her own initiative.Thus,the supplier contributes to a commons-bad or commercial project in which the appropriation of the supplier’s invested resources emanate from the potential customer-ba and will be boosted by community-related benefits in the form of economic or social value.
To summarize,advances in IT have promoted new intermediary opportunities to match supply and demand,build relations and cross-pollinate creative ideas. Patent auctions,intermediary ,
Dodgson et al.,2006),crowdsourcing (Howe,2008;Surowiecki,2004),online ,Sproull et al.,2007)
