LETTIG Stefan, DBA

Stefan LETTIG is co-founder and managing director of Swiss Medical Diagnostics AG (MedTech startup) in Switzerland. At the same time, he is Head of Technology and Application Management of Nynos GmbH in Switzerland. He is a recognized expert in the innovation and digitization scene, an innovation and digitization forerunner. As entrepreneur and senior executive with 15+ years’ experience in business model design and digital transformation lead roles, he assisted firms in refitting operations aligned with digital age economy. Lead successfully business design initiatives for global operating banks, key pharmaceutical players and advancing startup TechFirms.

In September 2020, he completed his Executive Doctorate in Business Administration (EDBA) on the theme “Information acquisition and knowledge conversion: Towards a routinized innovation process” under the supervision of Professor Caroline MOTHE, University Professor at IAE Savoie Mont-Blanc and member of l’IREGE, Université Savoie Mont Blanc.

Prof Caroline MOTHE

Information acquisition and knowledge conversion: Towards a routinized innovation process.

Innovation entails a series of complexities for both companies and customers. Companies can be unsure about the best way to develop and market innovations, while customers may be unsure if they want to accept innovative products and services, as it may mean changing their consumption patterns. The literature states that interactions with customers and employees support innovation; however, the mechanism that enables it is still not explained. This research examines the information acquisition process of customer and employee involvement, in order to better explain how it influences the development of innovation. The primary data is collected through extended interviews with innovation managers in three case studies (two retrospective and one ongoing innovation) and nine expert information interviews. Inductive coding is the way in which this information is examined, in order to determine repeating patterns and theoretical concepts. Detailed coding of the interview data reveals a set of seven recurring activities within the information acquisition process that represent different types of customer and employee involvement. These activities are: Brainstorming, Structuring Problem, Collecting Data, Reflecting Information, Exchanging Knowledge, Filtering Knowledge and Feedback. External Benchmarking is considered as a complementary activity. The activities are then used as inputs for modelling feedback loop diagrams. In this way, an emergent theoretical model based on feedback loops is constructed. The model structure was tested through 5 final interviews: 2 professors from the field and 3 innovation practitioners. Innovation is not considered to be something that can be achieved in a fixed number of steps. Earlier generations of innovation models have tried to illustrate this and have been called out for presenting a heavily simplified reality. Instead, this study uses feedback loops to illustrate the relation between the activities. The probability to obtain innovation is not specified, as it depends on the specific business environment and instead more general principles are presented. The contribution of this study is that it specifies the activities of customer involvement and employee involvement required to obtain information and convert it to knowledge. The distinction between information and knowledge is also presented and used throughout the study, as information becomes knowledge only after it has been sorted and turned in a useable form by the company. The tacit knowledge of employees is a valuable resource for the company and if it is converted into explicit knowledge, it can contribute to improving the policies and procedures of the company. Customers can also have tacit knowledge, as they are looking for a very specific product or service and this can contribute to increasing the knowledge store of the company. This study contributes with new knowledge about the information acquisition process of customer and employee involvement, hereunto the theory of innovation processes. It also has practical considerations that firms must take into account when making innovation a central aspect of their business objectives.