Ahmad BeltaguiAston University · Operations and Information Management Group
Ahmad Beltagui
PhD
About
55
Publications
29,121
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1,065
Citations
Citations since 2016
Introduction
Ahmad Beltagui is a Senior Lecturer and a member of the Advanced Services Group at Aston Business School. His research is primarily focused on design and service operations. Ahmad has published research on topics including servitization, service experience and additive manufacutring, in most of the top operations and innovation management journals.
Additional affiliations
March 2017 - present
July 2014 - March 2017
February 2007 - April 2011
Publications
Publications (55)
Predictions that 3D Printing will lead to an Additive Manufacturing revolution have been made for at least three decades. Although adoption of these technologies continues to increase, there is a disparity between companies and industries achieving success and those becoming disillusioned when the technologies fail to achieve unrealistic expectatio...
The digital transformation of supply chains is happening at the same time as environmental and social impacts are leading to a radical rethink of the very nature of supply chains, how they are designed, and how they are managed. We examine the intersection of digital transformation and sustainability in the supply chain and consider whether they ar...
The COVID-19 crisis has underlined the need for accelerated innovation to rapidly help business solve social problems. These problems require access to capabilities and knowledge that no single organization or existing supply chain possesses. Drawing on the experience of the open innovation and rapid-scale-up achieved by the VentilatorChallengeUK t...
Business models are becoming more inclined towards platforms, which allow inclusion of diverse participants to promote leveraged growth and modularity of offerings. Despite being closely linked, several aspects of platforms are often studied exclusively from their ecosystems, lacking integrative insights on the topic of platform ecosystems. Most st...
As the COVID‐19 pandemic spread across the globe in the first quarter of 2020, demand for specialised equipment in hospitals soared. As a result, firms from a variety of sectors repurposed their design and manufacturing to create new products in days. By examining 80 cases of this accelerated innovation, the research investigates how a shared purpo...
This study examines the impact of intergenerational leadership on innovative capability and business performance. Applying a resource orchestration perspective to data from 531 family businesses in China, the results suggest that innovative capability is positively related to growth performance of family businesses. Furthermore, family businesses i...
The availability of digital technologies such as 3D printing can allow members of the public rather than only producers, to innovate. Makerspaces, where communities of individuals share access to such technologies may therefore support the democratisation of innovation. Yet little is known about how and why makerspace members use 3D printing to rea...
Call for papers for a special issue in International Journal of Production Economics,
Submission deadline April 2021
"Rethinking operations and supply chain management in light of the 3D
Printing revolution"
The growing importance of humanitarian operations has created an imperative to overcome the complications currently recorded in the field. Challenges such as delays, congestion, poor communication and lack of accountability may represent opportunities to test the reported advantages of emergent disruptive technologies. Meanwhile, the literature on...
Research into organizational storytelling has been associated with engaging stakeholders from the outset, with the myth being the focus of much of this work. Yet, few methods exist based on myths that managers can use to engage stakeholders. For this paper, we have conducted a review into organizational myths adopting the lens of the practicing man...
Social sustainability is a growing concern for supply chain management, but questionable practices endure due to insufficient stakeholder pressure on the market leading firms. Meanwhile small, socially oriented firms may have the will but lack the means to change dominant practices when entering a market. In this context 3D printing may offer a sol...
This research investigates disruptive innovation through the under-explored relationship between two ecological concepts, exaptation and ecosystems. Exaptation-driven innovation involves exploiting unintended latent functions of pre-existing technologies. Digital innovation ecosystems account for industry-spanning cooperative and competitive dynami...
The aim of this research is to understand how 3D printing is used by independent innovators, in the context of makerspaces, to generate innovations. 3D printing refers to digital fabrication technologies that are increasingly affordable and accessible. Makerspaces allow communities of individuals to share access to such technologies, learn to use t...
Design thinking and agile thinking are approaches that have great value in product innovation management. While they may be widely discussed in practice, it is unclear to what extent they are understood and how they are applied. To answer these questions, qualitative research was conducted with design engineers involved in product innovation. Inter...
Online games based on a freemium business model face the monetization challenge. The purpose of this research is to examine how players’ achievement orientation, social orientation and sense of community contribute to willingness to pay (WtP).
A multi-method study of an online game community is used. Interviews and participant observation are used...
Disaster management entails activities for responding to and recovering from disruption to normal conditions. Disasters restrict the ability of operations managers, but technologies such as 3D printing have been proposed as a means of overcoming some of the restrictions. This research uses a state-of-the-art review of 3D printing technologies to de...
Three-dimensional printing (3DP) is touted as a core element of a new industrial revolution, in which digitization, information and connectivity transform product innovation. However, while the purported benefits of 3DP are compelling, existing research suggests that expected benefits of advanced manufacturing technologies are rarely realized in pr...
The purpose of this study is to examine the interaction between New Product Development (NPD) capabilities and Business Model Innovation (BMI) by studying the adaptation of capabilities in a manufacturing firm as it adopts a service business model.
Approach: An in-depth case study is used to identify design capabilities and document how these have...
Purpose
Research suggests that to structure for servitization, organizations should separate their front- and back-end units by reference to high versus low contact activities. However, these prescriptions are overly simplistic and largely based on anecdotal evidence that fails to account for context. This research addresses the need to explore th...
The purpose of this research is to revisit prevailing notions of service quality by developing and testing a model of service quality for experience-centric services.
By problematizing the service quality literature, a model is developed to capture impacts of outcome-achievement, instrumental performance and expressive performance on customer loyal...
Adopting a holistic view of disruptive innovation, we take a broad view of disruption at the level of innovation ecosystems. By applying the lens of effectuation to disruptive innovation, we examine how firms enter into an ecosystem and contribute to disruption. Using empirical evidence from the emerging 3D printing ecosystem, we build a conceptual...
This study proposes a solution to the challenges of Professional Service Firms (PSF), which are referred to as cat herding, opaque quality and lack of process standardization. These result from misalignment in the mental pictures that managers, employees and customers have of the service. The study demonstrates how the process of articulating a sha...
3D Printing represents a development in the trend towards digital transformation of business processes and offers potential advantages for new product development. Whereas this transformation has widely affected information based processes, the digital transformation of physical product innovation represents a greater challenge. Drawing on Resource...
This study examines whether and how digital manufacturing technologies can a) facilitate the growth of a start-up firm and b) affect supply chain practices in an established industry. We investigate the case of Fairphone—a mobile phone developer based on principles of openness (towards users) and fairness (towards supply chain partners). Through a...
This research identifies service design strategies to improve outcome-oriented services by enhancing consumers’ emotional experience, while overcoming customer variability.
An abductive, multiple-case study involves 12 service firms from diverse online and offline service sectors.
Six service design strategies represent two overarching themes: Cust...
Recent research into the innovative behaviour of family businesses produces inconclusive results. Family businesses are characterised by a long term orientation that can lead to greater innovation investments in search of long term legacy or lead to risk aversion that restricts innovation efforts. The owners tend to exert a high degree of control t...
This paper presents a case study of the development process of a healthcare mobile application designed for the NHS (National Health Service) in England. Apps have transformed customer service in recent years, however issues related to data security, and personalisation and accuracy of information raise questions on the suitability and usefulness o...
Three-dimensional printing (3DP) is viewed by many as a potential catalyst for a new industrial revolution. Contributing to an improved understanding of the 3DP ecosystem, this research examines the trajectories businesses take to enter it. By analyzing the trajectories taken by 182 businesses that see themselves as being part of the 3DP ecosystem,...
The key to understanding service design is to recognize that design need not only be about giving form to physical objects. Design thinking involves reframing problems in a manner that allows novel solutions to be developed. Services require preparation and planning (or what is called as design) with the aim of creating a particular reaction and a...
Service innovation has become a priority within the field of innovation management and is increasingly focused on the creation of memorable experiences that result in customer loyalty. Studies of experience design suggest individual service elements to be managed when staging an experience whereas conceptual models in the literature emphasize the h...
The purpose of this article is to understand the interactions between players in a Danish online social-casual games community using an interpretive framework based on the Danish social constructs of Hygge and Janteloven. Hygge relates to notions of home, family, safety and security in small, sheltered surroundings, while Janteloven is a subversive...
A growing number of studies use wearable sensors, including cameras, to detect user activity patterns. When an object of academic investigation, these patterns are interpreted by researchers and conclusions are drawn about people's habits and routines. Alternatively, interpretations are provided by users themselves during extensive post-study inter...
The goal of this research is to examine how social responsibility can augment the success of a business model innovation. This issue is explored through the construction and analysis of a number of narratives, representing each of the groups involved in a case company engaged in business model innovation and how their divergent perspectives are rec...
This paper examines satisfaction and loyalty in the context of an online casual games service. Building on the customer experience literature, it investigates how service quality and community contribute to an experience that is profitable as well as memorable. The absence of service quality is regarded as creating an experience with a hollow core,...
There is a growing recognition of the opportunities of innovation through experience staging. The literature, however, tends to focus on high-profile examples of firms from largely hedonic sectors, such as entertainment and hospitality. These cases provide vivid and persuasive examples, but they fail to address how firms outside these sectors can j...
This chapter explores the relationship between emotional design and customer experience. It begins with an introduction to the concept of emotional design, comprising behavioral, visceral, and reflective elements. Next, the nature of service experiences is examined, leading to a framework that classifies services according to their functional and e...
Amid claims that we live in a service economy, the distinction between manufacturing and services is blurred. Many manufacturers have made a product-service transition, whereby services are integrated with products, to meet demand for access to the benefits, but not the risks of ownership of products. Many aspects of this transition and the product...
The value of design is increasingly recognised, but design is often overlooked in favour of R&D in the measurement of innovation. Design is difficult to define, which makes it difficult to measure in financial terms. R&D was previously considered difficult to measure, but, as it is now well defined, financial measures of R&D have been established....
Some writers have claimed we are now in an ‘experience economy’, in which companies compete not by selling products, or even services, but by creating holistic customer experiences. These experiences are designed to target customers' emotional responses, to generate loyalty and positive word of mouth. This paper adds to the nascent body of research...
The importance of research and development (R&D) and innovation at a national level is well established. Both are perceived to be essential contributors to future national productivity and economic performance.
Recognising the growing importance of design, this paper reports on the development of an approach to measuring design at a national level. A series of measures is proposed, that are based around a simplified model of design as a system at a national level. This model was developed though insights from literature and a workshop with government, ind...
It is recognised that companies in almost every sector are making a transition from selling products to innovative, integrated product-service packages. These packages deliver the benefits to customers while generally removing the requirement for ownership of products. The purpose of this paper is to establish the importance of studying design's ro...
This paper aims to explore leadership styles in relation to the management of design. The paper is based on the analysis of data collected during a multiple-case study of the role of design in business. The study involved interviews with senior managers in six case companies. The paper proposes a typology of design leadership, which defines some ch...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of product‐service systems (PSS). It uses a multiple method approach to analyse literature and cases and synthesise a framework for the understanding and investigation of PSS. It demonstrates the need to consider the “organisation” or network, of firms involved in defining, designing...
Recognising the growing importance of design at a national level, this paper reports on the development of a suite of measures relating to national design performance. These measures are based around a simplified model of design as a system at a national level, developed through a workshop with government, industry and design sector representatives...
This paper aims to explore leadership styles in relation to the management of design. The paper is based on the analysis of data collected during a multiple-case study of the role of design in business. The study involved interviews with senior managers in six case companies. The paper proposes a typology of design leadership, which defines some ch...
Some writers have claimed we are now in an 'experience economy', in which companies compete not by selling products, or even services, but by creating holistic customer experiences. These experiences are designed to target customers' emotional responses, to generate loyalty and positive word of mouth. This paper adds to the nascent body of research...
It is recognised that companies in almost every sector are making a transition from selling products to innovative, integrated product-service packages. These packages deliver the benefits to customers while generally removing the requirement for ownership of products. The purpose of this paper is to establish the importance of studying design's ro...
This speculative paper presents research questions concerned with the transition from manufacturing to service in firms and the role of design in firms making it. The transition is recognised in the marketing and operations-management literatures but the business implications are not fully understood, leaving scope for empirical research to fill th...
Questions
Question (1)
We have data from an online survey distributed by our project partners to their customer mailing lists. We have no demographic data on nonrespondents so cannot compare, but using t-tests we found no significant difference between early/late responses. Is there a better method used in social science research?
Projects
Projects (5)
Working with large businesses to develop their capacity to deliver advanced services.
In this project, we examine what motivates individuals to participate in communities that use 3D Printing (3DP) to digitally design and physically produce their own products. While authors who describe a new industrial revolution focus on capabilities of 3DP technologies, our emphasis is on understanding what people want to do with the technologies and why.
We uncover their motivations and investigate whether their behaviour predicts that of consumers in general. Drawing from the literatures on open innovation and consumer culture, we examine possible scenarios labelled democratisation and mass-customisation. The first sees consumers use 3DP to replace reliance on business, the second sees
businesses use 3DP to strengthen consumer loyalty to their brands. Our findings have implications for academics and managers concerned with how digital technologies like 3DP will shape future socio-economic behaviours.
