Marketing Dissertation Introduction Sample 1

In a contemporary, technologically advanced era, information and communication technologies play a prime role in corporations’ quest for innovation. However, the environmental complexities and increased competition in the corporate world have made the sole reliance of organisations on ICT services and systems inadequate. Today, organisations must adopt holistic views for attaining sustainable competitive edge based on innovation (Gressgard et al., 2014).  Tools, processes and people are responsible for fostering innovation within the organisation as well as capitalising its benefits. Researchers contend that successful integration and capitalisation of innovation relies on the functionality of these three elements. Hence, ICTs should be integrated and aligned with the adaptation of organisational structure and process for effective innovation process (Hafkesbrink & Schroll, (2011).

Successful innovation requires an intricate alignment of both capital and human resources along with efficient distribution and diffusion of knowledge to certify the successful adoption and commercialisation of innovation (Nesheim & Gressgård, 2014).  This feature of complexity has triggered an intense argument between proponents of a protective innovation strategy who advocate the protection of the organisation’s innovation process to avoid the imitation of firm’s competitive advantage, and supporters of collaborative innovation approach, founded on effective knowledge disbursement and capitalising organisation’s network (Adner, 2006).  Firm’s resource-based view contends that organisations can attain sustainable competitive advantage by possessing non-substitutable, inimitable, rare and valuable resources. In this case, the innovation based success relies on the organisation’s ability to convert these resources into core competencies and strategic capabilities. A technologically innovative organisation can gain competitive advantage through the effective exploitation of its core competencies and valuable resources. In such case, an isolating mechanism is required to maintain the competitive edge, which includes information asymmetry. It means that the organisation has an exclusive access to a transaction as compared to its competitors (Hafkesbrink & Schroll, 2011). However, the current perspective suggests that sustainable competitive advantage could be derived by integrating the innovation into business processes rather than relying on resource based perspective (Li, Huang & Tsai, 2009). Hence, this study aims to highlight the challenges faced by Jordanian telecom organisations and assess their perceptions towards embedded innovation for the accomplishment of business objectives in a highly-saturated market. In doing so, the research will explore the mechanism and processes of building a system for embedded innovation.

            Within a resource-based perspective, knowledge is considered extremely important to preserve the competitive advantage (Lin & Wu, 2014). Whereas, recent researchers contend that the resource-based theory has lost its relevance with contemporary era to a great extent. Today, we live in an era where digitalisation of information has made it almost impossible for organisations to attain and sustain a technology based competitive advantage in the long-run. Previously, the knowledge was regarded as a resource, (as suggested by the firm’s resource based perspective) but today, the knowledge is regarded as a process initiated by collaborating with the stakeholders and results in the fulfilment of their implied needs (Li, Huang & Tsai, 2009). Recent theories emphasize the knowledge sharing and collaborative innovation. The theorists contend that it is not possible to develop the innovation in a vacuum (Adner, 2006). They further argue that technological innovation requires a complicated structure of supportive technologies and services that an organisation cannot handle without collaborating with other parties. The debate does not only entail a vibrant research topic in academia, but, contemporary organisations pursuing innovation are also showing extreme concern, as their survival in a highly turbulent environment has become challenging than ever before. These organisations struggle to choose between the collaborative innovation strategies or resource based strategy. In the latter case, they can probably miss out the advantages of supportive knowledge and collaboration with customers, suppliers and competitors (Lin & Wu, 2014).

“Competition is essential to the innovation process and to capitalist economic development more generally. But so is cooperation. The challenge to policy analysts and to managers is to find the right balance of competition and cooperation, and the appropriate institutional structures within which competition and cooperation ought to take place.” (Teece, 1990, p. 1).

The current scholarly debate in innovation studies revolves around the transformation from a resource-based, linear innovation model to an open, systematic and user-centric innovation model. There are two types of processes to develop innovation systems. They could be through competitiveness or through cooperation and both of them would be considered leaner. However the current innovation debate emphasises that this linear model will not lead to successful innovation. The other structure is non-leaner innovation model, which is open and systematically consider stakeholders such as including suppliers, users, government, supply chain partners and broader society. Researchers are interested in exploring how knowledge creation develops under unique and new innovation paradigm (Carayannis, Barth & Campbell, 2012). For instance, the quadruple helix innovation model proposes that knowledge creation and utilisation occurs in non-linear and highly interactive modes, in different multifactor innovation networks, and involves collaboration with all stakeholders including suppliers, users, government, supply chain partners and broader society.  The issue is how contemporary organisations can select between completely linear and utterly non-linear innovation models (Dubina, Carayannis & Campbell, 2012). Contending on the same note, a previous researcher has made the following comment:

The above comment suggests that while functioning in a hypercompetitive market, the firms cannot ensure sustainability until they adopt a collaborative approach with all stakeholders. Such collaboration depends on the innovative communication style and results into strengthened competitive positioning at marketplace. “Competitive pressure” is one of the biggest challenges of contemporary organisations that can be addressed by ensuring effective collaboration with primary stakeholder- as suggested by embedded innovation (Boyer, 2003).

Invariably, the term “embeddedness” has been introduced to address the current innovation challenges being faced by contemporary organisations. This introduction has marked the increasing challenge of substantial integration of firms into surrounding community to ensure that their exploitable knowledge has been well absorbed organic (Hafkesbrink and Evers, 2010). Granovetter (1985) has already marked the organisations’ social embeddedness approach and researcher has supported the argument in the context of contemporary economic sociology. The shift from innovation 1.0 (closed innovation) to innovation 3.0 (embedded innovation) needs to be realised by proactive organisations if they are seeking a long-term survival in such a turbulent scenario. This shift has transformed various traditional management practices by opening various formal and informal communication channels to foster the knowledge flow. The previous innovation models were closed in a way that they allowed a one-way flow of innovative ideas, hindering the management’s ability to maximise the business potential. Later, the open innovation models were introduced that to a great extent, they resolved the issues associated with previous innovation models. However, the open innovation models also have their own limitations. These include increased reliance on the external knowledge sources and expensive collaboration with the external stakeholders. To overcome these weaknesses, the latest innovation model, “innovation 3.0” has surpassed the closed innovation (also called “Innovation 1.0”) and open innovation (also called “Innovation 2.0”). The innovation 3.0 has theoretically embraced the ambidextrous structural capabilities of using institutional arrangements for the accomplishment of the embedding process (O’Reilly and Tushman, 2008). These institutional arrangements can be explicit (in the form of formal contracts with other parties), implicit (such as cultivation of a trust culture), exploitative or explorative, mechanic or organic (Hafkesbrink and Evers, 2010), depending on the relationship characteristics, the phase and the nature of overall innovation process.

Embedded innovation offers a more inclusive approach to service innovation where multinational telecoms can engage end-users in the experimentation and design of their services. Simon & Hart (2009) defines embedded innovation as the process of creating long-term, sustainable sources of growth and re-embed consumers, potential customers, and producers to generate an infinite number of new services, products, markets and business enterprises in the current economy. Noordhoff et al (2011) define embedded innovation as the interaction between the supplier and the customers’ innovative knowledge to influence innovation, as well as to what degree they benefit from customer relationships. Van der Meer & van Zwieten (2010) define innovation as the total set of activities that lead to the introduction of something new that gives the company defendable competitive advantage.  Hassink (2001) defined embeddedness as the firm’s interactive learning from other institutions in the direct environment (rivals, suppliers, and regulators) to a high level of inclusiveness.  Schumpeter (1950) points out that innovation not only affects current profits and output of the firms but also makes fundamental changes in the organisations, lives, and people.

The integration of innovation 3.0 or embedded innovation has become crucial for modern business enterprises. The businesses operating in a highly competitive industry need to innovate continuously to strengthen their competitive position in the market and increase the survival chances in a highly competitive scenario (Hafkesbrink & Schroll, 2011). Embedded Innovation (EI) is considered a sustainable approach for enhancing service innovation in multinational information and communication technology providers. Telecom sector is one of the advanced ICT providers facing tight competition in a highly saturated local and global market. However, telecom organisations can mitigate the competitive pressure through effective integration of embedded innovation based on external knowledge acquired from the product users and combining knowledge of market needs and technological solution principles (Hafkesbrink & Evers, 2010).

After describing the background to the study, the next section provides a brief overview of the Jordan Telecom Sector before stating the research problem. The next section clarifies how these issues shape the innovation systems in the Jordanian telecoms.