![\"\"](\"https:\/\/parisx.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/funnels-1024x247.png\")
Figure 1. A brief review of funnel designs by Management scholars.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Actually, the – still young – discipline of Management Science had often enjoyed the luxury of limiting its scope within the boundaries of a specific organization. Yet, it\u2019s becoming more and more clear that contemporary innovation processes expand beyond the boundaries of a single enterprise, creating and engaging business ecosystems.<\/p>\n
This evolution of business fields is also reflected in the relevant literature of the last decades. As Figure 1 illustrates, Wheelwright and Clark (1992) didn\u2019t consider any holes in the organization boundaries, whereas Bayart et\u00a0al. (2000) identified some tiny ones – merely visible. Chesbrough (2003) on the other hand, made those holes larger.<\/p>\n
While most Management scholars operate their research at the level of the enterprises, in my thesis I chosen to focus on these holes at the micro-level, i.e. the interfaces. Using the funnel metaphor, we can thus see the level of my analysis in Figure 2: at the level of the holes there may be knowledge and ideas outflowing (red ones), inflowing (blue ones) or even being born there (green one).<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Figure 2: Zooming into Chesbrough\u2019s funnel to see my level of analysis.<\/p><\/div>\n So, if the contribution of Chesbrough in relationship to the work of Wheelwright and Clark was to focus on the boundaries of the organization and see that the holes were larger than described by Bayart et al., mine was to focus on these holes. Thus, I could see that beyond simple passages, these holes are also places<\/i>, from where innovation may emerge. The article I had submitted to the SI and which I presented more recently at the EHESS, further elaborated on this idea (Chrysos, 2018b, 2019b).<\/p>\n At a conceptual level, making a Special Issue about value at the interfaces was a good idea.<\/p>\n Besides, innovating with outsiders was the main challenge addressed by my Ph.D. dissertation, defended back in 2013 at Mines-ParisTech (Chrysos, 2013). Back then, many wondered whether the \u201cWeb 2.0\u201d would be just another bubble like the dot.com, on the contrary, something that could last more (see for instance Deshayes and Bourguinat, 2008). While most scholars studied it as a communication toolkit, I chose to study it as an emerging industry.<\/p>\n Defining the scope of my research, I argued that \u201cin research fields where the organisational mode includes multiple firms, a central issue (for both practitioners and academics) is the definition of the common boundaries (of the alliance, the venture or the partnership)\u201d<\/i> (p. 301). In other words, examining knowledge and idea flows requires an understanding of the common \u201cwalls,\u201d too.<\/p>\n Still, challenging the funnel model also implied facing methodological challenges: knowing that previous studies in management \u201cwere able to limit the scope of their [data] sample through organisational boundaries (be it a specific community or an enterprise), how might we determine the sample of our study in an emerging business environment? \u201d<\/i> (p. 92). Put differently, boundaries not only framed the action of an organization, they also used to frame the context of management research and – consequently – the scope of the expected results.<\/p>\n I managed to avoid pre-defined frameworks by opting for an empirical, phenomenon-based approach (Chrysos, 2019a): there existed external developers discussing with Facebook and Google about the technologies of these enterprises and I wanted to study that.<\/p>\n As it turned out, more than simple walls of a funnel, these forums were wide enough to host rich discussions creating knowledge and making emerge ideas. These forums become intimate places (Chrysos, 2011, 2019a), where common preoccupations on the given technologies were shared.<\/p>\n Thus, I was very glad to learn that, six years after my Ph.D. defense, an important management journal launched a call on the topic I\u2019ve been studying for so long!<\/p>\n To be honest, during the first years of my study, I didn\u2019t care much about the gap in the literature. I was just curious to understand the phenomenon: what happens when enterprises like Google and Facebook talk with developers about technological problems? I drew a two-fold research path: analysis\/discussion. Thus, I was studying data from these forums while discussing them with scholars and developers in Europe and in the US.<\/p>\n The forum settings used by Google Maps and Facebook were similar to those developed by free software communities (i.e. customized versions of Bugzilla). These settings allow everyone to download the data from the forum discussions. Downloading and examining those data was my starting point.<\/p>\n Yet, as I found out, studying such data is significantly different from standard scientific methods: the researcher has no control on the way the data was created. In a way, their specific nature renders them independent from the researcher\u2019s action, but also independent from scientific knowledge. The researcher is called to understand \u201cwhat happened\u201d, judging from the \u201cmonuments\u201d of past interaction (Chrysos, 2016b, 2017).<\/p>\n While the general ambiance of the times was characterized by an amazement about the technological achievements of those companies, my study revealed an invisible side of the phenomenon: the great majority of issues reported in both Facebook and Google Maps developer forums remained unsolved over a period of six months – no more than 15% of the issues were actually solved!<\/p>\n Personally, I didn\u2019t expect to find such low rates: imagine you have a problem with your phone and that you only have 15% it\u2019s solved within six months\u2026That wouldn\u2019t be serious business!<\/p>\n Moreover, using the same method I found similar problem-solving rates in the forums of two free software projects, the Firefox browser and the Linux OS.<\/p>\n I presented my early findings at the Open and User Innovation Workshop held at the MIT in 2010 and at Mozilla Labs at Mountain View before undertaking a set of interviews with developers of the Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n When I returned in Paris, I had lunch with a friend, a fine Linux developer, at a very nice brasserie. Talking about my findings, he told me about the low problem-solving performance I had found in the forums: \u201cmost people reporting bugs are clueless.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Since then, I spent much of my time interpreting those findings from a managerial perspective. To this end, I focused on the cases of Google Maps and Facebook: many enterprises wanted to become like Google and Facebook so my results could have more value. In addition, enterprises seemed to take management issues more seriously than communities do, thus I was more likely to find answers by studying the two of them.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, literature on Business Models was very poor at the time, so I had to find another literature to discuss with. I took as a reference the most popular book of my supervisor, Armand Hatchuel, \u201cL\u2019expert et le syst\u00e8me\u201d (The expert and the system, (Hatchuel and Weil, 1992)).<\/p>\n This book suggests a model for expertise in industrial systems, portraying three categories: the \u201cknow-how\u201d of the artisan, the \u201cunderstanding know-how\u201d of the repairer and the \u201ccombining know-how\u201d of the strategist. Each of these categories corresponds to different configurations of enterprise expertise. So, I tried to apply them in my research field.<\/p>\n It turned out, none of them suited me. Thus, I had to criticize them.<\/p>\n As I already mentioned, my data indicated that the greatest part of the issues reported on the forums were just left open during months and discussed like this by the enterprise and the external developers: while every issue raised in the forum expressed a lack of know-how on an aspect of the technologies in question, there was a work to be done before deciding to fix any bugs, or combing proposed features with the strategy of the company. Yet, Management Science had not identified any letting problems unsolved.<\/p>\n By operating a conceptual trick I later on came to call \u201cthe epistemological trick with the boxes,\u201d I related my findings to the three known categories of expertise in industrial systems: I had just found a fourth one!<\/p>\n I named the new expertise \u201cempathy\u201d and the corresponding expert a \u201ccurator.\u201d Thus, I argued that \u201cbefore problem solving, a kind of \u201cempathy\u201d between UDEs [i.e. User-Developer-Entrepreneurs] and enterprise needs to be developed\u201d<\/i>, enabling the curator to take care of issues that cannot be addressed by other experts (Chrysos, 2013, pp. 343-344).<\/p>\n To reach to that conclusion, I had to combine my data findings with my visit at the Silicon Valley. In a manual where a Google employee shared her experience with her fellow Googlers on how to manage developer relations, I found that – beyond the technical advice – showing empathy to external developers facing problems was highly valued.<\/p>\n Despite the critique to his work, my supervisor appreciated this introduction of the notion of empathy in innovation management – his daughter even made a business on that!<\/p>\n And yet, further discussing my results with the management community was not very easy – besides, empathy is not the strongest point of managers. In fact, my paper was \u201cDesk-rejected\u201d (i.e. rejected easily) from the potential editors of the SI mentioned above. But since all submitted papers were eventually rejected, as the Special Issue never got published, I am less frustrated for this rejection than I would initially expect.<\/p>\n Besides, the fact that Chesbrough et al. adhere to the concept of \u201cvalue realization\u201d I introduced is encouraging, as it shows that I\u2019m in a good path.<\/p>\n I first introduced the concept of Value Realization<\/i> in 2015, at the EURAM conference that took place in Warsaw, the Open and User Innovation Society Meeting in Lisbon and the EGOS conference that took place in Athens during the same summer (Chrysos, 2015c, 2015a, 2015b). I attended the Lisbon meeting by Skype, as my responsibilities as Vice-President of the Hellenic Organization of Industrial Property obliged me at the time to be in Athens. Still, I managed to Warsaw. There, as one could tell by the look in the eyes of the participants of the EURAM conference that attended my presentation, I understood that there was still work to be done to clarify what this concept was all about. To this end, the EGOS conference in Athens was very helpful, the distinction between \u201cvalue capture\u201d and \u201cvalue realization\u201d was much appreciated.<\/p>\n Thus, in the paper I submitted to the JPIM special issue, I rendered the distinction between \u201cthe resources, the competencies and the lineages of products an enterprise can already develop\u201d<\/i> and \u201cthose that an enterprise could develop in the future\u201d<\/i> (Chrysos, 2018b, p. 7) more explicit.<\/p>\n While Chesbrough et al in their rejection letter told me that \u201cSome of the definitions are confusing\u201d,<\/i> it was nice to see they ended up by adhering to the concept of value realization while editing their own paper.<\/p>\n When I was younger, I had bought the book \u201cOpen Business Models\u201d by Chesbrough. There, I read the \u201cFunctions of A Business Model\u201d (p. 109) and I found it very messy: the book was confounding the notions of value proposition and value creation and it used many complex words such as \u201cvalue chain\u201d, \u201cvalue network\u201d and \u201cstructure\u201d without really explaining them. The term \u201cvalue realization\u201d, however, didn\u2019t figure among the \u201cFunctions of a Business Model.\u201d Recently, I took another look at the book to discover that the term is used on page 100 in a very reserved way, while talking about something else.<\/p>\n In their new paper, Chesbrough et al mark a significant progress. First, they don\u2019t refer at all to the complex terms or the \u201cFunctions\u201d mentioned above. Secondly, they adhere – in a less reserved way – to the term of value realization.<\/p>\n Science is not only about introducing terms. It\u2019s also about understanding the relationship among them. For instance, in a paper I published in the journal Natures, Sciences et Soci\u00e9t\u00e9s<\/i> I discuss about contemporary epistemology based on a paper of Albert Einstein. There, Einstein shows that Physics Theories have been developed from Newton to the Theory of Relativity by suggesting different configurations between the notions of \u201cether\u201d and \u201cmatter\u201d (Chrysos, 2016a).<\/p>\n Thus, in their recent paper, Chesbrough et al advance their understanding of value realization, trying to find out its relationship with value creation. In Figure 3, you can find the 2×2 matrix which illustrates their progress.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Figure 3: The 2×2 matrix of Chesbrough et al. (2018).<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/parisx.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/funnels-chrysos-300x285.png\")
2 Turning Interfaces of Web Giants To A Research Field<\/h2>\n
3 Drawing A Research Path<\/h2>\n
4 Empathy as a Critique to Industrial Expertise<\/h2>\n
5 Value Realization in Open Innovation<\/h2>\n
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