Business Innovation Lab in Business NETwork settings (BILB-Net)

World leading enterprises increasingly build and manage business innovation ecosystems around them; so that they construct collaborative advantage and remain competitive in the emerging open innovation landscape of the 21st century. Such business innovation ecosystems often cross sectoral, disciplinary and regional boundaries. They also shift strategic focus from new product to service innovation and competition among ecosystems rather than individual companies. However, as emerging phenomena these business innovation ecosystems have not been sufficiently studied and understood with respect to both business models and network architectures of collaboration in competition (co-opetition) among an array of large and small players with significantly varied organisational cultures and time horizons for delivering value propositions to customers in Europe and world wide. The development, establishment and deployment of a Business Innovation Lab in Business NETwork settings (BILB-Net) aims to address the value co-creation and co-capture challenges and distributed network architectures of collaboration and competition in a leading aerospace ecosystem in Europe. More importantly, the aim of BILB-net it is the development of a novel toolkit, techniques and methods available to in house business analysts and developers who are interested in business model prototyping of business service innovation; in a similar way that engineering and software toolkits are available to engineers and software developers who are interested in technical innovation for engineering firms. The premise of BILB-net therefore stems from the growing realisation that strategic innovation in the European aerospace industry needs both the early stage and experienced talent and human resources capable for understanding and managing such business innovation ecosystems. Therefore the main research questions for this proposal will deal head on with how emerging business models should be prototyped, evaluated and tested extensively in real-time within their concerned collaborative networks (i.e. with the active and concurrent participation of business partners, both large and small) before their launch in their industry settings. Evidence from both academic research and industrial practices indicate the crucial role that SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises) and start-ups play in fostering economic growth through emerging organisational and technological innovation in key areas for a competitive future. The premise of the open innovation paradigm in delivering increased competitiveness relies on the effectiveness of the collaborative relationships between large companies and SMEs. To this end, the active and meaningful involvement of business partners at the early stages of value innovation activities is becoming mandatory for better service provision and value propositions to the end client. It is at these early stages that value co-creation and value co-capture decisions need to be made in a collective manner fostering co-opetition in business ecosystems. Co-opetition and constructing collaborative advantage therefore seem fundamental for the development of reciprocal trust and multi-lateral commitment that are the intangible key factors underlying the sustainability and effectiveness of emerging business networks and ecosystems. However, business modelling activities are nowadays lagging behind best practices and still performed by leading aerospace companies either at an individual basis; or through ad-hoc collaborative activities focusing mainly on financial aspects of business models (e.g. NPV), hence ignoring complex organisational aspects of business modelling that need to be addressed real time in a collaborative network setting. BILB-net aims to serve both the ecosystem orchestrator (keystone), EADS/Eurocopter (French-German), a world-leading multi-national aerospace company and involved SMEs alike. In this sense, BILB-net will be the catalyst to engage and involve SMEs from a broad range of sectors throughout Europe. The IAPP provide an ideal instrument for developing the BILB-net talent in large and small companies, addressing the increasingly complex needs of the European aerospace industry, vis a vis growing competition in the industry worldwide and the entry of new competitors from emerging markets, such as Brazil and China.

Projektbeginn: 2014
Projektende: 2015

Prof. Dr. phil. Ellen Enkel

Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen
Lehrstuhl für Innovationsmanagement (eingerichtet 06/2008)
Dr. Manfred Bischoff Institut für Innovationsmanagement der Airbus Group
Am Seemooser Horn 20
88045 Friedrichshafen

Telefon: +49 7541 6009-1500
Fax: +49 7541 6009-1299
Email: sabine.marx@zu.de
http://www.zeppelin-university.de/innovation