Designing a repeatable collaboration method for setting up emerging value systems for new technology fields

Abstract These days even large multinational enterprises must collaborate with other companies when creating and mobilizing new technology applications. They might not possess all the capabilities needed, or they might even find it economically unfeasible to internally master all the relevant value activities in a traditional value chain. Thus, new technology business fields are increasingly being formed by networked value systems. However, there are no established management practices on how to instigate and nurture emerging value systems. In this design science research, we will develop and test a repeatable collaboration method for setting up an emerging value system in a new technology field. We will apply collaboration engineering as the design approach and group support systems as a technique when developing our process artifact. The agenda setting is performed collaboratively by finding out the major barriers facing the birth of a new field, and the actions needed to overcome those barriers. We will apply our method to mobile marketing. We found that the use of a carefully designed ICT-enabled collaboration method can facilitate the stakeholders in an emerging field to work together and provide initiatives toward the creation of a new value system. The developed collaboration method is also repeatable and easily transferable to emerging technology-based businesses other than mobile marketing. Keywords: Emerging value system, agenda setting, collaboration engineering, group support systems, design science research methodology, mobile marketing, mobile advertising INTRODUCTION Today even large multinational enterprises must collaborate with other companies when creating and mobilizing new technology applications. The reason for this is that they might not possess all the required capabilities, due to the dispersion of knowledge or technological resources, or they might find it economically unfeasible to internally master all the relevant value activities in a traditional value chain, from product innovation to customer care (Moller et al. 2005). Consequently, the creation and commercialization of new technology business fields are increasingly carried out through linked actors in complex inter-organizational networks (Lundgren 1995; Powell et al. 1996), also called value systems (Moller et al. 2005; Moller and Svahn 2003b). The actors in a value system network are able to specialize in the value-creation activity supported by their distinctive competence, which leads to increased efficiency as a whole (Jarillo 1988). Value systems appear in different maturities in the market. According to the continuum presented by Moller and his colleagues (Moller et al. 2005; Moller and Svahn 2003b), there are essentially three basic types of value systems: (1) emerging value systems characterized by radical changes in existing value systems and in the creation of new value activities, (2) established value systems characterized by incremental improvements, and finally, (3) stable, well-defined value systems. In this study, we will focus on the emerging value systems, in which individual firms aim to mobilize cooperative networks of actors through which new technologies, products or business concepts can be developed and commercialized (Moller and Svahn 2003b). There are, however, no established management practices on how to instigate and nurture emerging value systems. Moller and Svahn (2003a,2009) have contemplated how to influence the birth of new business fields, and they have developed an intuitive conceptual framework describing the phases of their emergence. The three-phase framework proceeds from exploring for future business to mobilization for applications, and finally to coordination for dissemination. The researchers also identified the key activities that firms should master during these phases. The first phase includes sense making, focusing, and selecting as the key activities. …