Innomediary agency and practices in shaping market ...

IMM-07074; No of Pages 12 Industrial Marketing Management xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

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Industrial Marketing Management

Innomediary agency and practices in shaping market innovation Cristina Mele ⁎, Tiziana Russo-Spena University of Naples “Federico II”, Department of Economics, Management, and Institutions, Via Cinthia Monte S. Angelo, Naples, Italy

a r t i c l e

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Article history: Received 15 December 2012 Received in revised form 19 November 2013 Accepted 30 March 2014 Available online xxxx Keywords: Market innovation Practices Agency Innomediary Actors

a b s t r a c t In today's business world, the role of the Schumpeterian entrepreneur is dwarfed by that of the variety of market actors who co-create innovation by interacting with and integrating resources within performative practices. New actors have entered the market and changed how market innovation occurs. This study focuses on the “innomediary” as a new category of market actor. By moving beyond the mainstream research, we offer a fresh conceptualisation of innomediary agency and practices in shaping market innovation. Acting as catalysts of creativity and knowledge, innomediaries collect information, expertise, skills and experiences from a heterogeneous mass of actors, and encourage the interchange of ideas, tools, images and languages. Innomediary agency enables the deployment of four practices: 1) engaging; 2) exploring; 3) exploiting; and 4) orchestrating. Each practice involves a set of actions and resource integration. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Innovation – who does it and how they do it – is the issue that will be explored in this paper. By adopting Schumpeter's (1934) vision of entrepreneurship and the “not invented here” (Katz & Allen, 1982) concept, most textbooks continue to conceptualise individual companies (and their R&D departments) as the main innovators. The typical storyline of economic innovation (Jamison, Christensen & Botin, 2011) describes innovation management as a linear process within a stagegate model, and uses the metaphor of the funnel to describe how such management functions. However, market innovation does not always occur in this manner. In examining the “who” and “how” of recent innovations, practitioners and scholars propose different stories of innovation with significant social and cultural meanings (Evanschitzky, Eisend, Calantone & Jiang, 2012; Rubalcaba, Michel, Sundbo, Brown & Reynoso, 2012). Four main ideas have shaken the traditional perspective on innovation by addressing who is involved – the customer and the generic actor – and what the process is — the model of open innovation and the role of the Internet. Regarding who innovates, co-creation studies focus on crowdsourced and community-based innovation (Howe, 2008; Nambisan, 2002). The key contribution of such studies is to highlight the role of the newly empowered customer who harnesses new developments in technology (e.g., the Internet) to become more involved in a company's innovation processes. Moving beyond the sole perspective of the ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0816750; fax: +39 081675058. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Mele), [email protected] (T. Russo-Spena).

customer, several scholars suggest the need to overcome the rigid distinction between suppliers and consumers and to adopt a more general actor-to-actor terminology (A2A: Vargo & Lusch, 2011). From this perspective, innovation is understood as a new process of value cocreation by a network of actors (co-innovators: Mele, Russo-Spena & Colurcio, 2010). With reference to the “how” dimension, the open-innovation framework challenges the earlier paradigm of innovation by suggesting that the locus of innovation is not deeply embedded in the firm, but rather exists outside its boundaries in the market. In this context, the Internet and Web-based technologies are crucial tools in making innovation a socially interactive and open process that entails collaboration to share ideas, resources, costs and risks (Sawhney, Prandelli & Verona, 2003; Verona, Prandelli & Sawhney, 2006). These recent developments open space for new actors to enter the market and change how market innovation occurs. This is what has been occurring with the phenomenon of virtual innomediation. Virtual (or online) intermediaries, which we refer to as the “innomediary” (Verona, Prandelli & Sawhney, 2006), are third-party agents who connect suppliers and customers (i.e., innovation seekers and solvers) using the Internet and Web platforms. These actors engage in an active systemic integration of activities and resources through which market innovation emerges; however, their agency is not fully addressed in the literature. Therefore, there is a need to further understand the agential roles of these virtual intermediaries by shifting the focus from innovation as a new outcome to innovation as something that people do; i.e., a practice (Dougherty, 2004; Mele & Russo-Spena, 2012; Russo-Spena & Mele, 2012a, 2012b). This study aims to analyse the innomediary as a new category of market actor, as well as its agency and its practices in shaping market innovation.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2014.10.006 0019-8501/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Mele, C., & Russo-Spena, T., Innomediary agency and practices in shaping market innovation, Industrial Marketing Management (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2014.10.006

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C. Mele, T. Russo-Spena / Industrial Marketing Management xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

The paper is structured as follows. First, the theoretical framework is introduced, which is based on the practice turn in market studies, and the role of intermediaries in innovation. By highlighting relevant gaps in the analysis, we introduce two research questions and outline the research design. Next, we present and discuss the findings. The paper concludes by addressing implications for scholars and practitioners. 2. Theoretical framework 2.1. Practice turn to market innovation In the social sciences, scholars stress the contribution of the practicebased approach (PBA) as an epistemological means of seeing and understanding phenomena in organisations and society (Bourdieu, 1990; Giddens, 1984; Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina & von Savigny, 2001). In the PBA, the unit of analysis is the field of practices that joins the individual and the collective, as well as the human and technological dimensions. A practice is not simply an action or a process; it is a way of doing that is embedded in a context of interlinked elements (Schau, Muñiz & Arnould, 2009; Storbacka & Nenonen, 2011). This distinction is reflected in the following representative definitions of practices: — Focus on practice involves consideration of the links between material devices, embodied skills and mental representation, and the configurations in which they come together (Araujo, Kjellberg & Spencer, 2008, p. 7). — Practices as linked and implicit ways of understanding, saying and doing things. They comprise a … nexus of behaviours that include practical activities, performances and representations or talk (Schau, Muñiz & Arnould, 2009, p. 31). The concept of practices is central to the debate regarding markets and market shaping. Kjellberg and Helgesson (2006, p. 842) describe markets as composed of the following interlinked sets of practices: i) exchange practices, involving individual transactions; ii) normalising practices, referring to the formulation of the rules and norms of market behaviour; and iii) representational practices, describing the structure and the functioning of specific markets. Market-practice studies (Andersson, Aspenberg & Kjellberg, 2008; Araujo, 2007; Azimont & Araujo, 2007; Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2006, 2007; Korkman, Storbacka & Harald, 2010; Peñaloza & Venkatesh, 2006; Skalen & Hackley, 2011; Venkatesh & Peñaloza, 2006) are based on a postmodern vision of the market in which social reality is understood as an ongoing process of creation. Thus, markets are sociohistorically situated institutions (Peñaloza & Venkatesh, 2006) that are subjectively defined by market actors (Storbacka & Nenonen, 2012) and stabilised by interacting actors (Rosa, Porac, Runser-Spanjol & Saxon, 1999): — Markets are not universal, self-contained entities, but rather take on distinct discursive forms and material practices across various social contexts and over time (Araujo, Kjellberg & Spencer, 2008, p. 5). — Markets are what actors make them to be. They are socially constructed human artefacts, created by the actors who populate a specific context and link resources within this context (Storbacka & Nenonen, 2012, p. 184). The conceptualisation of markets as nets of interlinked practices shifts the focus from theoretical normative approaches to the study of how ideas shape realities by translating ideas into practices (Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2006, 2007). A market contains “a variety of market actors” (Azimont & Araujo, 2007, p. 850) whose agencies enact the innovative reconfiguration of market-shaping processes (Geiger & Finch, 2009; Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2007). From this perspective, the concept of market innovation assumes a different meaning lying far from its traditional view (Johne, 1999). It involves a process of market shaping

(Azimont & Araujo, 2007) and market scripting (Storbacka & Nenonen, 2011), by understanding the dynamics of the market and searching for opportunities in the core as well as in the “periphery of the market” (Storbacka & Nenonen, 2012, p. 211). Callon (2007, 2008) highlights the importance of innovation in structuring new market forms in which networks and individuals play complementary roles. The performative idiom directs attention to the social–material practices (Orlikowski, 2007) that agencies engage in to construct markets. This approach is similar to that of Jamison, Christensen and Botin (2011), who suggest that we describe innovation as a storyline of social construction in which “actors co-construct scientific facts and technological artefacts with non-humans to satisfy social interests” (p. 21). This perspective of innovation focuses on social processes in addition to economic ones, with storytellers employing “a language or vocabulary of sociology, anthropology and social philosophy to recount their tales of networking” (p. 22). From this perspective, innovation can be understood as a social process of construction by a group of actors in which a company's borders and the distinction between the internal and the external disappear in favour of an actor-to-actor market ecosystem (Vargo & Lusch, 2011). Thus, innovation is co-created through a set of practices, while innovators are perceived as carriers of practices who perform actions by using and integrating resources (including symbolic, linguistic and material ones) (Russo-Spena & Mele, 2012a). As Vargo (2009) posits, true innovation is no longer the making of novel units of output, but the design and creation of new markets. 2.2. The intermediary in innovation Many of the activities performed in market shaping may be characterised as intermediation (Andersson, Aspenberg & Kjellberg, 2008) where the role of intermediaries (third-party agents) in innovation is to connect suppliers and customers, a topic that has not been addressed in market studies. Scholars within the innovation literature have addressed the variety of intermediation forms, such as intermediaries (Watkins & Horley, 1986), third parties (Mantel & Rosegger, 1987), bridgers (Bessant & Rush, 1995; McEvily & Zaheer, 1999), superstructure organisations (Lynn, Reddy & Aram, 1996), brokers (Hargadon & Sutton, 1997), knowledge brokers (Hargadon, 1998), innomediaries (Prandelli, Sawhney & Verona, 2008; Sawhney, Prandelli & Verona, 2003), infomediaries (Cillo, 2005), innovation intermediaries (Howells, 2006), bridge builders (Lagnevik, Sarv & Khan, 2010), virtual knowledge brokers (Verona, Prandelli & Sawhney, 2006), innovation brokers (Klerkx, Hall & Leeuwis, 2009) and open-innovation accelerators (Diener & Piller, 2010). The intermediary agent performs an array of functions (Diener & Piller, 2010; Howells, 2006; Lopez-Vega, 2009), such as demand articulation (i.e., needs of technology or problem diagnosis), network composition (i.e., scanning, scoping and matchmaking of possible partners) and innovation-process management (i.e., enhancing alignment in networks) (Klerkx, Hall & Leeuwis, 2009). The innovation broker is an organisation that is neither the source of the new idea nor its developer (Winch & Courtney, 2007), but rather acts as an agent “in any aspect of the innovation process between two or more parties” (Howells, 2006, p. 716). Third-parties function “as knowledge brokers, helping companies overcome the gaps in knowledge about the customers that impede innovation” (Sawhney, Prandelli & Verona, 2003, p. 77). This process-mediated innovation is called “innomediation”, and the third-party actors who facilitate it are “innomediaries” (p. 77). Some scholars (Chesbrough, 2003, 2006; Diener & Piller, 2010) offer interesting insights in their analyses of the growing roles of intermediaries in open-innovation initiatives. By interacting with many sources, intermediaries conduct more efficient and effective searches as a result of their position — that is, in the middle. This position fosters links between actors and helps to construct and maintain a network by



connecting different sources and types of knowledge (i.e., specialised, tacit and explicit knowledge). Diener and Piller (2010) distinguish between two main categories of mediating agents: software that is able to perform complex functions (scanning, collecting and structuring data) and human agents who are able to interact with one another. In addressing the role of both components – human and IT – Verona, Prandelli and Sawhney (2006) highlight the role of virtual knowledge brokers that take advantage of the Internet. These knowledge brokers occupy a virtual space and aim to create virtual bridges that connect a great number of actors across space and time, spanning structural holes in existing knowledge. Accordingly, the Internet has a positive effect on the cost, reach and quality of communications and interactions (Diener & Piller, 2010; Sawhney, Prandelli & Verona, 2003). 3. Research approach 3.1. Research aim Although there is an extensive body of literature on innovation and intermediaries, most of the discussion is focused on matching the demand for innovation with its supply. There has been little analysis on how innomediaries unlock new opportunities in market innovation due to open innovation and Web-based technology. As Andersson, Aspenberg and Kjellberg (2008) assert, there is a need to learn more about the link between the configuration of market actors, types of agency and market practices. This study examines the agency, or the ability to act, and the agent, the individual engaging with a social structure. The focus is on the “who” (new actors and their agency) and the “how” (different types of practices) of market-innovation shaping. Following this line of thinking, we put forward a research question: RQ.1. How does innomediary agency shape market innovation? 3.2. Research design Close to relativist epistemology, our study is the outcome of a contextual knowledge. The empirical research has an explorative aim and is based on multiple qualitative case studies. The use of qualitative methods allows for a deep, detailed, rich data collection that can help us to understand complex issues and to further develop previous knowledge (Dubois & Gadde, 2002; Gummesson, 2005). We chose to focus the analysis on the specific context of the innomediaries' websites. We took guidance from practice scholars on how to investigate practices. As in recent studies (Schau, Muñiz & Arnould, 2009), ours moves the unit of analysis from dyadic relationships to practices across networks of market actors. We followed Gherardi and Nicolini (2006, p. xviii), who suggest that “the methodological principle of ‘follows the practices’ acquires concrete meaning when the researcher observes a situated practice and moves up from it to the institutional order or moves down from it to the individual-in-situation. Or in other words, when she/he explores ‘a connective web’” (see also Nicolini, Gherardi & Yanow, 2003). These authors also note that practices “are the context in which the concrete activity… becomes visible and observable as well as describable without one having to delve into what goes inside people's heads” (p. xvi). Consistent with Carlile (2002), we studied agency and marketinnovation practices through an analysis of who innomediaries are, what activities they perform, how they interact with other market actors, what resources they use and how they integrate resources to reach their aims. 3.3. Research methodology: data collection and analysis We carried out an Internet search by using certain keywords (e.g., intermediaries, open innovation, crowdsourcing) to find and select

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information-rich case studies (Piekkari, Lakoyiannaki & Welch, 2010). In identifying case studies, we referred to the OIA Survey 2010 “The Market for Open Innovation”, which has a list of service providers specialising in open innovation (Diener & Piller, 2010). We also considered the list of intermediaries available at ideaconnection.com. For twelve months we analysed intermediaries engaged in Web-based innovation (virtual innomediaries; see Table 1). The aim was to generate enough in-depth material to illuminate the patterns, concepts and categories of the investigated phenomena (Gummesson, 2005). We formed a judgment sample of 14 case studies, stopping when no new materials emerged in spite of continued investigation (informational redundancy or theoretical saturation: Marshall, 1996). Kozinets' (2002) suggestions regarding netnography and how to investigate online communities were useful in gathering data about innomediaries. Our first analysis included preliminary studies of the Web-based contexts and observations of the actors and their visible actions in the market. We also examined the discourse, objects and documents (Kozinets, 2002) in forums and blogs and analysed the descriptive material and other documents available on the innomediaries' websites. We augmented the data collected with information from additional documents, case reports and other related materials (Richardson, 2000) and initially conducted the analysis of the data on an intra-case basis. A verbatim analysis – text mining and lexical analysis – allowed us to extract general trends and significant issues. Subsequently, a cross-case analysis was conducted to develop a general view of the issues under investigation. We used conceptually clustered matrices to analyse the data, which facilitated cross-case comparison and highlighted similarities as well as differences. The aims of our data reduction and classification process were to identify patterns in the data and define agency and practice as primary categories (Gummesson, 2005; Piekkari, Lakoyiannaki & Welch, 2010). We identified four practices and labelled them according to the verbatim words used by innomediaries. These categories indicate a common way of doing, with a shared language and a similar set of actions and tools. Research credibility, reliability and validity were enhanced by the techniques used for data collection and analysis (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998; Flyvbjerg, 2006). We organised a meeting with two managers of a virtual innomediary that was not in the judgment sample to discuss findings and find weaknesses in the identification of patterns and primary categories (external reviewer's feedback: Creswell, 2007).

4. Findings In the cases investigated, the innomediaries create Web-based contexts to enable market innovation. Their mission is to link innovation seekers and solvers with other actors in innovation networks. They are not simply a platform of Web-based technologies; rather, they see themselves as a new market. Innoget is a marketplace, not a database. We know that good ideas are widely distributed today and no one has a monopoly. The discovery of new ideas is neither sufficient nor necessary for commercial success as a better business model always beats a better technology. We are also conscious that IP is a perishable asset: customers or markets don't wait. We work actively to face all new challenges placed by the logic of open innovation. We generate interactions and opportunities for market innovation. [(Source: Innoget documents)] The tasks of innomediaries range from open contests and challenges to technology scouting, R&D problem solving, accessing experts and professionals, obtaining patents, and others. By encouraging the interchange of ideas, tools and technologies, innomediaries enable market actors such as consumers, communities, experts and fans to participate


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Table 1 The investigated Web contexts. Case

Description

Network

Market

10EQS

Promotes e-crowd-solving and mass collaboration techniques for problem-solving related to critical business issues

100%Open

Offers bespoke services that combine business knowledge with extensive hands-on experience implementing successful open innovation Offers to help companies and organisations with design problems and product development

Industry and functional specialists, consultants, researchers, analysts, qualified students, research organisations, data providers, professional associations, recruitment firms Experts, researchers, consulting companies, lawyers, financial professionals, invention markets, patent and trademark offices Experts, researchers, consulting companies, lawyers, financial services, invention markets, patent and trademark offices Experts in the worlds of advertising and online marketing

Hi-tech and e-commerce, telecommunications, energy and utilities, banking and financial services, media and entertainment All industry sectors

Scientists, market researchers, engineers, retired or employed researchers, academics Experts, researchers, individuals, technical engineers, firms

All industry sectors

Contract laboratories, retirees, students, university faculty, small pharmaceutical firms, biotech firms, research institutes, and other industries and scientific disciplines R&D directors, licensing managers, technology brokers, scientists, technology-transfer officers, business developers, inventors, multinational companies, SMEs, and government agencies Scientists, market researchers, students, entrepreneurs, engineers, retirees

Large pharmaceutical companies, consumer-product companies and industrial–chemical organisations

A network of scientists, university researchers and technology incubators

All industry sectors including large corporations, middle-market companies and global non-profit companies Socially responsible firms

BeeQuu

Idea Bounty

IdeaConnection IDEO Labs

InnoCentive

Innoget

Innovation Exchange NineSigma

Open IDEO Yet2

YourEncore Zooppa

Provides a secure channel for the worldwide creative community, offering solutions to creative problems Helps companies and other organisations find emerging technologies that meet their needs Provides a place where companies and other organisations can explore, learn, and think about new ideas Provides a market for companies to post their research problems and tap into a large source of problem-solvers for solutions Provides a full range of services related to the acquisition, revaluation and marketing of technologies; addresses needs related to R&D and innovation Targets companies that have the vision to complement their internal R&D with openinnovation alternatives Connects companies with experts to solve problems and grasp opportunities wherever they are in the world Welcomes all creative thinkers to participate in the work of addressing the problems of social business Finds promising new technologies and connects them with companies to facilitate step-change market growth Helps firms to leverage external innovation as a means to accelerate growth Provides the world's largest source of usergenerated advertising

Inventors, experts and individuals Incubators, angel groups, brokers, experts, university technology licensing offices, industry associations, venture capitalists and commercial partners Experts, engineers, retired scientists and creative people Creative-communications experts and professionals

in companies' innovation processes. In this way, companies can access many ideas, from the simple to the visionary. The innovation marketplace… challenges the highly disaggregated context of innovation due to the global dispersion of resources and knowledge by enabling and making clear the most valuable connections. It confronts the lack of transparency due to information sensitivity, IP protection and management-created barriers, as well as enabling R&D staff to recognise and look beyond their own strictly closed network. [(Source: www.Ninesigma.com; date: 24th May 2012)] In such a context, market innovation occurs as a process of co-creation by a variety of market actors connected by innomediary agency through the deployment of a common set of four practices (Appendix A): 1) engaging; 2) exploring; 3) exploiting; and 4) orchestrating. Each practice enables resource exchange and integration between interacting market actors. 4.1. Practice of engaging Innomediaries act to find partners that can spawn new opportunities and disseminate ideas, knowledge and information. They foster the practice of engaging that occurs through four networking actions: 1) connecting; 2) soliciting; 3) socialising; and 4) expanding. Innomediaries build social networks by connecting different groups of actors: individuals, companies, competitors, research centres,

All industry sectors (with a focus on SMEs) All industry sectors


Life science, chemistry, physical science, computer science and engineering and technological sciences All industry sectors


All industry sectors with a focus on large corporations All industry sectors

universities, design institutes and venture capitalists. These open market spaces enable actors to interact and cooperate within a trusted, professional, experiential context. The Web context is conceived as a workshop, playroom and open space in which market actors can share their creativity in an ongoing discovery process. It works similarly to an enlarged focus group in which creative minds are free to reflect about ideas and concepts in a compelling and challenging way. The Innoget.com website is the tool through which our clients connect with companies, research institutions and innovation professionals worldwide. In Innoget.com organizations seeking innovation meet innovation-generating organizations. Our clients capture external knowledge (via the publication of Technology Requests) and promote the knowledge generated within their organizations (via the publication of Technology Offers). Making the knowledge flow, we foster innovative technologies, products, methods, procedures and services. [(Source: www.Innoget.com; date: 13th May 2012)] Our clients tell us we help to provide them with an expandable, low-cost network of innovation partners. It is a place where the firms show bits of what they are working on, talk about ideas, and share their excitement over the tools that help the users to create. [(Source: www.labs.ideo.com; date: 10th June 2012)] Working with InnoCentive enables us to connect with new minds around the world which would have been inaccessible without this



partnership. When we launched what we thought was a neuroscience challenge we certainly didn't expect some of the most exciting ideas to come from the fields of dermatology, chemistry, and plant biology, and yet that's what happened. InnoCentive's Solver network is unparalleled. [(Source: searcher's post at www.innocentive.com; date: 27th September 2012)] In offering an open-innovation platform, innomediaries have the aim of soliciting talented or interested actors and encouraging them to collaborate in developing ideas and projects. Great effort is directed towards identifying and informing actors about the opportunities of innovation. Innomediaries work to prompt users and passionate people to find challenging problems that match their experience and expertise as well as to share what skills they have that match or complement the skills of others. The YourEncore network is made up primarily of retirees who want to stay retired, yet engaged, and engaged on their terms. We work with our clients to collaborate on what the problem is. What's the outage, the innovation challenge? We go to work on matching the talent in our network with those requirements. By soliciting better minds we discover ways to challenge innovation. [(Source: www.yourencore.com; date: 23rd September 2012)] Transferring knowledge and creating new opportunities to innovate require socialising. Many innomediaries use open teams where users can freely communicate with each other, enter and update ideas or documents or conduct conversations with the company and other experts. The interactions are brief and in the context of peer-to-peer relationships. These interactions make it possible for participants to obtain clarification or further details about the issues at play, helping to transform individual ideas or imagined projects into collective views about problems and solutions. As the teams focus on making sense of new ideas and insights, continual socialising is central to the collective sensemaking. The project room is a meaningful context within the InnoCentive website where I feel engaged with scientists and other users. I can post submissions of my ideas, store documents, and conduct conversations with other scientists and seek company in order to get clarifications or further details about the challenges I might face. Within the private room I feel as [if I am] working side-by-side with InnoCentive's staff to refine my idea and support solvers to find solutions (Source: user post at www.innocentive.com; date: 9th June 2012).

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listing of inventions and licensing proposals and extend our network to enlarge the pool of resources available to actors seeking and offering new technology. [(Source: www.Innoget.com; date: 2nd July 2012)] The evolving world of work is becoming a world in which individuals will need to be really good at networking and playing well with others, while also honing their skills at standing out from the crowd. The external perception of network value will expand from a focus on close connections to also include the talented minds you might know that can be brought in on different projects or challenges. [(Source: InnoCentive documents)] 4.2. Practice of exploring The innomediary encourages market actors to apply their knowledge and creativity to the pursuit of opportunity, change and experimentation. The process of exploring occurs in the following ways: 1) in generating a range of ideas; 2) in articulating a project; and 3) in experimenting with alternatives. These actions make it possible to leverage and extend the knowledge and creativity that exist within networks. By focusing on wide and unarticulated topics, innomediaries challenge market actors to generate new ideas that can be explored further. Generative tasks often occur within specific contests and competitions and are encouraged through offers of incentives and rewards. Market and technology scouting is also performed through a highly challenging problem-finding process and open-ended workflows. By providing a common context, market actors can jointly develop broad, complex, visionary ideas for the future. A week-long think-tank of innovators, we promote the engagement of users in focusing on challenging topics and building on each other's expertise to generate new breakthrough ideas. We launch The Idea Rally™ as big competition among empowered users. It generally lasts for one week, and each member can participate by discussing new ideas about the way to look at the future. All discussion is in text form. Ideas can be voted up or down. Ideas can be moved to particular strings or particular themes. [(Source: www.ideaconnection.com; date: 24th October 2012)] On Field Notes, we encourage [people] to post stuff that's inspiring users. We'd also love to feature anything that's inspiring you. We know that taking a breather to be inspired is key for all of us, so we hope that you'll take your breather here! [(Source: www.openideo.com; date: 12th September 2012)]

In expanding the range of possibilities, innomediaries continuously reach beyond their immediate networks. They use virtual social spaces (Facebook, Twitter, Ovi, etc.) to enlarge their networks and gather ideas from as broad an audience as possible. Enabling actors to build new communities is one way in which innomediaries encourage innovation strength and help actors gain powerful advantages in the pursuit of open innovation. In addition, the concept of expansion is central to the market and technology-brokering activities of innomediaries through access to each market actor's website and cross-listings of proposals.

To leverage the knowledge of external experts, innomediaries provide tools and methods that enable actors to articulate aims, along with the metrics and tests through which collaborative innovation can be advanced. Market actors are invited to participate in an iterative process that begins with a project brief in which the scope and the expected criteria for determining success are established. Market actors as problem-solvers are challenged to use their creativity and knowledge for detailed projects and prototypes that can be integrated into the innovation process. The process of articulation also gives market actors more compelling tasks, such as documenting, writing, drawing, showing and modelling. These tasks, in turn, make it possible to externalise tacit knowledge and reveal the connections between projects, ideas and solutions. Actors work with specific knowledge artefacts to visualise, store and improve knowledge and creativity. This way of doing supports the processes of learning by doing and interactive learning, and market actors are challenged to learn from the activities that they perform. Open-source mechanisms help these actors to modify the artefacts and to improve the problem-solvers' design experiences.

At Innoget full access to each other's websites is assured to all actors who want to be in contact [with] each other. We prompt the cross-

At YourEncore, we provide our users with an account team that includes an account manager, administrative support, and appropriate technical

We promote a networking approach to put different perspectives and insights of different experts to address specific client issues. By working on the platform in collaboration mode, experts can connect and exchange ideas with other experts. These attractive networking options grow skills and expertise. [(Source: www.ideaconnection.com; date: 23rd October 2012)]


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or scientific advisors. This integrated team assists clients in the identification and definition of needs and project scope, and matches the project requirements with the skills and expertise of the experts in our database. [(Source: www.YourEncore.com; date: 18th July 2012)] Bringing new ideas to life is an essential part of what we do. We invite our users to work on tools they can share with others. The pictures, designs and proof prototypes are those tools we ask users to use in order to challenge their skills. They're early proofs of concepts and usually they're far from pretty, and they do not work. These tools are mainly ways of helping users to start to work on [an] idea and explore, learn, and think in a collective way. They're prototypes — not finished products. Most of our prototypes are not let out into the world. Our aim is to develop stuff that we can share, and help users to unlock and foster their creativity. [(Source: www.labs.ideo.com; date: 19th September 2012)] The greatest hurdles to problem solving are those that keep the right people from experimenting with alternatives and suggesting refinements, as these activities generate possible solutions and successful outcomes. Innomediaries are particularly active, keeping ideas alive by encouraging people to put their competences to work and by organising knowledge flows to promote more effective feedback. Paper prototyping and other low-tech methodologies (e.g., proof prototype) are used to help market actors imagine how an innovation will change their reality. They can then use this information to identify flaws in their assumptions and designs. The innomediaries' platforms also promote creative visual interpretations and feedback. All of the concepts that are generated are shareable, remixable and reusable by the creative community. People participating in the OpenIDEO platform can provide feedback every step of the way in the innovation project. Between each development phase, IDEO helps shape the innovation journey through framing the challenge, prototyping, and encouraging the conversation. At the end, the strongest concepts are chosen. The main effort is to guide the contribution of different users to allow the concepts to become reality outside of openideo.com. [(Source: www.openideo.com; date: 16th May 2012)]

4.3. Practice of exploiting Because of its mediating function in the market, the innomediary contributes substantially to the combination and transformation of existing knowledge. The practice of exploiting involves moving across a range of different contexts to discover how the knowledge and technologies that are available in one context can be used, combined and refined in new ways. This practice is deployed through three actions: 1) discussing; 2) appropriating; and 3) disseminating. Innomediaries' platforms enable market actors not only to express their personal creativity but also to be inspired by others' ideas and suggestions. This way of doing is based on discussing the ideas created, through which the most promising designs and concepts are selected. By modifying and extending original concepts and developing new design solutions from the myriad of available alternatives, market actors extend the possibility to invest their ideas in new projects. An advertising competition sponsored on Zooppa allows one to reach real feedback about the brand perception coming from users' contents. Interesting conversations about brands start spontaneously through the users' comments and forum. Each user starts a conversation with another to push their insight at work and the suggestions are welcomed when they contribute to further the ideas of others. All ideas and

information are analysed and scrutinised within the community thanks to the community's aids. [(Source: www.zooppa.com; date: 18th July 2012)] At OpenIDEO community members can contribute in a variety of different ways, from inspirational observations and photos, sketches of ideas, to business models and snippets of code. Sometimes this can be in the form of a comment; other times, it's building off a previous person's work. People participating in OpenIDEO can provide feedback every step of the way to innovation. [(Source: www.openideo.com; date: 21st June 2012)] The aim of accelerating innovation processes and bringing innovations to market requires a commitment from market actors and clear methods for capturing information and transforming it into insights. Innomediaries promote appropriating actions by helping actors to make associations among ideas and projects and create their personal commercial concepts. This practical way of doing helps market actors widen their access to structured information and learn in-depth information about new solutions and how to adopt them, enabling them to translate new knowledge into actions and real changes. Innomediaries support users with scoring systems that facilitate idea selection and provide users with an enhanced working context to develop their own way to implement or scale up innovative ideas. Additionally, effective decision-making tools that facilitate the early analysis of the potential solution spaces are assured. The working support of innomediaries provides insight into how market actors can obtain the most profit from solutions moving forward, and it makes knowledge more digestible for audiences. To build idea acceptance by wider audiences and improve innovation success, innomediaries promote disseminating by acting as sounding boards for ideas, solutions and innovative projects. Such diffusion fosters openness to new solutions by market actors and attention to the relevant innovation domain. Zooppa fosters Viral Effect by spreading the created advertising campaigns on social networks and video-sharing sites. We support the community members in doing the same, helping to promote your brand through the viral distribution. Since the most voted works are the ones that finally win, the community is strongly motivated to spread their works on the Internet. All videos are posted on the most famous video-sharing platforms in order to augment their exposition (Viddler, Veoh, Dailymotion, Youtube, Vimeo, Metacafe, Yahoo). [(Source: www.zooppa.com: date 16th July 2012)] By posting an IBox-out at Innoget, market actors can quickly reach many contacts, providing information about their patents, technologies and innovative products. We support them in providing a space where the discussion about their ideas and resources is coming up and is spread in a wider context. By posting an IBox-out we provide the opportunity for organizations to better divulge their patents, technologies and innovative products in a professional and interested context and facilitate the setting up of collaborative projects or commercial agreements with other organizations. [(Source: www.Innoget.com; date: 25th May 2012)] 4.4. Practice of orchestrating The innomediary's ability is centred on setting up the contexts and conditions that improve the flow of actions and the process of resource integration within the practices of engaging, exploring and exploiting. The practice of orchestrating emerges through 1) framing; 2) mobilising; and 3) strengthening. Innomediaries enable the framing of innovation networks by improving actors' responsiveness and ensuring their adaptability in mutually beneficial interactions. Furthermore, they generate the necessary



roles, resources and rules that facilitate the effective alignment and linkage of market actors by overcoming technological, social, economic and cultural divides. Several innomediaries reveal the risks and benefits of engagement in the innovation process by mediating issues related to price, property rights, knowledge transfer and acquisition. They ensure regular reporting and feedback for both clients and problem-solvers, and they also act as interpreters of different cultural frameworks. We provide deal-facilitation services to ensure that value is generated for both the parties helping to close transactions and assist parties. Our focus is on accelerating deals between partners mainly when larger solution-seekers and small problem-solvers are involved. We also support firms in moving introductions through initial logistics, potentially complicated NDA/IP issues, technical evaluation, economic discussions and final negotiations. [(Source: www.Yet2.com; date: 24th September 2012)] Innomediaries orchestrate open-innovation processes by helping market actors to maintain their focus on, enthusiasm for and commitment to innovation and relationship building. In mobilising market actors, innomediaries encourage market actors to have confidence in their projects and they help the market actors to effectively meet their project requirements. Furthermore, they ensure personal empowerment by providing professional services to experts ranging from feedback to training and guidance. We conceived The ThinkSpace® in order to provide a facilitator for each team working towards a solution. The facilitator helps to keep the team focused and motivated on ideas and to lead them to success. [(Source: IdeaConnection documents)] The Design Quotient (DQ) is a measure of your contributions to OpenIDEO. It corresponds to how active you are in the inspiration, conception, and evaluation phases of a challenge. It also measures your collaboration, increasing every time you comment or build on other people's inspirations and concepts. When you take part in a challenge, you build up your DQ by accruing points. A DQ can help to publicly identify your design expertise and strengths. Maybe you're excellent at providing inspiration that shapes the conversation, or you're great at building off others' ideas. Share it with your friends, colleagues, teachers, and even potential employers to give them some insight into what you're best at. [(Source: www.openideo.com; date: 3rd July 2012)] As a merit-based organization, our method of evaluation ensures experts get the feedback and support needed to grow. Professionals also gain access to online learning, support and guidance to become highly effective and successful on the 10EQS platform. You will be able to build and manage your online profile, plan and track your professional development, connect with others to share advice, mentor and be mentored, be recognized by others for your performance, and continually enhance your ability to earn by serving top clients on the 10EQS platform. [(Source: www.10eqs.com; date: 18th October 2012)] Innomediaries improve the quality of interactions by creating incentives that strengthen communities. They make sense of valuable relationships, relevant knowledge and innovation, thus helping to shape the actions of market actors who are interested in the social participative processes of learning and innovating. Innomediaries promote and encourage the sharing of documents, reports and case studies on knowledge platforms to inspire market actors to engage in openness and collective innovation. At IdeaConnection we invite our users to take a proactive approach in the conversation. Users generating content has to be seen as a conversation that is never going out. Users invest time and energy to be

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connected. They need to be rewarded for their ideas and encouraged to persist with the process. Shared knowledge contexts are the results we want. [(Source: staff manager's post on www.ideaconnection.com; date: 5th April 2012)] Staying truly ‘fresh’ is a 365 days a year challenge and we're very clear that two of the secrets to achieving this are celebrating great ideas and staying in touch with your others. What's great about Idea Bounty is it does both. [(Source: www.ideabounty.com; date: 25th May 2012)] 5. Discussion Since the emergence of the Internet, the importance of the single entrepreneur is dwarfed by that of the variety of new actors who co-create market innovation by interacting and integrating resources within performative practices. This study focused on the innomediary as a new category of market actor. By moving beyond the mainstream research, we offer a fresh conceptualisation of innomediary agency and practices in shaping market innovation. The following research question guided the empirical study and theoretical contribution: how does innomediary agency shape market innovation? Virtual innomediaries take advantage of the Internet and Web-based technologies to organise and coordinate networks of actors in pursuit of market innovation. We use the term virtual to refer not only to an online context (a world less “real” than physical: Kozinets, 2002) but also, by recalling its etymological meaning (from the Latin virtus or strength), we refer to a meaning of “potential ability”, which is consistent with our moving from the agent to the agency (what market agents are capable of: Hagberg & Kjellberg, 2010). From this perspective, innomediaries' agential role lies in fostering interactions and relationships at the actorto-actor level (the “in-between” level) and at the collective level (the “many-to-many” level) (Howells, 2006). The agency of innomediaries (which we may call “innoagency”) lies in bridging structurally disconnected resource pools and bringing new resources, relationships and actors together to foster market innovation. The innoagency builds on the website that, consistent with Sawhney, Verona and Prandelli (2005), can be framed as an open platform — a space where market actors share ideas, integrate resources, learn, reach consensus regarding priorities, define roles, engage in joint action and sustain working relationships. Our research indicates that the innoagency enables four practices that shape market innovation: 1) engaging; 2) exploring; 3) exploiting; and 4) orchestrating. Each practice emerges through specific actions (Appendix A). The engaging practice consists of connecting market actors who seek out new opportunities to co-create innovation. In this way, it becomes possible to solicit talented and interested actors to collaborate and develop ideas and projects. Through collaboration, market actors socialise and thus create collective views and share working contexts. The ultimate aim of engagement is to expand the variety of actors and adopt a peripheral vision that captures the wide possibility of market and technology novelty. By bringing together market actors, the engaging practice enables the other practices of exploring and exploiting to deploy and make market innovations happen. The exploring practice occurs when innomediaries support the continuous dynamic of knowledge creation and recombination by facilitating communal interaction: thinking, knowing and learning together. In this way, actors are invited to engage in generating new ideas and projects. They become problem solvers who use their creativity, knowledge and competences to articulate the connections between projects and ideas and to experiment with alternatives for solutions and successful outcomes. If the practice of exploring consists of generating and experimenting with new ideas and knowledge, the exploitation is essentially the combination and transformation of previously disseminated, existing


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knowledge. The exploiting practice involves working across a range of contexts to see how knowledge and technologies that are available in one context can be used, combined and refined in new ways. Market actors are enabled to discuss ideas and projects and apply their creativity to modify and extend original concepts into new opportunities. Appropriating actions facilitate the translation of knowledge and ideas into the development of innovative commercial concepts. The exploitation deploys through disseminating the relevant innovation domains, thereby improving the probability of innovation success. The practices of engaging, exploring and exploiting are brought together by the orchestrating practice as knowledge-sharing contexts and conditions ensure a better flow of actions and better resource integration. The orchestration consists of framing innovation networks in terms of roles, resources and rules to promote the effective alignment and linkage of market actors. This behaviour takes effect at the actor level as well as at the community level. At the actor level it enables the mobilising of each actor to increase confidence and personal empowerment, while at community level it fosters connections and relationships to align market actors and overcome technological and cultural divides. The ultimate aim of orchestration is to support the development of a collective sense with respect to co-creating market innovation, thus facilitating and encouraging a culture of open innovation. The four practices are strictly interwoven and offer a new conceptualisation of the shaping of market innovation. As depicted in Fig. 1, the practices of exploring and exploiting are core market-innovation practices, while the practices of engaging and orchestrating are peripheral market-innovation practices. The core practices support the generation, dissemination and discussion of knowledge and ideas, thereby enabling actors to develop new projects and solutions as outcomes of innovation networks. The peripheral practices sustain the core practices by creating contexts, connecting market actors and enabling resource exchanges and integrations as well as facilitating the sharing and dissemination of market and technological knowledge. This study proposes a different perspective of market innovation, that of the innomediary. The innoagency shapes market innovation as a collective accomplishment such that it is something that market actors perform or co-create together (Gergen, 1985; Mele, Russo-Spena & Colurcio, 2010; Vargo & Lusch, 2011). Accordingly, the set of socio-material assemblages (Orlikowski, 2007) of practices is the

performative outcome of talented market actors in their search for innovation. Acting as catalysts of creativity and knowledge, the innomediaries collect information, know-how, skills and experiences from a heterogeneous mass of actors and encourage the interchange of ideas, tools, images and languages among these actors. As a result of their ways of doing, innomediaries are changing the rules of the market-innovation game.

6. Implications for scholars Innomediaries are shaping market innovation through their agency and practices as they create new ways of developing, diffusing and using knowledge, and new ways to generate and promote innovation. They encourage new innovators (consumers, communities and experts) to enter into the co-creation of innovation by enabling new practices through the use of diverse resources, e.g., devices, meanings and languages. Bourdieu (2005) advocates a return to practices as the locus for the dialectics of opus operatum (the results of practices) and modus operandum (the mode of practices), stressing the creative dimension of the practical and the collective existence of human beings (see also Fuchs, 2003). Through their modus operandum, innomediaries innovate the opus operatum, and it is this innovation system that the innomediaries are changing. The true innovation is an institutional innovation, one that affects the markets. By emphasising the agency of the innomediary, we refer to innomediaries as proto-institutions (Lawrence, Hardy & Nelson, 2002, p. 281) that promote new practices and rules that transcend collaborative relationships and generate new institutions. This view contributes to the research on business actors (Ford, Gadde, Håkansson & Snehota, 2003) and market actors (Andersson, Aspenberg & Kjellberg, 2008) with specific reference to the study on agential properties involved in the configuration of market actors and the link with market practices. Emphasising practices creates a new way to conceptualise market innovation. In moving away from the traditional view, innovation ceases to be simply the product of a company's processes (Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina & von Savigny, 2001) and becomes instead a set of practices that are viewed not simply as the sum of individual acts but as

Fig. 1. Market innovation practices.



collective actions and accomplishments (shared practices: Barnes, 2001). Focusing on practices enables scholars to analyse the social connections among individuals, collectives, organisations and institutions, as well as the contexts in which these connections take shape. Consistent with Barnes (2001), who argues that “practice is all there is to study and describe” (p. 17), market innovation can be studied by analysing the system of the four practices outlined in this study combined with further insights from literature cross-fertilisation. Focusing on the practice of engaging allows us to broaden the traditional perspective of “a supplier and customer firm engaging in a relationship” (see Walter, Ritter & Gemunden, 2001) to a net of market actors engaging in market construction (Kjellberg & Helgesson, 2010) with both economic and social implications. Recent works have addressed the role of customer engagement in the online community (Brodie, Ilic, Juric & Hollebeek, 2013). We move from the singlecustomer focus to consider the complex multidimensional and dynamic nature of market actors' engagement. The following questions could guide further research. How can innomediaries increase the engagement of market actors? Why do market actors become engaged in market innovation? What are the business and social antecedents of engaging in market innovation? What are the enablers and the constraints of engagement? Analysing the practice of exploring and exploiting means examining the core of innovation by adopting a (market) peripheral vision and not stopping with a single company (Chesbrough, 2006). As new insights and new forces in market innovation will develop regardless of the type of market, the exploitation and exploration of new ideas can be a job for everyone, not just for experts. Web technologies allow innomediaries and other market actors to overcome the constraints of time and space dimensions. In this context, the ability to explore new opportunities and exploit existing expertise is not a question of resource trade off, according to March (1991), but rather it is a feature of market actors' ambidexterity (market actors' ability to use both exploration and exploitation techniques to be successful). Certain aspects, therefore, can be studied in greater depth. How can market actors ensure the coordination and the use of a shared repertoire (i.e., knowledge, artefacts, information, etc.) to improve innovation? How can market actors' representations influence the practices of exploring and exploiting? What are the factors that enable or constrain the practices of exploring and exploiting? How can market actors strengthen the potential link between the exploration and exploitation, thus making ambidexterity a reality? Understanding the practice of orchestrating implies examining the ability of a market actor to sustain and coordinate other marketinnovation practices. This perspective can enrich the recent literature on orchestration (Gidhagen, Persson & Sörhammar, 2011), as it takes into consideration not only actors and networks but also the entirety of the practice within markets. Specific research questions include the following. How can practices and their elements (actions, resources, etc.) be better arranged to enhance interactions and increase opportunities for innovation? How can rules and incentives support market actors in managing conflicts and addressing the misalignment of expectations and behaviours? How can Web technologies enable and constrain orchestration? Finally, we address the need to analyse the links between the four categories of practices and the systemic ways in which they influence each other. Areas of interest for future studies could include the following. How can the different actions within the engaging practice foster the deployment of other practices? How does the generation of ideas and knowledge in the practice of exploring influence the exploitation of these ideas and knowledge? How can the orchestrating practice enable other market-innovation practices with greater effectiveness? Which elements strengthen or weaken the links among the four practices? How do these strengths and weaknesses influence marketinnovation shaping?

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7. Implications for practitioners This study argues that innomediaries entered the market and changed how market innovation occurs. From this perspective, innovation occurs in practical constellations enabled by Web technologies whereby actions are implemented and resources are integrated (Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina & von Savigny, 2001). Innomediary agency effects the co-creation of market innovation by enabling the deployment of four practices: 1) engaging; 2) exploring; 3) exploiting; and 4) orchestrating. Specific implications for practitioners emerge from this study with respect to ways of seeing and ways of implementing innovation. Managers should consider market innovation as a participative and shared achievement among a variety of market actors. By challenging the traditional norm of individual companies innovating through planned and stage-gate processes, practitioners can adopt a market view of innovation that enables the deployment of the four practices and their actions. Fostering the practice of engaging managers can bridge disconnected worlds and build new innovation opportunities for market actors. Specific actions can then enable connections, solicit talented and interested people, foster socialisation and expand the innovation network. By promoting the integration of ideas, tools, images and languages, managers can foster practices of exploring and exploiting, they can promote market innovation, and they can focus on methods and tools to foster idea generation, to transform ideas into solutions and to experiment with alternatives. New methods and tools can also be useful to the orchestrating practice. For example, such methods and tools can be used to frame better contexts and conditions for improving the efficacy and efficiency of actors' interactions, resource exchanges and integration practices. For this reason, it is important to increase the commitment of market actors and foster the development of a collective sense of co-creating market innovation. Accordingly, the agency of virtual innomediaries can help managers and companies increase their connectedness to other market actors and grasp opportunities to shape market innovation. Innomediaries support companies' innovation practices by helping practitioners tap into the socio-material dimensions of their innovation network. The innoagency provides practitioners with information and knowledge and also facilitates practitioners in the sharing, using and appropriating of innovation methodologies wherever they are generated. The positive aspects of innoagency and market innovation should be balanced with critical questions about values, rules and rights: how can the virtual innovation environment enable value appropriation by all actors involved? How do the innomediaries participate in framing and managing a set of rules and rights to manage the balance between value-creation and value-capture processes in an open-innovation context? How do market actors negotiate roles, rules and rights within the market-innovation practices? How can innomediaries and other market actors cope with issues such as intellectual property, confidentiality, transparency, as well as individual and multi-party agreements and conflicts? One of the most critical issues is the intellectual property rights on the Internet (West & Gallagher, 2006). The simplicity with which actors use digital technologies to access unauthorised content and to copy and distribute information requires that this problem be addressed. Actors need to find a balance between the necessity to protect platform standards and user interfaces to increase their value (e.g., benefits and rewards) and the need to open critical sources to enhance opportunities, creativity and collective appropriation of value. In sum, the question for practitioners is straightforward: how can companies balance their internal policy and their planning and control activities with the management of unstructured and mediated relationships to exploit the new opportunities from the market and technology? The answer should consider the challenges of the new and partially regulated online innovation environment. As practitioners, managers must understand that innovation is not simply a company affair but is a market-shaping issue.


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Appendix A. The four practices

Practice

Action

Engaging

Connecting actors who seek Build innovation networks. Enable interactions and new opportunities to cooperation within a innovate community based on trust, professionalism and experiential learning

Exploring

Innomediary agency

Soliciting talented and interested people to collaborate and identify opportunities

Identify and inform actors about the opportunities of innovation. Prompt users and passionate people to find challenging problems

Socialising market actors to create collective views

Foster shared work through open teams. Enable collective sensemaking

Expanding the variety of actors and broadening peripheral vision

Enable actors to build new networks around innovation topics. Foster the access to actors' websites and the crosslisting of proposals Support the generation of solutions within problem solving and problem defining processes. Perform market and technology scouting

Generating fresh ideas and novel projects

Articulating aims and ideas Enable market actors to into concepts and solutions develop aims, metrics and tests to ensure solution success. Challenge actors to visualise, store and improve knowledge and creativity

Experimenting with alternative ideas and suggesting refinements in finding solutions

Exploiting

Discussing original ideas and extending them into new insights and opportunities

Foster the use of tools to help market actors visualise and understand how innovation can change reality. Encourage actors to put their competence to work Support market actors in analysing and improving ideas created by others

Case study • IDEO Labs is conceived as a workshop and open-space contest in which market actors can share their creativity. • YourEncore operates as a community of professionals helping companies accelerate innovation by connecting them with retired scientists and engineers to leverage their expertise. • InnoCentive is the open-innovation and crowdsourcing pioneer enabling organisations to solve problems by connecting them to diverse sources of innovation (employees, customers, partners, etc.) and the world's largest problem-solving marketplace. • Innoget is a tool through which clients are connected with companies, research institutions and innovation professionals worldwide. Innoget promotes the integration of a group of independent professionals to allow the acquisition, revaluation and marketing of technologies and to address the needs of R&D and innovation. • Innoget uses calls for ideas as the main source of input for innovation. • Project Posting at YourEncore allows seekers to post a need to the expert network and prompts experts to share what skills they have that match the project need. • InnoCentive's challenge-driven innovation methodology and cloud-based technology platform help problem solvers find challenging problems that match their experience and expertise. InnoCentive transforms the economics of innovation and R&D through rapid solution delivery and the development of sustainable open-innovation programmes. • At IdeaConnection, each team is comprised of 3 or 4 peers working in an online ThinkSpace. Members can communicate with one another, enter and update ideas and ask questions of the idea seeker. • The project room on the InnoCentive website is a virtual space that allows scientists to post submissions, store documents and conduct conversations with the company that requires assistance. • At YourEncore, experts can enter ad hoc community spaces where they can be asked to join ideas and projects, communicate with multiple project team members and share documents, ideas and tools. These focused interactions allow them to improve the way they work to correspond to innovation needs. • Innoget's community allows full access to each market actor's website, enabling the cross-listing of inventions and licensing proposals. • All innomediaries provide connections to the most famous external community spaces (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.).

• NineSigma Linked Innovation enables users to collaborate on the broad, complex challenges that cross industry boundaries. Pre- or non-competitive topics could include themes such as the sustainability issues of processing water and waste streams, requirements for bio-based materials, and alternative energy sources. Linked Innovation provides a common forum to involve different actors in collaborating on broad and visionary ideas about the future. • IdeaConnection's Idea Really Competition is a week-long project by a think tank of innovators who focus on a specific topic to produce breakthroughs and identify ideas that could be explored further. • The technology-scouting approach at Innovation Exchange gives visibility to emerging and potentially disruptive technology. It provides a better understanding of what technology is and enables organisations to optimise resources, determining whether to make, buy or lease a technology both faster and more confidently. • Innovation Exchange provides support and works with the client to develop challenge briefs that provoke high-quality thinking among innovators in the community. YourEncore provides clients with an account team that includes an account manager, administrative support, and appropriate technical or scientific advisors. This integrated team assists clients in the identification and definition of needs and project scope and matches the project requirements with the skills and expertise of the experts in their database. • IDEO Labs is distinguished by its design process and methodology. It focuses heavily on user research, brainstorming and rapid prototyping. The users are supported with a variety of computer tools to use from the earliest stages of a project. • NineSigma provides a neutral third-party facilitator to lead seekers through needs articulation, definition and the solution–acquisition process. • The advantage offered by Innoget versus other marketplaces is the possibility for seekers to publish their profiles by contracting an Innovation Box (IBox). Through an IBox, companies bring to light the domains of knowledge and technologies where they are seeking ideas, patents, products and/or technologies from externals related to their field of industrial activity. • At IDEO Labs, users work with paper prototyping or other low-tech means (proof prototype) to imagine what the changed reality will resemble with innovation to catch flaws in assumptions and design. • Zooppa runs user-generated advertising campaigns by working as a massive focus group. The platform allows the return of creative visual interpretation to collectively reflect on brands and their values.

• At OpenIDEO, problem solvers self-organise into various online communities, blogs and forums where users are engaged in active dialogue about creative designs and prototypes. • Zooppa allows companies to achieve their target, facilitating a conversation with users and involving them in the communication process. Blogs, forums and comments on Zooppa are only some of most common tools used to put ideas in motion and let users easily share information and suggestions on each other's ideas. • 100%Open interaction is based on two proven styles of programmes: Jam™ & Discover ™. Jam ™ programmes identify collaboration partners and joint opportunities. The process is iterative and the briefs inspirational. The Discover™ programme releases a problem to a competing community. The process is linear and the briefs focused.



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Appendix A (continued) Practice

Action

Innomediary agency

Case study

Appropriating information and knowledge to have insights that accelerate innovation

Help market actors to make associations among ideas and create their personal concepts. Support users with decision-making methods and tools that facilitate idea selection Promote the diffusion of innovation across different contexts

• The crowdsourcing business model at Idea Bounty relies on an effective scoring system that facilitates idea selection by separating good ideas from outstanding ones. • The InnoCentive team develops ways to implement or scale-up innovative ideas in addition to supporting market actors in articulating tasks. • At NineSigma, the QuickScan provides a decision-making tool that facilitates the early analysis of the potential solution space, validating the chosen technological direction and helping to verify the client's current knowledge.

Disseminating ideas and information about new products and projects

Orchestrating Framing roles, resources and rules among market actors

Mobilising actors to maintain focus, energy and strong commitment to interactions

Improve market actors' responsiveness and ensure their adaptability in mutually beneficial interactions. Foster the effective alignment and linkage of market actors

Support market actors in having confidence in their projects and improving their empowerment

Strengthening the collective Create incentives to sense of co-creating market strengthen relationships and interactions innovation

• Zooppa and Idea Bounty actively conduct viral advertising campaigns. The user's campaign is diffused by providing connections to the most visited social networks and video-sharing sites where new advertising and ideas created on the innomediaries' Web platform are easily posted. • By posting an IBox-out, organisational users quickly divulge patents, technologies and innovative products and set up collaborative projects and commercial agreements. • At OpenIDEO, all concepts generated are shareable, remixable and reusable because the contributor grants a non-exclusive license to the Challenge Host. • Deal-facilitation services are provided by Yet2 and NineSigma to create buy-in conditions for external innovation processes. They support purchasing and legal departments to expedite negotiations and avoid failed deals. • Zooppa offers companies an exhaustive report with quantitative and qualitative data about posted contributions. • YourEncore widely monitors project progress, collects expert hours worked and expenses, and handles expert payroll. Upon project completion, feedback is obtained from both clients and experts. All feedback is carefully analysed to ensure exceptional value is consistently delivered to both parties. • Idea Bounty manages ad hoc idea-selection workshops with their clients (e.g., Unilever). The workshop sessions support the client in extracting the most value from briefs and selecting the best idea for them. • Professional services are offered to 10EQS; Zooppa and YourEncore provide professional development to experts. These services range from performance feedback to training and guidance. • At IDEO Labs, the Design Quotient tool allows market actors to track their development by measuring how active they are in idea generation, evaluation and improvement. • Acting as an agent for a seeker company, InnoCentive entered into a legal agreement with them and provided training to their R&D staff to help them formulate their problem in a way that could be entered into the InnoCentive website. • IdeaConnection and 100%Open provide a repository where all proposed solutions are collected. Users can see them and create success histories.

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