Meeting the demands of a circular economy entails substantial organizational change and innovation, particularly by industrial incumbent organizations. This paper aims to deepen understanding of how such organizations use management controls to strengthen circular principles and drive innovation, while also shedding light on tensions in the management control system that may occur following the contrasting logics of linearity and circularity. The study collects qualitatively rich empirical data from three large industrial organizations in Sweden, employing 38 semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis. The study suggests that the management control system serves as a valuable instrument for implementing circular principles through interventions, and conversely, as a system that can entrench a linear logic in organizations. Specifically, the analysis reveals that while circular principles are not fully integrated into all aspects of the management control systems, specific identified factors enable or impede innovation in the circular transformation. Imbalances and inconsistencies in the use of action-, result-, and cultural controls were also identified. The practical implications emphasize a risk of reducing circular initiatives to minor improvements without a comprehensive understanding of the needed radical changes and corresponding adjustments to the management control system. Overall, the research provides valuable and qualitatively rich insights connecting the adoption of the circular economy in incumbent organizations and further strengthens the bridge between literature on innovation management, circular economy, and management control systems, highlighting the importance of addressing tensions and imbalances for successful circular transformations.

Innovation and its management in retail organisations is an emerging field, yet the measurement of innovation in this context remains challenging and under-researched. The study investigates innovation in large Swedish retail companies, focusing on monitoring and measurement of innovation performance. Through a qualitative, multiple case study, our findings reveal that retailers are aiming to become more active innovators. They are exerting a greater control over the innovation process, implementing a range of financial and non-financial indicators that encompass inputs, outputs, and the process itself. Innovation projects serve as vehicles for experimentation and learning about how to improve the structure of innovation efforts. However, challenges still arise when strategic objectives are not aligned with performance measurements across the organisation. Nonetheless, existing performance measurement practices can support innovation capability development in retail, especially in relation to culture and competence development and utilising external knowledge for open innovation. The paper advances theory by offering insights into how retailers gain more control of innovation through measurement, contributing to the growing landscape of strategic innovation management in retail. We propose a model, informed by theoretically built framework and empirical data, to guide retail organisations in defining new measurements that promote a holistic perspective to building innovation capability.

Our knowledge of how to design innovation ecosystems that effectively deal with grand challenges or wicked problems is currently insufficient due to a lack of understanding of their joint innovation processes. Through the use of an in‐depth case of an innovation ecosystem designed to combat organized crime, this study shows how diverse government authorities manoeuvre innovation and interact to continuously make the challenge amenable and identify and implement provisional and innovative solutions. Drawing on extensive data gathered from observations, documentation, and interviews with multiple stakeholders, we contribute to the innovation ecosystem literature by offering a model of three interdependent and complementary innovation processes: responsive, preventive, and tactical innovation, supporting an ongoing and distributed experimentation among diverse actors. Furthermore, we emphasize the use of a hybrid interorganizational structure that combines hierarchical and horizontal structures, over one that is entirely network‐based, and we highlight the crucial role of a focal collective actor as opposed to a single orchestrator of the ecosystem. Finally, the study suggests attention not only to strengths and complementary attributes but also to vulnerabilities and gaps between involved actors, providing unique innovation opportunities. The paper offers valuable guidance to designers and coordinators of innovation ecosystems addressing grand challenges.

Circular economy (CE) is gaining interest among industrial firms in light of sustainability concerns, and several incumbent firms are integrating it into their strategy. In this study, we scrutinize learnings from three large established industrial firms with a clear CE agenda and that are front-runners in CE strategy deployment. We analyze exploitation and exploration approaches to CE and problematize how these approaches relate to radical innovation, which we argue is critical for achieving CE. Semi-structured interviews (n = 30) were used to collect data. We found several issues referring to (1) challenges and approaches to normative management, (2) how the innovation ecosystem is engaged, (3) how goals and metrics relate to CE, and (4) resources and coordination regarding the CE initiative. Overall, current exploitative approaches are favored over explorative, mirroring an undesired imbalance between the two. We suggest several ways to counteract this. For example, (1) addressing existing norms so that they align with the ambitions in CE, (2) actively managing collaboration in the innovation ecosystem, including radically new setups of different actors, and (3) that managers need to carefully consider when and how to use goals and measurements in a circular strategy deployment, to foster both radical and incremental innovation.

Barriers to access-based consumption (ABC) have been extensively studied in different strands of literature. However, cumulative knowledge is not organized to date, and a comprehensive overview of barriers identified by empirical studies in diverse strands is lacking. Such a picture is essential for laying the ground for further change-oriented research and actual changes in practice. This article reports on the results of a systematic review on barriers to transitioning from ownership- to access-based consumption. The review focuses on the literature strands product-service systems, circular economy, sharing economy, and collaborative consumption. Through open and axial coding of 289 barriers reported in 45 empirical studies, we found 17 themes of barriers concerning consumers, business, and society. The analysis of the barriers reveals four significant insights important for the research and practitioner community: (1) the overall experience of ABC and trust mechanisms need to be better understood; (2) organizational aspects in traditional business need a system change; (3) regulation plays a fundamental role in making ABC work for business, society, and sustainability; and (4) sharing risks and experimentation for new learnings are necessary. These four major insights suggest that consumers need business and government to offer enabling conditions for ABC – spanning from raising awareness and understanding to improving user experience. Furthermore, businesses need governments to create the necessary structures to support ABC offerings – from decreasing risks to increasing incentives. How and which mechanisms can further facilitate circular behaviors is a salient topic for future investigations.

Numerous researchers and practitioners emphasize the potential to create value through sustainable business models (SBMs). However, little attention has been paid to how sustainable value is proposed, created, delivered, and captured in the organization, and how customers perceive sustainable value in service. The aim of this paper is to explore this research gap empirically through a case study of sustainable value (co-)creation through SBMs of sustainable service innovations as experienced among two hotels' managers, employees and customers. The contributions of the study relate to the development of SBMs in service, where the value processes happen simultaneously and where the element value perception has to be added to the extant SBM literature, which is closely related to the creation and delivery of physical goods as in product-oriented industries. The study also contributes through the dual perspective (providers and customers) on sustainable value proposition, value creation and value capture. The findings reveal different key aspects in creating and capturing sustainable value through SBMs and sustainable service innovation. The managerial implications for creating and implementing SBM in service stress the need for employee engagement, customer involvement and targeted and personal communication educating internal and external sustainability ambassadors.

The linear paradigm of take-make-dispose in production and consumption patterns impedes the achievement of global sustainability goals. Strategies for maintaining the added value of resources and circulating them have been discussed as promising for the future. There are, however, many barriers to be addressed to overcome the linear lock-in. The large body of literature on these barriers is notably diverse in terms of theory, methods, sectors, products, and settings. This demonstrates the complexity of delineating implications to the practice and research needs. Without a common framework to analyse barriers, knowledge does not accumulate, hindering the development and implementation of solutions and policies that could effectively address the barriers. In this article, we developed a systematic map of studies on barriers related to the circular transition. The purpose was twofold: (1) to classify published research on barriers; (2) to provide a searchable database for future more rigorous systematic literature reviews. We reviewed the abstract of 527 publications and classified the study according to a developed scheme. This classification scheme includes the research paradigms (circular economy, sharing economy, collaborative consumption and product-service systems), circular strategy (recycling, remanufacturing, component/product reuse, and access-based consumption), country, sector/industry/product, and research approach and method. The resulting research map is open source, serving also as an adaptive digital database for researchers alike to perform systematic reviews and contribute further to its collaborative development.

Reducing private car commuting is necessary for decarbonisation of cities; meanwhile, new shared mobility services provide an alternative to cars for daily commuting proposing a transition of user behaviour towards more sustainable mobility practices. In this paper, we investigate changes in everyday life practices when private car commuting is replaced with a shared mobility alternative, integrating lightweight small size electric vehicles (LEVs) in a peer-to-peer shared mobility service. Through a living lab experiment, a long-term empirical study with 16 individual households in Sweden was conducted employing a mixed methods approach. Using social practice theory as an analytical lens, we interrogate in depth the process of change in users’ everyday lives to understand challenges in integrating shared mobility services into everyday practice, and the implications for transition towards sustainable mobility practices from a user’s everyday life point of view. The results show that a new mobility service can play a role in reconfiguring the meaning of private car commuting in terms of its related impacts, as well as increase knowledge and trust in sustainable alternatives. However, integrating shared mobility services in everyday practices showed that it became difficult to manage after six months, particularly for users with children. Our study demonstrates that current everyday life logistics, time affluence, and effort requirements are critical variables for enabling practice changes towards more sustainable mobility alternatives, such as a light electric vehicle sharing service. To enable people to reduce private car use, a more integrated and systemic design approach is needed for alternatives to become competitive with the notion of cars in everyday mobility.

The current linear system of extract-produce-consume-dispose poses considerable challenges for achieving sustainability goals and will eventually lead to the depletion of non-renewable natural reso ...

Low-carbon mobility alternatives, such as shared services integrating light electric vehicles, support transitions to sustainable transport systems. However, new products and services are not enough, as changes must also incorporate the practices of travelling, infrastructure, and mobility cultures in which users of mobility solutions are core stakeholders. This paper argues that user involvement is necessary in sustainable innovation processes but that the expected diversity of user roles and their involvement can also lead to contrasting outcomes for sustainable innovation transitions. Guided by theory in user involvement, this study investigated users and nonusers of light electric vehicles in a sharing mobility service system set up as living lab in two large workplaces in Sweden. Fifty-one interviews with employees at the workplaces were conducted during the implementation process and analysed combined with a questionnaire and data from system tracking through sensor technology. The paper finds that both users and non-users are cocreators in building momentum for sustainable mobility alternatives and provides a spectrum of user roles with defined characteristics. Four roles are distinguished within this spectrum: vigilant users, passive collaborators, active decision makers and ambassadors. We suggest that a convergent activation strategy is deployed for involving a full spectrum of users in order to capture their insights in ways that positively affect transition. Such a strategy addresses users and non-users as part of decision-making concerning alternatives and cultivates a culture of user collaboration, while also enabling a plurality of contributions in order to challenge existing regimes and established practices among individuals.

Innovation in retailing is under-investigated in academia and yet a highly relevant concern given the current changes in the retail landscape. Although retailing is often characterized by a dynamic and highly competitive environment, retail organizations are not often considered as 'innovative,' at least when compared with manufacturing industries, or when using existing innovation frameworks in academic literature. There are many aspects of innovation discussed in literature and a need to consider different ways of looking into retail's innovativeness. Among them, the importance of organizational climate on influencing creativity and innovation may help explain how to enable innovation in service organizations, such as retailers. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the climate for innovation and creativity and examine how retail organizations perceive it. We applied a mixed-methods approach using an established organizational climate survey and semi-structured, one-on-one interviews regarding the innovation climate and other aspects of innovation management in the companies. The study shows that despite retail organizations still struggling to incorporate innovation on a strategic level and move beyond incremental developments in their operations, retailers score positively on being innovative regarding certain dimensions of the organizational climate survey. This indicates that retailers (especially conventional ones) could benefit from challenging current practices and moving towards becoming more active and strategic innovators since their organizational climate to a certain extent allows for it. Respondents within the organizations also express a need for better innovation support, whether it is through established structures and processes or an improvement in the current conditions of the organizational climate. How retailers could enable themselves to become more active innovators - based on what we know that retailers look more towards entrepreneurship and continuous development as a driving force rather than formalized innovation practices per se - is a potential avenue for further research.

The world is facing severe and complex issues and the sustainable development challenges are immense. In order to meet the challenges, social innovation is crucially needed. Developing social innovation is however challenging and collaboration among stakeholders is an important factor to overcome this. A way to collaborate with citizens is with citizen co-creation. The aim of this study was to investigate how citizen co-creation is used as a mean to achieve social innovation. This was done by investigating the research questions “Which factors have a positive impact on the citizen co-creation process to achieve social innovation?“ and “What are the challenges of using citizen co-creation to achieve social innovation and what are the potential solutions?”. Literature within social innovation and citizen co-creation was reviewed and a case study was performed. The case study was executed in Medellin, Colombia, together with a public entity working with the transformation of the city. A program for a citizen co-creation process called MiMedellin was studied. Interviews were performed with team members working with the program and stakeholders involved in a specific project. Secondary data regarding type of challenges and the citizens behaviour on the platform was also analysed in order to confirm information collected in the interviews. This master’s thesis revealed a strong link between citizen co-creation and social innovation. The ways to work in citizen co-creation align with key factors in the social innovation process and citizen co-creation is therefore a mean to achieve social innovation. Factors with a positive impact in the citizen co-creation process were found to be related to ways to work, methods for citizen participation and leadership. Challenges of achieving social innovation with citizen co-creation were found to be related to trust, engagement and the complexity of the process. This master’s thesis suggests ways to overcome the challenges as well as gives practical and theoretical implications and areas for future research.

The goal of this research is to see which challenges the individuals on the OEM’s side meet during asymmetrical collaborations and which approaches they use to overcome them. Literature was focused very much on the managerial view of solving challenges in these collaborations. This study shows that individuals could play a major role in resolving challenges that occur in asymmetrical collaborations. The profound effect of individuals could resemble that of individuals in other fields, e.g. champions in innovation. To gain insight, 34 interviews within an automotive OEM were performed with project leaders of collaborations that were done with start-ups. These interviews were investigated by coding. These codes were analyzed once via text mining to get an overarching view, and once with traditional coding to get more nuanced and detailed insights. Four major challenges were found. Mismatches in processes, lack of time and capacity, potentially unknown stakeholders, and the assessment of the start-up. These challenges were approached through a variety of measures by the interviewees. Coaching the start-up, designing a proof-of-project, using the personal network, effective communication, explaining and shielding of the start-up, and implementing new processes in the start-up. The role that is described by these tasks shall be called the ambassador role. Implementing this role in a company enables individuals to facilitate asymmetrical collaborations. However, it is suggested that there should also be an institution established that is aware of the best-practices and therefore able to educate new ambassadors. INTRODUCTION Through a fast changing environment automotive OEMs are currently showing the need for more exploration, a trend that is also fostered by new competitors and new technologies (Sidhu, Volberda, & Commandeur, 2004). Since they are traditionally set up more for exploitation rather than exploration, e.g. through their size, structure, and culture (Burns & Wholey, 1993; Sørensen, 2002; Sørensen & Stuart, 2000), they have started to contact start-ups in order to address this need (Weiblen & Chesbrough, 2015) For that reason, the automotive corporation that is studied here has introduced five modes of interaction between a start-up and the OEM. Joint product development, establish suppliers, CVC investment, problem solving, and spin-outs. These modes 25th IPDMC Innovation and Product Development Management Conference, June 10-13 2018, Portugal 25th IPDMC Innovation and Product Development Management Conference, June 10-13 2018, Portugal have been installed to benefit from the start-up’s explorative capabilities. (Buck, Nilsson, & Ritzén, 2017) However, these kinds of asymmetric collaborations are known to bear challenges on a managerial level, for which some approaches were found as a solution (Minshall, Mortara, Valli, & Probert, 2010). A previous study within the OEM identified that employees acting in a specific way were able to facilitate the collaboration and solve the challenges(Buck, Arekrans, Gordin, Nilsson, & Ritzén, 2017). The employees there showed behaviors that were known from other areas, such as champions (Burgelman, 1983) or change agents (Lunenburg, 2010). It is known from these areas that individuals can be major reasons for overcoming challenges, if they show the correct behavior. To find out if individuals also could play a major role in facilitating asymmetrical innovations, this research will study the challenges that the individuals responsible in the departments face during the collaboration. Also, the approaches they use to overcome these challenges will be portrayed.

The business potentials of businesses and business models going circular are vast as identified by Nasr (2011). Despite the increase of publications on the topic of circular economy (CE) and circul ...

A number of researchers and practitioners emphasize the potentials of creating value through sustainable business models. However, little attention has been paid as to how sustainable value is crea ...

Several researchers talk about how the greatest source of competitive advantage is a firm's capability to be innovative, and it is a fact that economic growth is built upon innovations and ideas. Ideas belong to the early activities of innovation processes, which can be defined as the front end of innovation (FEI). FEI has clearly been stated to be crucial for the innovative performance of firms, but yet an area which many companies often lack of handling in a structured way. What need to be considered for a successful FEI has laid the foundation of this thesis. The aim with the thesis is to investigate what are key success factors and common pitfalls for processes and activities within the FEI, and how these can be handled by management. The thesis is also investigating how ideas and innovations can be measured in order to take the right decisions for different types of ideas by a suitable level of decision-makers. The thesis was carried out as a case study at Construction Tools division at Atlas Copco who had expressed the same demand as many companies appear to struggle with: a structured FEI. The goal with the thesis is therefore to propose recommendations towards a successful FEI, including structures, methods, and tools for the case company. In order to do so, twelve semistructured qualitative interviews with internal employees followed by ten semi-structured qualitative interviews with external companies in different industries and sizes were conducted. Along with the case study, a literature study was also performed. The collected data were analyzed and benchmarked towards the literature and the research questions, which resulted in several conclusions which are both general as well as organizational specific for the case company. These are amongst others: a structured innovation portfolio management including clear budget allocation and innovation strategy; enabling a creative culture; separating staff for conducting work regarding disruptive ideas; involvement by top management in the development of ideas.

Sustainable development requires disruptive changes and radical innovations, and the capability to deliver this in relation to adapt to a sustainable development is needed in mature large industrial companies. Integration between sustainability and business development is needed, which the Circular Economy model offers. Circular Economy is little implemented in practice, and in the present paper barriers to a transition to Circular Economy is identified. Barriers are financial, structural, operational, attitudinal and technological. They are also, as analyzed in relation to innovation management, characterized by a need to increase integration between a number of different perspectives and domains in industry.

Sustainability driven innovations differ from current established technologies imposing new requirements on users and often interdependent with other actors' changes. Strategic Niche Management (SNM) stresses interactions between actors through niches i.e. protected spaces for experimentation to support innovation. However, it is unclear what activities are necessary when different actors are involved in developing and diffusing sustainability innovation. This paper aims at identifying activities crucial for sustainability innovation in an implemented mobility project. The results show that co-creation through iterations and reflections by combinations of diverse actors and users can be considered a core process for sustainability innovation. Six activities are identified as critical: matching the interdependencies by combining the actors' diverse competences and resources; facilitating to steer the group of actors into actions; engaging users at early stages of innovation; trying to drive change by offering the users an opportunity; co-creating through a multitude of actors with the development and usage simultaneously; steering and facilitating to enable co-creation.

This paper describes and analyses an exploration-capability model that is currently being introduced in an automotive OEM. An increasingly high environmental dynamism as well as a new level of competition in the automotive industry call for an improved capability to explore and realise more radical innovations to complement the established OEMs exploitation skills and present focus on incremental innovation. The model that is target for the study offers the employees in the OEM five different forms of interactions with start-ups as a way to develop the capability to explore. The different forms of interaction are found to make use of different modes of balancing ambidexterity and to introduce different means to improve and establish individual, entrepreneurial skills, as well as influence the innovation culture of the OEM. The paper lays the foundation for future research by describing how and why an OEM is designing a new model to develop its exploration capability through interacting with start-ups by analysing the model in relation to theory, and presenting propositions that will act as a baseline for further studies.