Comparative among the cases
| Constructs | Main aspects | Analysis for each case study | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company A | Company B | Company C | ||
| Collaboration | Strategic direction | No presence of strategic direction | Very strong presence of strategic direction | Strong presence of strategic direction |
| Decisions about open collaboration goals | Focused in increasing awareness in the market | Aligned with organizaton’s growth strategy. Desire to speed up the reach for new technologies, knowledge and market | Aligned and deployed to fill the gap about the final consumer needs. Ideas for sustainable growth | |
| Top management involvement | Involvement of the marketing and sales departments only | Involvement of all the board of directors | Involvement of the board of directors, with special attention to the R&D, technology and innovation departments | |
| Role of the participants | Idea generation. There is no type of commitment or further engagement in other initiatives | Strong level of collaboration. Disclosure of information and high level of commitment and further engagement | Deep level of collaboration. Disclosure of information and plans. High level of commitment and further engagement | |
| Technology | Technology typology, architecture and/or platform to support open collaboration activity | Facebook, mainly to idea generation. Open to overall public | Customized collaboration platform developed to attend to their objectives and needs. Selected participation, with specific objectives | Selected participation with specific objectives. Invitation to participation done by personal contact and use of technology as a facilitator. Later, adoption of a partner’s platform to collaborate with universities and young entrepreneurs |
| Existence of alignment between IT and strategy | Not observed | IT and business strategy are aligned. There is a technology and innovation VP | IT and business strategy are aligned; however, for open collaboration, activities are in an intermediate stage | |
| IT role in the company | To support the operation efficiency | Technology is a vital part for their growth strategy in the whole company | Technology is a key part for their R&D | |
| Performance | Gains in leadership and learning | Not observed | Many of their growth and business innovation are based on the learning from the collaborative experiences | They strongly relay in the collaboration perspectives. It is from these experiences that they learn about the final customer needs and are able to make long-time planning for their products and services |
| Access to new markets and business models | Not observed | Through the learning obtained from the collaboration activities, the companies are able to constantly innovate in their products and business models | Through the learning obtained from the collaboration activities, the companies are able to constantly innovate in their products and business models | |
| Reduction on costs, time and risk | Not observed | One of the key collaboration initiatives is the quick prototyping initiatives where participants are invited to create new product, packages or even business models and go until the prototyping stage – all in a very short time span | Once specific needs are identified and partners and customers engaged in the process, the risk of developing something that will not be accepted in the market is low. Also, the time to market is shortened by this process | |
| Top management involvement | Not observed | Top management is involved in the whole process | Top management is involved in the decision about what actions should be taken | |
| Results | Open collaboration direct results | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Open collaboration indirect results | No | Yes | Yes | |
| Constructs | Main aspects | Analysis for each case study | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company A | Company B | Company C | ||
| Collaboration | Strategic direction | No presence of strategic direction | Very strong presence of strategic direction | Strong presence of strategic direction |
| Decisions about open collaboration goals | Focused in increasing awareness in the market | Aligned with organizaton’s growth strategy. Desire to speed up the reach for new technologies, knowledge and market | Aligned and deployed to fill the gap about the final consumer needs. Ideas for sustainable growth | |
| Top management involvement | Involvement of the marketing and sales departments only | Involvement of all the board of directors | Involvement of the board of directors, with special attention to the R&D, technology and innovation departments | |
| Role of the participants | Idea generation. There is no type of commitment or further engagement in other initiatives | Strong level of collaboration. Disclosure of information and high level of commitment and further engagement | Deep level of collaboration. Disclosure of information and plans. High level of commitment and further engagement | |
| Technology | Technology typology, architecture and/or platform to support open collaboration activity | Facebook, mainly to idea generation. Open to overall public | Customized collaboration platform developed to attend to their objectives and needs. Selected participation, with specific objectives | Selected participation with specific objectives. Invitation to participation done by personal contact and use of technology as a facilitator. Later, adoption of a partner’s platform to collaborate with universities and young entrepreneurs |
| Existence of alignment between IT and strategy | Not observed | IT and business strategy are aligned. There is a technology and innovation VP | IT and business strategy are aligned; however, for open collaboration, activities are in an intermediate stage | |
| IT role in the company | To support the operation efficiency | Technology is a vital part for their growth strategy in the whole company | Technology is a key part for their R&D | |
| Performance | Gains in leadership and learning | Not observed | Many of their growth and business innovation are based on the learning from the collaborative experiences | They strongly relay in the collaboration perspectives. It is from these experiences that they learn about the final customer needs and are able to make long-time planning for their products and services |
| Access to new markets and business models | Not observed | Through the learning obtained from the collaboration activities, the companies are able to constantly innovate in their products and business models | Through the learning obtained from the collaboration activities, the companies are able to constantly innovate in their products and business models | |
| Reduction on costs, time and risk | Not observed | One of the key collaboration initiatives is the quick prototyping initiatives where participants are invited to create new product, packages or even business models and go until the prototyping stage – all in a very short time span | Once specific needs are identified and partners and customers engaged in the process, the risk of developing something that will not be accepted in the market is low. Also, the time to market is shortened by this process | |
| Top management involvement | Not observed | Top management is involved in the whole process | Top management is involved in the decision about what actions should be taken | |
| Results | Open collaboration direct results | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Open collaboration indirect results | No | Yes | Yes | |