QUERY Innovation and business focus (SD6822)

[SDMAIL Anders Pold]

Posted by  Anders Pold <anderspold at gmail.com>

Dear SDMail-members

We are a couple of students at Copenhagen Business School using system 
dynamics for our master thesis. We are currently looking for articles 
about system dynamics related to our particular research focus. We would 
also like to get in contact with modellers, researchers and other 
relevant people working with system dynaimcs in the context of 
innovation management. Below we have presented our research focus:

*Using system dynimcs for commercialization of non-core business 
opportunities*

We are investingating how incumbent firms can use system dynamics to 
improve decision making on strategizing for non-core business 
opportunities. We are experiencing that too many companies take poor 
decisions related to business opportunities that, at first, are not 
related to the core business of the company. Often these projects are 
discarded as the company does not possess the right competencies to 
commercialize the particular business opportunity. We belive that these 
business projects could play an important source of innovation and 
change. We are using a major integrated energy company with a 
proprietary bioethanol technology as case study. We want to model 
different "exit strategies" for this technology: The company can choose 
the following strategies:

    * Trash can: Close the project
    * Sell: Find a buyer
    * Do-it-alone: All activities in-house
    * Joint-venture: Commercialize it in collaboration with one or more
      partners
    * License: Find a licenser

We limit the variables of the system to drivers rooted in theoretical 
perspectives within Industrial Organization, Resource-Based View and 
Transaction Cost Economics.

We would appreciate if you could help us with some information on who is 
working with system dynaimcs related to this research focus either the 
particular industry (bioethanol or other renewable energy technologies) 
or the problem investigated (commercialization of non-core busiss 
opportunties), or if you are familiar with articles that are dealing 
with the same focus as us. We would be very greatful if you can help us 
in any way. If you have any recommendations, please do not hesitate to 
contact us.

We are looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

Andreas Flensborg and Anders Pold
Copenhagen Business School
Posted by  Anders Pold <anderspold at gmail.com>
posting date  Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:09:07 +0100