Designing Innovative Business Models : A Design Catalyst Learning Resource

The term Design Led Innovation is emerging as a fundamental business process, which is rapidly being adopted by large as well as small to medium sized firms. The value that design brings to an organisation is a different way of thinking, of framing situations and possibilities, doing things and tackling problems: essentially a cultural transformation of the way the firm undertakes its business. Being Design Led is increasingly being seen by business as a driver of company growth, allowing firms to provide a strong point of difference to its stakeholders. Achieving this Design Led process, requires strong leadership to enable the organisation to develop a clear vision for top line growth. Specifically, based on deep customer insights and expanded through customer and stakeholder engagements, the outcomes of which are then adopted by all aspects of the business. To achieve this goal, several tools and processes are available, which need to be linked to new organisational capabilities within a business transformation context. The Design Led Innovation Team focuses on embedding tools and processes within an organisation and matching this with design leadership qualities to enable companies to create breakthrough innovation and achieve sustained growth, through ultimately transforming their business model. As all information for these case studies was derived from publicly accessed data, this resource is not intended to be used as reference material, but rather is a learning tool for designers to begin to consider and explore businesses at a strategic level. It is not the results that are key, but rather the process and philosophies that were used to create these case studies and disseminate this way of thinking amongst the design community. It is this process of unpacking a business guided by the framework of Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas* which provides an important tool for designers to gain a greater perspective of a company’s true innovation potential.

Small business entity tax concessions : through the eyes of the practitioner

Australia’s small business sector has pursued often-competing imperatives of simplicity, equity and efficiency in the income tax regime (particularly focusing on the notion of simplicity) over the last decade. In 2001, there was an attempt to provide such simplification and reduce the compliance burden faced by Australian small businesses through the ‘simplified tax system’ (‘STS’). However, despite amendments over the years, the regime is much criticised. This article explores how the STS (now known as the ‘small business entity’ regime or ‘SBE’) is utilised from the perspective of tax practitioners, by analysing their recommendations to small business clients in respect of the regime. The results indicate that practitioners believe the regime did nothing to simplify the tax system for small businesses or reduce tax compliance costs. Indeed, the practitioners believed that the introduction of small business concessions had actually achieved the opposite result — it had increased tax compliance costs for their small business clients. However, tax practitioners still recommend the regime highly because it minimises their client’s tax liability.

Modelling the Contribution of Knowledge Management towards Achieving Orgnisational Business Objectives

Knowledge management (KM) continues to receive mounting interest within the construction industry due to its potential to offer solutions for organisations seeking competitive advantage. This paper presents a KM input-process-output conceptual model comprising unique and well-defined theoretical constructs representing KM practices and their internal and external determinants in the context of construction. The paper also presents the underlying principles used in operationally defining each construct using extant KM literature, and offers a number of testable hypotheses that capture the inter-relationships between the identified constructs.

A methodological evaluation of business process compliance management frameworks

Existing compliance management frameworks (CMFs) offer a multitude of compliance management capabilities that makes difficult for enterprises to decide on the suitability of a framework. Making a decision on the suitability requires a deep understanding of the functionalities of a framework. Gaining such an understanding is a difficult task which, in turn, requires specialised tools and methodologies for evaluation. Current compliance research lacks such tools and methodologies for evaluating CMFs. This paper reports a methodological evaluation of existing CMFs based on a pre-defined evaluation criteria. Our evaluation highlights what existing CMFs offer, and what they cannot. Also, it underpins various open questions and discusses the challenges in this direction.

Constructing a research network : accounting knowledge in production

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the sociology-of-science type of accounting literature, addressing how accounting knowledge is established, advanced and extended. Design/methodology/approach – The research question is answered through the example of research into linkages between accounting and religion. Adopting an actor-network theory (ANT) approach, the paper follows the actors involved in the construction of accounting as an academic discipline through the controversies in which they engage to develop knowledge. Findings – The paper reveals that accounting knowledge is established, advanced and developed through the ongoing mobilisation of nonhumans (journals) who can enrol other humans and nonhumans. It shows that knowledge advancement, establishment and development is more contingent on network breadth than on research paradigms, which appear as side-effects of positioning vis-a-vis a community. Originality/value – The originality of this paper is twofold. First, ANT is applied to accounting knowledge, whereas the accounting literature applies it to the spread of management accounting ideas, methods and practices. Second, an original methodology for data collection is developed by inviting authors from the network to give a reflexive account of their writings at the time they joined the network. Well diffused in sociology and philosophy, such an approach is, albeit, original in accounting research.

Identifying the triggers for management services in business transformation management

Business transformations are complex organisational change endeavours that result in a business performing current work differently, or performing different work. Information Technology (IT) is a key enabler of such initiatives, but comes with its challenges, as revamping the IT infrastructure in large-scale organisations implies high complexity, high risk, and often high failure rates. We view business transformations as a collection of management services that are demanded and enacted at a program level, defined as abstract resources that provide the managerial capabilities necessary for business transformations. In this research-in-progress, we explore what triggers the need for management services in response to the challenges in business transformation management. We analyse data from two exploratory case studies using the critical incident technique as our qualitative analysis method. Early findings indicate that management service triggers reside on either the strategic level, which may be internally or externally driven, or at the program management level, which may be situational, influential or reactional. We detail implications for our on-going research.

Business in troubled waters : does adverse attitude affect firm value?

This paper investigates the relationship between US MNCs' valuations and anti-Americanism in countries where MNCs' foreign subsidiaries are located. We find that MNCs suffer value-destruction when they enter markets where people express severe anti-Americanism. However, we uncover that geographic diversification into these high anti-Americanism countries significantly increases firm value if the MNC has high levels of intangibles such as technological know-how and marketing expertise. Our findings are consistent with the notion that the advantages from internalizing the cross-border transfer of intangibles are greater when barriers to competition are higher.

A conversation approach to business model innovation

Sense making through conversation plays a key role in channelling and furthering participatory business model innovation. The designer as facilitator, with conversation as a core tool, is an emerging area of interest within the design research literature. This paper will discuss preliminary findings of a case study of Second Road, a strategy and innovation consultancy that employed a design thinking approach and conversational methods to redesign a client’s business development model. Through this study conversation based co-creation emerged as the primary method for participatory innovation.

Business model experimentation : what is the role of deign-led prototyping in developing novel business models?

This book presents readers with the opportunity to fundamentally re-evaluate the processes of innovation and entrepreneurship, and to rethink how they might best be stimulated and fostered within our organizations and communities. The fundamental thesis of the book is that the entrepreneurial process is not a linear progression from novel idea to successful innovation, but is an iterative series of experiments, where progress depends on the persistence and resilience of the individuals involved, and their ability and to learn from failure as well as success. From this premise, the authors argue that the ideal environment for new venture creation is a form of “experimental laboratory,” a community of innovators where ideas are generated, shared, and refined; experiments are encouraged; and which in itself serves as a test environment for those ideas and experiments. This environment is quite different from the traditional “incubator,” which may impose the disciplines of the established firm too early in the development of the new venture.

Investigating the success of operational business process management systems

Business process management systems (BPMS) belong to a class of enterprise information systems that are characterized by the dependence on explicitly modeled process logic. Through the process logic, it is relatively easy to manage explicitly the routing and allocation of work items along a business process through the system. Inspired by the DeLone and McLean framework, we theorize that these process-aware system features are important attributes of system quality, which in turn will elevate key user evaluations such as perceived usefulness, and usage satisfaction. We examine this theoretical model using data collected from four different, mostly mature BPM system projects. Our findings validate the importance of input quality as well as allocation and routing attributes as antecedents of system quality, which, in turn, determines both usefulness and satisfaction with the system. We further demonstrate how service quality and workflow dependency are significant precursors to perceived usefulness. Our results suggest the appropriateness of a multi-dimensional conception of system quality for future research, and provide important design-oriented advice for the design and configuration of BPMSs.

Social media metrics : are we measuring business value?

Over the past few years many organizations that directly or indirectly interact with consumers have invested heavily into a social media presence. As a consequence some success indicators are openly available to users of many social media platforms, such as the number of fans (or followers, members, visitors and others) or the amount of content(tweets, images, shares or other content). Many organizations additionally track their social activities internally to understand audience reach, consumer influence, brand image, consumer preference or other key metrics that make sense for a business. However, most of the immediately available social media success metrics are activity-based and many organizations are struggling with establishing a direct relationship to business success. This paper systematically reviews some of the common social media metrics/ratings used by organisations, critically analyse its business value and identify gaps formulating research questions for empirical study and concluding with recommendations and suggestions for future research.

A discourse on the non-method

In spite of the activism of professional bodies and researchers, empirical evidence shows that project management still does not deliver the expected benefits and promises. Hence, many have questioned the validity of the hegemonic rationalist paradigm anchored in the Enlightenment and Natural Sciences tradition supporting project management research and practice for the last 60 years and the lack of relevance to practice of the current conceptual base of project management. In order to address these limitations many authors, taking a post-modernist stance in social sciences, build on ‘pre-modern’ philosophies such as the Aristotelian one, specially emphasizing the role of praxis (activity), and phronesis (practical wisdom, prudence). Indeed, ‘Praxis … is the central category of the philosophy which is not merely an interpretation of the world, but is also a guide to its transformation …’ (Vazquez, 1977:. 149). Therefore, praxis offers an important focus for practitioners and researchers in social sciences, one in which theory is integrated with practice at the point of intervention. Simply stated, praxis can serve as a common ground for those interested in basic and applied research by providing knowledge of the reality in which action, informed by theory, takes place. Consequently, I suggest a ‘praxeological’ style of reasoning (praxeology being defined as study or science of human actions and conduct, including praxis, practices and phronesis) and to go beyond the ‘Theory-Practice’ divide. Moreover, I argue that we need to move away from the current dichotomy between the two classes ‘scholars experts-researchers’ and ‘managers/workers-practitioners-participants’. Considering one single class of ‘PraXitioner’, becoming a phronimos, may contribute to create new perspectives and open up new ways of thinking and acting in project situations. Thus, I call for a Perestroika in researching and acting in project management situations. My intent is to suggest a balanced praxeological view of the apparent opposition between social and natural science approaches. I explore, in this chapter, three key questions, covering the ontological, epistemological and praxeological dimensions of project management in action. 1. Are the research approaches being currently used appropriate for generating contributions that matter to both theory and practice with regards to what a ‘project’ is or to what we do when we call a specific situation ‘a project’? 2. On the basis of which intellectual virtues is the knowledge generated and what is the impact for theory and practice? 3. Are the modes of action of the practitioners ‘prudent’ and are they differentiating or reconciling formal and abstract rationality from substantive rationality and situated reasoning with regards to the mode of action they adopt in particular project situations? The investigation of the above questions leads me to debate about ‘Project Management-as-Praxis’, and to suggest ‘A’ (not ‘THE’) ‘praxeological’ style of reasoning and mode of inquiry – acknowledging a non-paradigmatic, subjective and kaleidoscopic perspective – for ‘Knowing-as-Practicing’ in project management. In short, this is about making a ‘Projects Science’ that matters.

What is a good project manager? Reconceptualizing the “do” : an Aristotelian perspective

In Social Science (Organization Studies, Economics, Management Science, Strategy, International Relations, Political Science…) the quest for addressing the question “what is a good practitioner?” has been around for centuries, with the underlying assumptions that good practitioners should lead organizations to higher levels of performance. Hence to ask “what is a good “captain”?” is not a new question, we should add! (e.g. Tsoukas & Cummings, 1997, p. 670; Söderlund, 2004, p. 190). This interrogation leads to consider problems such as the relations between dichotomies Theory and Practice, rigor and relevance of research, ways of knowing and knowledge forms. On the one hand we face the “Enlightenment” assumptions underlying modern positivist Social science, grounded in “unity-of-science dream of transforming and reducing all kinds of knowledge to one basic form and level” and cause-effects relationships (Eikeland, 2012, p. 20), and on the other, the postmodern interpretivist proposal, and its “tendency to make all kinds of knowing equivalent” (Eikeland, 2012, p. 20). In the project management space, this aims at addressing one of the fundamental problems in the field: projects still do not deliver their expected benefits and promises and therefore the socio-economical good (Hodgson & Cicmil, 2007; Bredillet, 2010, Lalonde et al., 2012). The Cartesian tradition supporting projects research and practice for the last 60 years (Bredillet, 2010, p. 4) has led to the lack of relevance to practice of the current conceptual base of project management, despite the sum of research, development of standards, best & good practices and the related development of project management bodies of knowledge (Packendorff, 1995, p. 319-323; Cicmil & Hodgson, 2006, p. 2–6, Hodgson & Cicmil, 2007, p. 436–7; Winter et al., 2006, p. 638). Referring to both Hodgson (2002) and Giddens (1993), we could say that “those who expect a “social-scientific Newton” to revolutionize this young field “are not only waiting for a train that will not arrive, but are in the wrong station altogether” (Hodgson, 2002, p. 809; Giddens, 1993, p. 18). While, in the postmodern stream mainly rooted in the “practice turn” (e.g. Hällgren & Lindahl, 2012), the shift from methodological individualism to social viscosity and the advocated pluralism lead to reinforce the “functional stupidity” (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012, p. 1194) this postmodern stream aims at overcoming. We suggest here that addressing the question “what is a good PM?” requires a philosophy of practice perspective to complement the “usual” philosophy of science perspective. The questioning of the modern Cartesian tradition mirrors a similar one made within Social science (Say, 1964; Koontz, 1961, 1980; Menger, 1985; Warry, 1992; Rothbard, 1997a; Tsoukas & Cummings, 1997; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Boisot & McKelvey, 2010), calling for new thinking. In order to get outside the rationalist ‘box’, Toulmin (1990, p. 11), along with Tsoukas & Cummings (1997, p. 655), suggests a possible path, summarizing the thoughts of many authors: “It can cling to the discredited research program of the purely theoretical (i.e. “modern”) philosophy, which will end up by driving it out of business: it can look for new and less exclusively theoretical ways of working, and develop the methods needed for a more practical (“post-modern”) agenda; or it can return to its pre-17th century traditions, and try to recover the lost (“pre-modern”) topics that were side-tracked by Descartes, but can be usefully taken up for the future” (Toulmin, 1990, p. 11). Thus, paradoxically and interestingly, in their quest for the so-called post-modernism, many authors build on “pre-modern” philosophies such as the Aristotelian one (e.g. MacIntyre, 1985, 2007; Tsoukas & Cummings, 1997; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Blomquist et al., 2010; Lalonde et al., 2012). It is perhaps because the post-modern stream emphasizes a dialogic process restricted to reliance on voice and textual representation, it limits the meaning of communicative praxis, and weaking the practice because it turns away attention from more fundamental issues associated with problem-definition and knowledge-for-use in action (Tedlock, 1983, p. 332–4; Schrag, 1986, p. 30, 46–7; Warry, 1992, p. 157). Eikeland suggests that the Aristotelian “gnoseology allows for reconsidering and reintegrating ways of knowing: traditional, practical, tacit, emotional, experiential, intuitive, etc., marginalised and considered insufficient by modernist [and post-modernist] thinking” (Eikeland, 2012, p. 20—21). By contrast with the modernist one-dimensional thinking and relativist and pluralistic post-modernism, we suggest, in a turn to an Aristotelian pre-modern lens, to re-conceptualise (“re” involving here a “re”-turn to pre-modern thinking) the “do” and to shift the perspective from what a good PM is (philosophy of science lens) to what a good PM does (philosophy of practice lens) (Aristotle, 1926a). As Tsoukas & Cummings put it: “In the Aristotelian tradition to call something good is to make a factual statement. To ask, for example, ’what is a good captain’?’ is not to come up with a list of attributes that good captains share (as modem contingency theorists would have it), but to point out the things that those who are recognized as good captains do.” (Tsoukas & Cummings, 1997, p. 670) Thus, this conversation offers a dialogue and deliberation about a central question: What does a good project manager do? The conversation is organized around a critic of the underlying assumptions supporting the modern, post-modern and pre-modern relations to ways of knowing, forms of knowledge and “practice”.

Acting and knowing in temporary and project-based organizing : turning from the practice world to a liberation praxeology?

The purpose of this article is to offer a critical discussion about the “practice” lens and its weaknesses in addressing acting and knowledge & competence development in the context of temporary and project-based organizing. I demonstrate that “practice turn” and “phronetic proposal” are dual and opposite perspectives within the “practice” world, none of them being fully relevant to grasp project organizing and that each of them maintain the opposition between the “observer” and the “natives “of the practices. I suggest an alternate style of reasoning in order to address the dissatisfaction in face of problems, antinomies, perplexities and contradictions generated by the dichotomous thinking: a liberation praxeology rooted in Aristotle philosophy aiming, through praxis & phronesis and practical acquired experience & perfecting actualization, at reconciling facts & values and means & ends, and Ethics & Politics in the quest for human happiness and social good through project organizing.