Postulating ideation mechanisms

Altogether five routines were identified in the previous section to be pertinent to the ideation stage. These routines were: 1) further development of existing product or prototype, 2) initiating a collaboration with a third party, 3) execu-tion of a pre-study, 4) initiating a project to match customer needs and 5) ini-tiating a development of a prototype. These routines or a constellation of them

were present in all of the 15 cases. Therefore, each of the NPD cases were cod-ed for the presence and absence of the routines bascod-ed on the NPD actions.

One outcome condition was also coded which was the transfer of the project into evaluation stage. Each of the projects was transferred to evaluation stage and therefore none of the projects disintegrated during ideation. Table 8 pre-sents a truth table of the NPD routines on the ideation stage. Altogether 12 different configurations of NPD routines were identified.

Table 8: Boolean truth table of ideation configurations

No contrary configurations were identified and therefore all the NPD cases could be used for further analyses and no additional conditions were necessary to be introduced. The conditions were then analyzed for necessity and suffi-ciency. On the level of configurations of conditions, each of the configurations is sufficient as they all enable the creation of a positive outcome. Neither of these configurations can be considered necessary, as there are other configura-tions that can lead to the outcome. On the level of single condiconfigura-tions, no single condition can be deemed neither necessary nor sufficient, as no single tion alone is able to create a positive outcome (sufficient) and no single condi-tion is present in all the configuracondi-tion leading to successful outcome (neces-sary).

Next a Boolean minimization algorithm of the Tosmana program (Cronqvist 2011) was applied to the truth table results. This generated logically minimal reduced expressions of the configurations of routines leading the NPD project to the evaluation stage. After this, the prime implicants were restructured based on case specific knowledge. This enabled excluding one prime implicant, further reducing the expressions and assigning cases to specific formulas based on case knowledge. The cases are assigned to specific prime implicants at this point to highlight the common characteristics between the projects.

These assigned minimizations will also be further used in the next chapters when the postulated mechanisms are contextualized. Table 9 presents the pro-cedure and findings.

Table 9: Boolean minimization table for ideation configurations

These reduced equations state the combinations of central NPD routines both present and absent that lead to an NPD project from the beginning of ideation into the evaluation stage, covering the process of ideation. As none of the for-mulas led to failure there was no need to check for the consistency of the solu-tions leading to failure. To better grasp each of the solution formulas and the postulated mechanism that underlies them, I next move to depicting them in detail.

7.1.1 Local search mechanism

The first formula for successful ideation contains the presence of further de-velopment of existing product or a prototype and the absence of initiating col-laboration with a third party and the execution of a pre-study. Specifically the formula can be stated as:



 









This formula can be interpreted as explaining NPD projects that are firm-internal projects where the focus is on developing a commercial stand-alone extension to an existing product or prototype. In explaining the projects

as-signed to this prime implicant, the formula depicts a traditional extension of a product line or in one instance the extension of an existing prototype that had been in internal use into a commercial product.

The ideation stage proceeds through the development of the existing prod-uct. Thus no external collaboration or pre-studies are undertaken to under-mine the process and the outcome it is intended to create.

The mechanism that is postulated to underlie this configuration relates to lo-cal search. The process begins from the recognition that there is an existing product or a prototype that could be enhanced. This raises awareness within the company above a threshold when a development project is initiated. The process ends when the project moves into the evaluation process conducted by the new product group. From the perspective of the functional routines of the mechanism, central component of the mechanism is the further development of an existing product that appears to overpower all other routines.

7.1.2 Exploratory search mechanism

The second formula for successful ideation contains the presence of the execu-tion of a pre-study and the absence of initiating the project to meet customer needs, and either the absence of further development of an existing product or the absence of initiating a collaboration to meet customer needs. Specifically, the formula can be stated as:





 









This formula can be interpreted as explaining NPD projects that make use of a pre-study to orient the NPD project without the existence of a direct customer need. Therefore, the formula depicts the search for new kinds of solutions that could be developed into products in new product areas.

The ideation stage proceeds through a number of different paths that charac-terize the search for new solutions. Despite the fact that the configurations before the minimization procedure included the presence of other factors, the search for a new solution through a pre-study is the main driver of this pro-cess.

The mechanism that is postulated to underlie this configuration relates to exploratory search. The process begins from the recognition that there is an emerging business opportunity to which a product could be developed. This raises awareness within the company above a threshold when a development project is initiated. This is followed a pre-study that gauges the ways in which the new opportunity could be grasped through the development of a new product. The process ends by moving the product idea to the evaluation pro-cess conducted by the new product group.

From the perspective of the functional components of the mechanism, two crucial notions can be made. Firstly, responding to an existing customer need appears in none of the configurations from which the minimization was made.

This indicates that the mechanism focuses solely on the development of a product to a possible new need and that these two routines are almost mutual-ly exclusive. Secondmutual-ly, while all other routines are present in the baseline con-figurations, they have no central role and the execution of a pre-study drives the process.

7.1.3 External knowledge embodiment mechanism

The third formula for successful ideation contains the initiation of a collabora-tion with a third party, initiating the development of a prototype, the absence of the further development of an existing product and either the absence of initiating the project to match customer needs or the presence of executing a pre-study. Specifically, the formula can be stated as:





 









The formula can be interpreted as explaining NPD projects that capitalize on external knowledge in the ideation stage to produce a prototype that is not based on an existing product of the company. Therefore, the formula explains NPD projects where the organization exposes its NPD to external influences that are targeted towards the creation of a prototype that embodies these in-fluences.

The ideation stage proceeds through a number of paths that characterize the process of collaboration. Despite the fact that the configurations before the minimization procedure contained all other conditions besides the further development of existing product, the integration of external and internal knowledge into a prototype characterize this configuration.

The mechanism that is postulated to underlie this configuration relates to exposing the organization to external influences and embodying these influ-ences into a prototype. In all instances the process begins with a third party proposing collaboration with the focal company. When the collaboration is accepted, it is followed by the making of a prototype that incorporates knowledge from both Vaisala staff and the third party. The process ends by moving the prototype and associated knowledge to the evaluation process con-ducted by the new product group.

From the perspective of functional routines of the mechanism three crucial notions can be made. Firstly, initiating a collaboration with a third party ap-pears to be mutually exclusive with the further development of an existing product. This indicates that in these kinds of instances Vaisala aims to guard their own intellectual property incorporated in products by not exposing them to third parties. Secondly, the execution of a prototype and the absence of ex-isting customer need are present in the sub solutions. The presence of a pre-study acts in these projects as a step in the ideation stage, where a pre-pre-study is done to orient the development of the prototype. The absence of an existing customer need characterizes the second sub solution by highlighting the

no-tion that the product that is being developed falls beyond the immediate cus-tomer base of the company and can be perceived as an attempt to extend oper-ations into this area. Thirdly, while all other routines are present in the base-line configurations, they have no central role and the execution of a prototype with a third party.

7.1.4 Theoretical grounding for the mechanisms

Altogether three different ideation mechanisms were postulated. All the mech-anisms relate to how knowledge is created and used to generate product ideas and prototypes. Two of these mechanisms relate to the search beyond the im-mediate knowledge domain and one relates to local search.

The local search mechanism is closely related to previous NPD activities.

This is done to search for solutions from the domain of current expertise, as has been suggested by Nelson and Winter (1982). The local search mechanism relies on the knowledge of a specific technological domain on which develop-ment has been made. Therefore, it enhances the current technological knowledge in the specific area (Rosenkopf and Nerkar 2001) and incorporates this knowledge into the developed product idea that is later on subjected to evaluation. As an outcome, the ideation process leads to the generation of in-cremental innovations that rely on exploiting local knowledge in new products.

The two other mechanisms rely on exploring technologies that reside outside the immediate technological domain of the company but the way in which this exploration is conducted differs substantially. The exploratory search mecha-nism focuses on probing new technological possibilities in fields where cus-tomer needs did not already exist. Therefore, this kind of search relies primari-ly on technological boundary spanning (Rosenkopf and Nerkar 2001). With regards to the external knowledge embodiment mechanism, the focal company relies on embodying the knowledge of a third part into a prototype that can later on be evaluated. This kind of search relies largely on organizational boundary spanning (ibid.) where the focal organization exposes itself to exter-nal influences. This enables the organization to draw together the necessary competences to develop a new offering, as suggested by Van de Ven et al.

(2008). Both of these ideation processes can lead to the creation of radically new innovations that rely on exploring new knowledge to generate product ideas and concepts.

Delineating from March (1991), these three mechanisms also highlight the means through which Vaisala conducted exploration and exploitation in their NPD activities. Furthermore, Aspara et al. (2011) identified market/customer intelligence, brands/bonds and technologies/processes as the three resource classes through which exploration and exploitation can be conducted. Of these resource classes, ideation mechanisms rely mainly on technologies and pro-cesses. Despite initiation of a project to match customer need was among the conditions used in the QCA, it appears not to have a central role in any of the identified mechanisms. Thus, the mechanisms focus on developing new

tech-nologies from which new product ideas and concepts are developed. Therefore, the ideation stage can be said to be technology focused.

Overall the mechanisms and their actualization in the NPD projects suggest that NPD was perceived as an efficient mode of using the resources of the company. Furthermore, the heavy focus on exploratory search is in line with the strategic goals of the company to broaden their offering portfolio during the period of inquiry. The decisions to venture into specific areas of develop-ment were largely based on the new product groups’ perception as, for in-stance, automatic weather stations were perceived important and therefore multiple projects were done on this area.

Interestingly, the local search mechanism focuses largely on radiosondes and on products that were discarded later on during evaluation. This could be tak-en to indicate that whtak-en NPD activities shift towards exploration, creating traction for local search can be challenging. However, local search provides coherence and orientation for the NPD activities that otherwise span both or-ganizational and technology boundaries.

Finally, it is apparent that the exploratory search mechanism and external knowledge embodiment mechanisms are adjacent in their capacity for creating change. They both enable the company to broaden its technology base but through different means.