Building on these insights on dynamic capabilities and organizational actions, Adrian and colleagues from Europe and NTU have looked at the issue of digital transformation focusing on organizational actions enacted by firms as they changed their digital strategies. Using the lens of "aligning" and paradoxical tensions, our indepth study of Hummel's experience, they discovered the positive and unexpected negative effects of a firm's dynamic capacities enacted through specific actions. See below for the study in Journal of Strategic Information Systems -- winner of Best Paper in Journal (2018) and voted by AIS Senior Scholars as one of the best papers in the IS field in 2019. A forthcoming paper in Journal of the Association for Information Systems further develops our insights to digital transformation. We introduce the concept of Digital Transformation Pathways as a way to understand how different organizations may enact their digital transformation experiences.
Besides digital transformation efforts at the organizational level, Adrian has been also involved in various studies looking at the digital transformation at the industry level through an analysis of strategic moves of IT firms and startups. He worked with Prof. Violina Rindova (at USC Marshall School of Business, currently Director of Research for the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies) to study the strategic moves of Yahoo and Google in the first ten years of their existence. We have published several conference papers and journal articles based on that study. Specifically, we explored how these firms strategically complemented their internal resources with external actions (alliance, contracting, joint-ventures) that in turn shape their overall growth trajectories. internal and alliance related actions. We also looked at the dynamic resource platforms created by Yahoo and Google to support their growth. Dynamic resource platforms included dynamic resource shifts, targeted resource orchestration, and complementary balancing processes.
A significant form of industry digital transformation has occurred in the finance industry. FinTech (or TechFin) is an area that has grown significantly in the past few years as crypto-currency and other tech enabled platforms and exchanges began taking off in various financial domains. Adrian has studied a Singapore-based tech company that is designing and implementing a last-mile mobile system for micro-finance institutions in Indonesia. Adrian has explored the contextual issues related to such implementations given the relative lack of infrastructure and economic incentives to move towards more tech (in a case study published with Asian Business Case Center). At the same time, the contextual issues are in direct conflict with institutional forces from donor organizations, who are looking for better and more efficient ways to address corporate and social accountability of such ventures. Another publication on this issue appeared in the Handbook of Blockchain, Digital Finance, and Financial Inclusion (vol. 2).
Besides digital transformation efforts at the organizational level, Adrian has been also involved in various studies looking at the digital transformation at the industry level through an analysis of strategic moves of IT firms and startups. He worked with Prof. Violina Rindova (at USC Marshall School of Business, currently Director of Research for the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies) to study the strategic moves of Yahoo and Google in the first ten years of their existence. We have published several conference papers and journal articles based on that study. Specifically, we explored how these firms strategically complemented their internal resources with external actions (alliance, contracting, joint-ventures) that in turn shape their overall growth trajectories. internal and alliance related actions. We also looked at the dynamic resource platforms created by Yahoo and Google to support their growth. Dynamic resource platforms included dynamic resource shifts, targeted resource orchestration, and complementary balancing processes.
A significant form of industry digital transformation has occurred in the finance industry. FinTech (or TechFin) is an area that has grown significantly in the past few years as crypto-currency and other tech enabled platforms and exchanges began taking off in various financial domains. Adrian has studied a Singapore-based tech company that is designing and implementing a last-mile mobile system for micro-finance institutions in Indonesia. Adrian has explored the contextual issues related to such implementations given the relative lack of infrastructure and economic incentives to move towards more tech (in a case study published with Asian Business Case Center). At the same time, the contextual issues are in direct conflict with institutional forces from donor organizations, who are looking for better and more efficient ways to address corporate and social accountability of such ventures. Another publication on this issue appeared in the Handbook of Blockchain, Digital Finance, and Financial Inclusion (vol. 2).
Articles & Cases
Agility in responding to disruptive digital innovation: Case study of a SME (by Chan, C., Teoh, SY, Yeow, A., and Pan, G. 2019)
Information Systems Journal 29(2) pp. 436-455. Disruptive digital innovation (DDI) often creates hypercompetitive market environment that forces firms to be agile in order to survive and remain competitive. Whereas most studies have focused on larger firms’ effort to be agile, few have looked at how small and medium-sized enterprises respond to DDI. The study attempts to answer the research question of how SMEs achieve agility to respond to DDI. Drawing on a case study of an innovative SME, our study develops a framework on agility based on the processes of mitigating organizational rigidity, developing innovative capabilities and balancing the tension of organizational ambidexterity. Specifically, our findings show that for SMEs, mitigating organizational rigidity is enabled by the mechanism of achieving boundary openness while developing innovative capability is enabled by the mechanism of achieving organizational adaptability. At the same time, given the inherent challenges of resource constraints, SMEs also need to balance the tension of organizational ambidexterity |
Aligning with new digital strategy: A dynamic capabilities approach (by Yeow, A., Soh, C., and Hansen, R. 2018)
Journal of Strategic Information Systems 27(1), pp. 43-58 AIS Best Information Systems Publications Award for 2018 Best Paper Award (2018) **Second most downloaded article on JSIS (December 2018-April 2019)** Key points:
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KOMIDA: Implementing Digital Microfinance in Indonesia (by Yeow, A., Lim, W.K., & Raharso, A.P.)
Asian Business Case Centre Teaching Case (2018) NTU (ABCC-2018-031) This case chronicles specific background, challenges, and actions taken by an Indonesian microfinancing institution (MFI) as it was implementing a digital mobile system to replace its current manual processes used in its field office operations. From a high level perspective, it describes the challenges faced by an organization that was attempting to implement a new digital initiative but constrained by its resource-scarce, institutionally and culturally bound environment. At the same time, it highlights that this digital initiative was a critical part of its overall plan for addressing industry demands, increasing competitive pressures, and internal process issues. The case study thus provides in-depth information of motivation behind such a project and the challenges facing the organization as it manages the project with an external IT vendor. While most standard IT project management principles may be useful in managing these challenges, it is imperative that they are applied in a way that is mindful of the cultural and industry norms in which the implementation occurs. |
Fintech, Financial Inclusion and Micro Finance Institutions: A Case Study (by Yeow, A., Lee, D., Tan, R., & Chia, M.)
Handbook of Blockchain, Digital Finance and Financial Inclusion (Vol. 2) With a growing shift towards a service based economy, organizations are increasingly participating in service ecosystems to jointly co-create value with the keystone organization. Prior research has however taken a cross-sectional view to examine this participation and has assessed limited aspects of value to members. This study hence takes a service dominant view of ecosystems and explicates three value co-creational exchanges that occur between the keystone organization and the members in a service ecosystem—service exchanges, resource exchanges and relational exchanges—and hypothesizes relationship between these exchanges and member value. The proposed model is studied in the context of a telemedicine-enabled ecosystem formed between an acute hospital and several nursing homes. Both economic and other value outcomes are considered —cost effectiveness, clinical outcomes and user satisfaction. With this, the study seeks to provide a more comprehensive analysis of relationships between value co-creational exchanges and value to members in service ecosystems. |
The Hare and the Fast Tortoise: Dynamic Resource Reconfiguration and the Pursuit of New Growth Opportunities by Yahoo and Google (1995-2007) (by Rindova, V., Martins, L., and Yeow, A. 2016)
Resource Redeployment and Corporate Strategy (Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 35) Vol. 35, pp. 253-284 Strategic management research has shown growing interest in understanding the dynamic resource reconfiguration processes through which firms grow, evolve, and sustain profitability. The goal of our study is to understand how dynamic resource reconfigurations enable firms to pursue growth opportunities. We use the methods of inductive theory building from case studies to elaborate current theoretical understanding about how firms draw on both internal and external resources in the pursuit of growth. |
How new firms use partner portfolios to pursue growth: Lessons from Yahoo and Google (1995-2008). (by Rindova, V., Yeow, A., Martins, L. and Faraj, S. 2012)
Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 6(2), pp. 133-151. We add to the theory of entrepreneurial firm growth by inductively theorizing the processes through which new high-growth firms utilize their partnering portfolios to pursue distinctive approaches to growth. We extend the strategic perspective on entrepreneurial networks by identifying three mechanisms linking partnering portfolios to differences in firm growth: configuring partnering portfolios to pursue distinctive logics for sourcing external resources, aligning resource-sourcing and resource-linking logics in new product development, and embarking on different growth trajectories, which contribute to different performance patterns. These theoretical insights contribute to current understanding of the external and internal sources of heterogeneity in the performance of entrepreneurial firms |
The search for “search”: Understanding technological and strategic contests” (by Yeow, A., Faraj, S., and Rindova, V. 2008)
68th Academy of Management Meeting, Anaheim, CA Organizational scholars have recently embraced network perspectives to explain innovation processes. However in settings characterized by highly dynamic, uncertain and fluid, the technological innovation emerges from the formation and competition of networks each embracing a specific conceptualization of what the technology is and how it should evolve. Based on a 12 year exploration of the evolution of the Web browser and search engine technologies, we offer a network model of technology evolution which posits that the dynamic technological evolution process goes through four interconnected movements: formation, contest, dominance and unraveling. This evolutionary networking perspective provides a rich set of conceptual tools to understand the emergent process through which new technological innovations evolve. Our study highlights the role of technological frames in guiding the inscriptions of artifacts and the enrollment of key actors and technologies into networks. |