Recent Submissions

  • Directive Deficiencies: How resource constraints direct opportunity identification in SMEs

    van Burg, Elco; Podoynitsyna, Ksenia; Beck, Lien; Lommelen, Tinne (Journal of Product Innovation Management, 2012)
    Previous studies show that resource constraints have mixed effects on innovation and opportunity identification by entrepreneurs. Sometimes, resource constraints lead to identifying more opportunities, whereas in other cases, entrepreneurs see fewer opportunities. This study explores a new approach to reconcile this inconsistency. Using a sample of 219 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we explore relationships between supply and demand constraints, on the one hand, and identifying supply and demand opportunities, on the other hand. The results show that supply constraints have a positive effect on identifying supply opportunities but a negative effect on identifying demand opportunities. Similarly, demand constraints have a positive effect on identifying demand opportunities but a negative effect on identifying supply opportunities. Thus, this study shows that resource constraints direct the entrepreneur's attention toward opportunities inside the constrained domain rather than outside the constrained domain. An important consequence for theory is that a complete explanation of the mixed effects of resource constraints should consider different types of resource constraints and different sources of opportunities simultaneously. For practicing entrepreneurs, being aware of this mechanism can prevent missing out on promising opportunities outside the constrained domains.
  • Improving new technology venture performance under direct and indirect network externality conditions

    Podoynitsyna, Ksenia; Song, Michael; van der Bij, Hans; Weggeman, Mathieu (Journal of Business Venturing, 2013)
    This study compares the effectiveness of five responses to external uncertainty in markets with network externalities: avoidance, imitation, control, cooperation, and real options reasoning as a form of strategic flexibility. Our analysis of 385 new technology ventures shows that direct and indirect network externalities have opposite effects on the effectiveness of these strategies. Moreover, under network externalities, attempts to make ventures less dependent upon environmental instabilities perform differently compared to attempts to control the environment. Finally, we show that real options reasoning does not always perform better under conditions of higher uncertainty, such as uncertainty due to direct network externalities.
  • A review of governmental support instruments channeling PV market growth in the Flanders region of Belgium (2006–2013)

    Huijben, J.C.C.M.; Podoynitsyna, Ksenia; van Rijn, M.L.B.; Verbong, Geert P.J. (Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2016)
    How did a country in the middle of Western Europe, starting almost from scratch, reach the European top 3 in terms of solar PV capacity in five years? And what were the costs? We provide a systematic chronological review of the different governmental support instruments that drove the exponential growth of the solar energy market in the Flanders region of Belgium and calculate their relative contributions. The results of the economic calculations show that green electricity certificates had by far the greatest effect on both the rise and stagnation of the market, costing about 1.5 billion euro only for 2006–2013. The long-term societal costs of such growth proved to be even higher (6.7 billion for 2014–2031) and unevenly distributed, with residents paying the highest price via their energy bills. Companies continuously adapted their organizations to enact the available support instruments. Counter-intuitively, the substantial support shifted the attention of companies to the larger systems, even though the incentive for investment in PV was lower than for the smaller systems.
  • Mainstreaming solar: Stretching the regulatory regime through business model innovation

    Huijben, J.C.C.M.; Verbong, Geert P.J.; Podoynitsyna, Ksenia (Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 2016)
    This paper explores how the regulatory regime for Solar PV, defined as a combination of niche shielding and mainstream regulations, affects niche business models, using the Dutch and Flemish regulatory regimes as examples. The regulatory regime does not influence all components of the business model: only one or two components are usually affected. The level of niche shielding influences the dominant niche empowerment strategy. We also identified substantial heterogeneity in fit-and-conform and stretch-and-transform empowerment strategies for dealing with the regulatory regime. These strategies are reflected in business models, and differ in terms of temporal focus, motivation and shielding characteristics targeted. Finally, we show that business model innovation, sometimes in combination with technological innovation, can be used for stretching the regulatory regime. Organizational components of the business model are usually redesigned for this purpose.
  • Learning while (re)configuring: Business model innovation processes in established firms

    Berends, Hans; Smits, Armand; Reymen, I.; Podoynitsyna, Ksenia (Strategic Organization, 2016)
    This study addresses the question of how established organizations develop new business models over time, using a process research approach to trace how four business model innovation trajectories unfold. With organizational learning as analytical lens, we discern two process patterns: “drifting” starts with an emphasis on experiential learning and shifts later to cognitive search; “leaping,” in contrast, starts with an emphasis on cognitive search and shifts later to experiential learning. Both drifting and leaping can result in radical business model innovations, while their occurrence depends on whether a new business model takes off from an existing model and when it goes into operation. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory on business models and organizational learning.
  • A multi-level perspective on innovation ecosystems for path-breaking innovation

    Walrave, Bob; Talmar, Mardis; Podoynitsyna, Ksenia; Romme, A. Georges L.; Verbong, Geert P.J. (Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2018)
    Path-breaking innovations are increasingly developed and commercialized by networks of co-creating actors, called innovation ecosystems. Previous work in this area demonstrates that the ‘internal’ alignment of actors is critical to value creation in the innovation ecosystem. However, the literature has largely overlooked that the success of an innovation ecosystem also depends on its ‘external’ viability, determined by the broader socio-technical environment. That is, path-breaking innovations inherently challenge the prevailing socio-technical regime in a domain (e.g., established rules, artifacts and habits) that tends to be resistant to change. Overcoming this resistance is a major challenge for ventures pioneering path-breaking innovations. The paper contributes to the literature on innovation ecosystems by explicitly considering the socio-technical viability of the innovation ecosystem around a path-breaking innovation. In particular, we theorize about the objects of manipulation in an innovation ecosystem and discuss the strategies that a focal venture, orchestrating the innovation ecosystem, can employ in manipulating these objects so as to increase the socio-technical viability of the ecosystem. We arrive at a multi-level perspective on innovation ecosystem development that integrates internal alignment and external viability and informs a research agenda for future studies in this field.
  • Sustainable business models as boundary-spanning systems of value transfers

    Podoynitsyna, Ksenia; Langerak, Fred (Journal of Cleaner Production, 2018-01-20)
    Sustainable innovation requires collaboration across organizational boundaries, hence in this research, we take a boundary-spanning perspective on the business model. This perspective focuses on how value is created and captured across organizational boundaries, by investigating the value transfers between the focal organization and the external network of business model actors. We analyze the business models of 64 innovative sustainable organizations from The Netherlands in terms of how environmental and social sustainability is manifested in the content, structure, and governance of their business models. We find that environmental sustainability is mainly represented in value creation content, whereas social sustainability is achieved by serving underprivileged user groups and mainly is reflected in value capture content. We observe that social sustainability in both for-profit and non-profit organizations is often achieved by having an imbalance in value exchanges that is compensated elsewhere in the business model. In terms of business model structure we show that sustainable organizations use the same underlying business model structures as can be found in conventional firms. All in all, we demonstrate that analyzing the environmental and social sustainability of organizations using the boundary-spanning perspective on business models provides complementary insights to the traditional component-based view of the business model.
  • Searching for partners in open innovation settings: How to overcome the constraints of local search

    Meulman, Freek; Reymen, Isabelle M. M. J.; Podoynitsyna, Ksenia; Romme, A. Georges L. (California Management Review, 2018)
    The search for partners in open innovation settings often consumes substantial time and managerial attention. Yet, organizations tend to get trapped in local search, which typically leads to collaboration with partners already known to them. To improve the search for partners, this article develops a tool that exploits the power of state-of-the-art information technology. In a sample of 33 search queries conducted in six innovation intermediaries, it studies differences between search with and without the use of our tool. The tests confirm the tool’s effectiveness and efficiency, and highlight the importance of searching with keywords that represent the core roles and activities of a firm, next to keywords referring to market and technology characteristics. Network visualization and semantic algorithms thus appear to facilitate the effort to identify distant partners. The article also finds that local partners are not that easy to find as commonly assumed.
  • Light the way for smart cities: Lessons from Philips Lighting

    Brock, Kati; den Ouden, Elke; van der Klauw, Kees; Podoynitsyna, Ksenia; Langerak, Fred (Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2019)
    Smart cities are one of the dominant manifestations of digitization with a multimillion dollar potential, where cities and companies alike are looking for ways to create and capture value. Technology-driven companies are key to making smart cities a reality, but their current product-centric business models do not meet the changing needs anymore. Based on an in-depth study at Philips Lighting of four smart city cases across a period of five years, our article illustrates four distinct business models that enable incumbent organizations to enter this smart city market. We develop and contrast the four types of business models on individual and joint value creation and value capture dimensions and show how each business model can be of value to an incumbent, depending on the project and ecosystem. We illustrate these business models with insights from Philips Lighting's transition from public lighting to smart cities and provide specific implementation suggestions for incumbent companies.
  • Mapping, analyzing and designing innovation ecosystems: The Ecosystem Pie Model

    Walrave, Bob; Podoynitsyna, Ksenia; Holmström, Jan; Romme, A. Georges L. (Long Range Planning, 2020)
    To achieve a complex value proposition, innovating firms often need to rely on other actors in their innovation ecosystem. This raises many new challenges for the managers of these firms. However, there is not yet a comprehensive approach that would support managers in the process of analysis and decision making on ecosystem strategy. In this paper, we develop a strategy tool to map, analyze and design (i.e., model) innovation ecosystems. From the scholarly literature, we distill the constructs and relationships that capture how actors in an ecosystem interact in creating and capturing value. We embed these elements in a visual strategy tool coined the Ecosystem Pie Model (EPM) that is accompanied by extensive application guidelines. We then illustrate how the EPM can be used, and conclude by exploring the multiple affordances of the EPM tool as a boundary object between research and practice.
  • Means versus goals at the starting line: Performance and conditions of effectiveness of entrepreneurial action

    Furlotti, Marco; Podoynitsyna, Ksenia; Mauer, René (Journal of Small Business Management, 2020)
    Various theoretical perspectives suggest that a means-oriented approach to new venture development can be a viable alternative to the conventional approach, which emphasizes predetermined goals, and that the former is favored by expert entrepreneurs. However, it is still unclear whether, and under which conditions, means-based action positively affects entrepreneurial performance and whether it would also be effective for novices. This study demonstrates the new venture performance impact of means orientation. We further contribute to various strands of entrepreneurship research by highlighting two moderating factors that are salient in the early-stage entrepreneurial process: opportunity recognition beliefs and process control practices.
  • Reducing the feasible solution space of resource-constrained project instances

    Vanhoucke, Mario; Coelho, José (Computers & Operations Research, 2024)
    This paper present an instance transformation procedure to modify known instances of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem to make them easier to solve by heuristic and/or exact solution algorithms. The procedure makes use of a set of transformation rules that aim at reducing the feasible search space without excluding at least one possible optimal solution. The procedure will be applied to a set of 11,183 instances and it will be shown by a set of experiments that these transformations lead to 110 improved lower bounds, 16 new and better schedules (found by three meta-heuristic procedures and a set of branch-and-bound procedures) and even 64 new optimal solutions which were never not found before.
  • A hybrid forecasting model to predict the duration and cost performance of projects with Bayesian Networks

    Ünsal-Altuncan, Izel; Vanhoucke, Mario (European Journal of Operational Research, 2024)
    This paper presents a new hybrid forecasting model to predict the final time and cost of a project using input parameters from the project scheduling and risk analysis literature. The hybrid method integrates two well-known risk models. A Structural Equation Modeling constructs and validates a theoretical risk model to represent known relations between project indicators and the project performance. A Bayesian Networks is used to train the theoretical model using artificial project data from the literature. These two integrated models are then used to predict the final duration and cost of a new unseen project. The accuracy of this integrated model is compared with other well-known forecasting methods from the literature. The computational experiments on a set of 33 empirical projects show that risk models demonstrate a noteworthy advantage for time and cost forecasting. To show the usefulness of this method, it is compared with a set of known machine learning forecasting algorithms. These static predictions of risk models are also compared with some well-known dynamic forecasting methods that continuously update the time/cost predictions along the project progress. These dynamic models make use of predictors from the earned value management and earned duration management literature. The results show that the static risk models offer more precise forecasts than the dynamic methods in the first half of the project progress for time forecasting, but then loose their power in favor of the dynamic forecasts.
  • A genetic algorithm with resource buffers for the resource-constrained multi-project scheduling problem

    Bredael, Dries; Vanhoucke, Mario (European Journal of Operational Research, 2024)
    In this study, we compose a new metaheuristic algorithm for solving the resource-constrained multi-project scheduling problem. Our approach is based on a general metaheuristic strategy which incorporates two resource-buffered scheduling tactics. We build on the most effective evolutionary operators and other well-known scheduling methods to create a novel genetic algorithm with resource buffers. We test our algorithm on a large benchmark dataset and compare its performance to ten existing metaheuristic algorithms. Our results show that our algorithm can generate new best-known solutions for about 20% of the test instances, depending on the optimisation criterion and due date. In some cases, our algorithm outperforms all other available methods combined. Finally, we introduce a new schedule metric that can quantitatively measure the dominant structure of a solution, and use it to analyse the differences between the best solutions for different objectives, due dates, and instance parameters.
  • Front end transfers of digital innovations in a hybrid agile-stage-gate setting

    Brock, Kati; den Ouden, Elke; Langerak, Fred; Podoynitsyna, Ksenia (Journal of Product Innovation Management, 2020)
    Digital innovations often follow a more fluid innovation process and, therefore, require different ways of managing the front end of innovation. Agile as alternative to established front end management practices is often suggested, potentially combined with Stage-Gate, in what is called a hybrid Agile-Stage-Gate model, to reap the benefits from both. Implementing the hybrid model in the front end is however not sufficient for firms with separate Research and Development departments to succeed. In such organizations digital innovations still need to be transferred from Research, where the front end work on digital innovations takes place, to the Development department, where formal development actually starts. Yet, such front end transfers have been described as inefficient and ineffective. Realizing digital innovation front end transfers is likely even more challenging because of their fluid definition. In the absence of extant theory on front end transfers in such a setting, this research uses a case study approach to analyze the front end transfer experiences of the Research department of a firm in the lighting industry that is undergoing a transformation from traditional to digital lighting. The in-depth analysis of triangulated data on eight front end projects shows that Research struggles to transfer digital innovations to Development, because transfer practices in terms of management, scope, and synchronization, turn out to be inherently challenging in a hybrid Agile-Stage-Gate setting. Specifically, the results reveal that each transfer practice plays an intricate role in either facilitating (i.e., transfer management) or inhibiting (i.e., transfer scope and synchronization) front end transfers of digital innovations. The discovery of these opposing forces has important implications for novel theorizing on the use of Agile in the front end of digital innovation, transfer practices from Research to Development in a hybrid setting, as well as for theorizing about digital innovation management.
  • Optimal distinctiveness across revenue models: Performance effects of differentiation of paid and free products in a mobile app market

    van Angeren, Joey; Vroom, Govert; McCann, Brian T.; Podoynitsyna, Ksenia; Langerak, Fred (Strategic Management Journal, 2022)
    Research Summary The optimal distinctiveness literature highlights a fundamental trade-off in product positioning within market categories: Products should be distinct to minimize competition, but similar to build legitimacy. Most recently, this research has focused on understanding sources of variance in the distinctiveness–performance relationship. We extend this literature with an examination of digital products and argue that the relationship depends on products' revenue models: We theorize the relationship is inverted U-shaped for paid products but U-shaped for free products, owing to heightened privacy concerns of free product customers. We further argue that this latter relationship becomes flatter for free products that provide greater monetization transparency by publishing a privacy statement or adopting a freemium revenue approach. Hypotheses are tested using a sample of 250,000-plus Apple App Store apps. Managerial Summary How should firms in the digital space position their products for optimal performance? We study this question in the Apple App Store, and suggest that the optimal positioning of digital products depends on their revenue model. Paid products should be moderately differentiated from competing products. By contrast, free products benefit most from very low or very high levels of differentiation. We attribute the different performance effects of differentiation to customers' privacy concerns over free products. Firms can partially ameliorate those privacy concerns by providing greater monetization transparency by publishing a privacy statement or by adopting a freemium revenue approach, making moderate levels of differentiation more viable. Our findings help managers align choices of positioning and revenue model, two critical aspects of the firm's business model.
  • Behavioural finance and cryptocurrencies

    Ballis, Antonis; Verousis, Thanos (Review of Behavioral Finance, 2022)
    The present study sets out to examine the empirical literature on the behavioural aspects of cryptocurrencies, showing the findings of related studies and discussing the various results. A systematic literature review of cryptocurrencies in behavioural finance seems to be timely and particularly important in terms of providing a guide for future research. Key topics include an extent review on the issue of herding behaviour amongst cryptocurrencies, momentum effects and overreaction, contagion effect, sentiment and uncertainty, along with studies related to investment decision-making, optimism bias, disposition, lottery and size effects.
  • Information and the arrival rate of option trading volume

    Zhang, Mengyu; Verousis, Thanos; Kalaitzoglou, Iordanis (The Journal of Futures Markets, 2022)
    In this paper we investigate the interaction between liquidity and information in the options market and its impact on the pricing of the underlying asset. We model option trade duration and volume jointly, for the first time, as a natural measure of options' trading intensity and we associate it with differential degrees of information present in option trades. We report a highly significant association between option trading intensity with contemporaneous and future underlying volatility and returns, which is robust to the presence of other information measures, market factors, and structural forms.
  • LGBTQ and finance

    Brahma, Sanjukta; Gavriilidis, Konstantinos; Kallinterakis, Vasileios; Verousis, Thanos (International Review of Financial Analysis, 2023)
    Recent changes in workplace and corporate board diversity policies and a series of court rulings have signalled a fundamental change in the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (henceforth LGBTQ) people in the corporate world. In this paper, we survey the burgeoning literature on the role of sexual orientation in finance. Studies show that there is a positive relationship between the adoption of LGBTQ-friendly policies and firm performance. We identify the factors that influence a firm's decision to adopt LGBTQ-friendly policies. We also provide evidence that sexual preferences play an important role in leadership styles in the household. Overall, our review suggests that LGBTQ research allows novel insights regarding how LGBTQ policies create value for the firm, insights that help us identify several directions for future research.
  • Financial stress and commodity price volatility

    Chen, Louisa; Verousis, Thanos; Wang, Kai; Zhou, Zhiping (Energy Economics, 2023)
    We use a Markov-switching vector autoregressive model to examine the impact of financial stress on the volatility of commodity prices, including energy volatility. An increase in financial stress leads to a persistent increase in the volatility of the commodity index and of individual commodity prices. We confirm the existence of three volatility regimes, with the volatility of the commodity index and of individual commodity prices in the high volatility regime being more than 25 times larger than that in other regimes. A financial stress shock that arrives during a highly volatile period has more destabilizing and persistent effects than when the shock arrives during a low volatility period. The impact on energy volatility in the high volatility regime is over 60% larger than that on the volatility of the commodity index. The high volatility regime is short-lived and reflects major economic events as well as the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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